Replacing an old fireplace

[rose99]

We are just moving into our first home and have some work to do on the house to bring it up to scratch. In the living room we have a 5 bad hung gas fire and surround, but want to replace it with an inset gas fire and new hearth and surround. The house was built in around 1910-1920 and is a terraced hosue with chimney breasts. I have read that this mean its a class 1 type chimney, but does anyone know of any past experience with fitting this type of fire or thigns to look out for! Thanks

[gucciman]

hi rose

basically you have 2 different types of inset fires, a slim box one or a deep box one.
the slim box one is designed to fit into pre-cast flues and is the ONLY one you can use in a pre-cast flue.
if you have a traditional brick built flue (a chimney in other words) then you can have a slim box or a deep box inset fire. deep box ones are more realistic as you have a deeper fuel bed and they give out more heat, they are however slightly more expensive.
you will need your chimney to be assessed by a corgi registered gas installer. he will need to disconnect and remove your old fire so he can examine the condition of the catchment space and the flue and to take measurements which will determine if you can have a fire and what type.
he will also need to examine the performance of the flue by performing a smoke test to ensure the smoke is drawn up the flue, that the smoke does not escape into any other rooms or loft space that the flue passes through and that the smoke leaves the correct terminal on the roof (chimney pot) this all sounds complicated but in reaity it only takes half an hr.
presuming your flue is suitable (which it should be as it already as a gas fire connected to it) then you need to consider which fire to go for. this all depends on how much money you have to spend. can i advise you if possible to avoid the focal point fires that they sell at bandq as they are cheap and nasty. if you can afford it go for a deep box valor and preferably one with a top mounted slide control as grovelling on the floor to operate the fire will soon lose its appeal. (something like the valor dream which is about 350)
as for the hearth and surround, again if you can afford it go for a marble back and hearth as the thin flexible marble copy type ones you can buy are really grot.
saying all this, i do regulary install focal point fies with cheap surrounds and hearths and they do look ok when nice and new,

[gucciman]

installation wise, presuming your flue was ok and the fire fits straight in then we charge 75, if the flue needed slight modifications then it would be about around 100-125 or if you wanted us to do the complete job including installing the hearth, surround and back piece then it would be around 200. if you wanted all the pipework concealed then it may be slightly more expensive. these prices are only a rough guide to what we charge as we are only a small independant firm and we tend to be on the cheaper side.
as a worse case scenario we could examine the flue and advise you that you need to get a builder in first to work on the flue, we had this recently and it cost a 1000 to get the fire installed in the end, this is on top of the 1000 the householder paid for there very flashy inset fire that was set half way up the wall. don't panic though, we install the vast majority of fires for less than 200.
so a quick re-cap, your getting rid of your old fire anyway, so call out a corgi gas installer and get the old fire disconnected and capped off and then get him to examine your flue and to advise you on what fire you can have.

if your in the birmingham area then let me know as thats where were based.

hope that helps, let me know if you need anymore advice

p.s. i should have said, with the real flame type gas fires you can get a decorative fuel effect type (dfe) or a living flame effect type (lfe) the dfe ones are designed just to look nice, they give out hardly any heat and cost a fortune to run, they also need additonal ventilation installed. the dfe's do look nice but go for a lfe.

[rose99]

thanks for your responses, im feeling a lot better about it all now! We had been told by couple of Gas fitters that it could cost up to around �1000, and they wouldn't estimate due to this! Im so glad it is the extreme cases!

Im in the Scarborough area and so unfortunatley not birmingham, otherwise would take you up on the joba dn hire you to do the fire!

Thanks again for the advice, it is very useful!

[gucciman]

how can someone quote a 1000 without even looking!

do you know anyone who can reccomend a good reliable gas fitter in your area? always a good idea to go on a reccomendation. often your local council will have a list of approved tradesmen and also you could ask help the aged as they keep a list of good tradesmen to stop the old folks gettin ripped off.

[rose99]

Unfortunatley we don't know any gas fitters in the area, and no one we know has had any work done of this type. So we shall take your advice and se what the council and other approval boards say on this.

But yes we were shocked by the attitude towards us simply asking if someone could give us a rough estimate before we go ahead, we didn't want to start if we couldn't afford to finish.

Thanks for the advice, im confident now we can start looking at fires, and will take the advice as well on not buying the B&Q cheapy! We shall spend a bit more money and get a bit quality fire.

[gucciman]

cant go wrong with a valor fire.