What the standard fixes
EN 1856 sets requirements for metal chimney products, and it is published in two parts. The first covers system chimney products — the assembly that forms the chimney itself, typically insulated, typically double-walled, running from the appliance connection to above the roof. The second covers metal liners and connecting flue pipes — the liner that is fed down an existing masonry shaft, and the pipe that runs from the appliance to the chimney inside the room.
Each part sets out what the product must satisfy and what it must declare, and the declaration is expressed in the designation system of the general chimney standard.
The distinction between the two parts is not administrative. A connecting pipe lives in a heated room and is designed to be seen, cleaned and replaced. A system chimney runs through a building and out of it, and is designed never to be touched again.
What it does not promise
It does not make a connecting pipe usable as a chimney. A single-walled painted steel pipe is a connecting pipe; running it up through a ceiling is a different product’s job, and no thickness of the first substitutes for the second.
It does not size anything. Which diameter, which height and which insulation suit a given appliance is the calculation’s question.
And it does not cover the masonry. A liner is classified; the shaft it is fed into is not.
The documents that sit beside it
It supplies the products that the general chimney standard’s designation describes, and the sizing calculation is what decides whether a particular assembly of those products works with a particular appliance.
On the appliance side, every appliance standard states a flue spigot diameter and a required draught, and those two figures are the interface between the two worlds. A stove and a chimney are compatible when a calculation says so, not when the diameters happen to match.
Where it appears on this site
On the liner family, and on the five connecting-side families: the pipe, the elbow, the wall sleeve, the cowl and the rain cap.
This site separates those families deliberately, because the German word for a stove pipe names the straight tube and the elbow indifferently, and sellers put the elbow forward because it sells better. A survey of the pipe shelf found that most of what a search for stove pipe returns is elbows. The families here are split by what the article actually is.
Questions that keep arriving by post
Can I run stove pipe through the ceiling?
A connecting flue pipe and a system chimney are different products under different parts of this standard, and the second is what passes through a building. What may be done in your case is a matter for the documentation and for whoever is competent where you live.
Is a thicker pipe a better pipe?
Wall thickness is one property among several, and the heavier connecting pipes on this market are sold on it. What the product declares — its class, its assessed distance to combustible material — is what the page reports, and thickness on its own does not change the classification.
Why is a liner cheaper per metre than a system chimney?
Because it is a different article doing a different job: one is fed into an existing shaft, the other is the shaft. Comparing them on price per metre is comparing two products that are not alternatives.
Last reviewed 22 September 2026