martin-f said:
i only have the fire in the picture below but it does warm the downstairs and air the upstairs when light
Nice fireplace that, I do like old cast iron open fireplaces, but they are terrible for making a house cold as they suck all the warm air up and out the chimney, and that air gets replaced with cold air from outdoors, so, it's not a great solution, especially in our house where we just seem to have a river of icy cold air flowing from the kitchen & bathroom through the dining room and into the living room cos of the (currently unused) open fire...
!
I'd love to have a wood burning stove though, you can control the airflow in those so you don't get so much cold air bring pulled through gaps in doors and through badly-placed air vents fitted by gas engineers who couldn't understand basic physics...
And as for stocking up on wood, there is a wood-based alternative, Wood briquettes, the cheap things from leading DIY stores and garden centres aren't worth messing about with as they just fall apart, but the fella that runs this website sells some properly-made, highly-compressed (so much so that they occasionally catch fire in their briquette machinery!! O-Ha ) and long burning, and unlike wood they can be burnt right away, no chemical binders are used (unlike cheaper things), no additives or preservatives, just waste sawdust compressed 'til the natural cellulose melts to form the logs:
http://www.greenfires.co.uk/
(click the "Firewood Briquettes" link at the top of the page)
You can even turn them into charcoal if you have the know how to make it, so can use them for BBQs in the summer too...