Advice

Each job set out in the order it actually happens

Each page walks one job from the first move to the final check, and marks the step that everything after it depends on. A product is named only where the job genuinely needs one — and more than one of these ends by telling you to buy nothing, because drier wood changes more than any appliance could. Where the answer depends on your own chimney, your own building or a limit the maker sets, the page hands over to the documentation instead of paraphrasing it.

Getting started

What has to be decided before anything is bought, and the order the decisions come in.

The first winter, in the order it happens Almost everyone starts at the appliance, and almost everyone should not. The chimney decides what appliance is possible, the fuel decides what the appliance can do, and the appliance is the part you choose last. This page walks the sequence.

Choosing a stove

Matching an output to a room, a fuel to a habit, and a flue spigot to a chimney that already exists.

Log or pellet, decided on the differences that hold These two appliances are compared on efficiency and price, and separated in practice by fuel supply, electricity, noise and how much of your attention they want. This page runs the differences in the order they end up mattering.

Installing & connecting

Clearances, floor protection and the pipe run — what is measured, what is inspected and what is not yours to decide.

The connection, and where this page stops This is the job where a page can do the most harm by sounding confident. What follows is the sequence and the parts list, with the decisions that are not ours marked as not ours — because the ones that matter here are settled by the manufacturer and by the rules where you live.

Seasoning & storing

How long wood actually takes to dry, where a stack has to stand, and what covering it wrongly costs.

Seasoning, the cheapest change on this site This page ends by telling you to buy almost nothing, and it is the page that changes more than any appliance here. Wet wood is not a small inefficiency — it is heat spent on evaporation, taken out of the room, and no appliance recovers it.

Lighting & running

Lighting from the top, setting the air, and why a slow fire is the expensive one.

Top-down lighting, and what the controls are doing Most people build a fire the way they were shown and then wonder why the glass goes black. This page walks the load, the controls and the first twenty minutes — the part where almost everything that goes wrong with a wood fire is decided.

Buying

How to read a stove listing: which figures are specifications, which are assumptions, and which are neither.

The real total, item by item The price on the appliance is the part everybody compares and the smaller half of what gets spent. This page builds the list that actually leaves your account, in the order the money goes out.

Sweeping & servicing

What the season's maintenance actually is, in the order it is done, and what still has to be certified.

The yearly service, and the part that is not yours Some of this is a Saturday and some of it is a legal duty with a named professional attached, and which is which depends on where you live. This page separates the two, then walks the part you can do.