Choosing An Efficient Gas Fire

Gas fires have come a long way in recent years. They have become more efficient and come in many sizes and for some you don't even need a chimney.

In this video, I demonstrate (very simply) how a gas fire works and walk you through some of the gas fires types available, so that when you come to our gas fire showroom or visit any other, you will have a better idea of what you need to ask to meet your personal requirements.

Below is a text of the video.

Hi. today I would like to talk about why gas fires all of a sudden become really popular. obviously we've had the wood burners, gone through a fashion point, if you like, and they have been really popular for the last sort of eight to 10 years. Gas fires all of a sudden, well, in the last year especially, have become more and more popular and there's reasons for it.

So the one of the main ones is efficiency and people don't realise just how efficient gas fires can be now because they’re used to the older types and they imagine that they haven't moved on. But in fact, they really, really have.

So I just want to explain why they're more efficient. because I'm finding when customers come in until such time, I've explained it properly. they don't really get it.

So once it's pointed out, it might actually, help you decide before you even go visiting showrooms. which way you want to go, whether it be electric, gas, or wood burning.

But so many of our customers are actually coming in wanting a wood burner when they're told about the gas fires and what's available, all of a sudden they, jump to a gas fire idea.

Okay, to explain, this is what I'd normally explained to a customer when they come in. This is a traditional old style, what we call the 16 inch standard gas fire. The way they work is you got a box with reflective panels in it, which reflects heat.

You've got controls under here, which basically control a burner like a, like a cooker anything else that has a burner underneath. The burner puts flames through the coal fuel bed. The colds glow up and it all becomes nice and hot in there. So that's reflecting heat forward. Okay, so what you're getting is radiant heat….

A bit like sitting in the sun. You go in the shade, you're cool, you go into the sun, you feel the radiant heat. That's how these radiant gas fires work. If they do, produce any warm air, it's simply because they've warmed up your carpet and furniture around it from that radiant heat. The air's running over those objects and warming the air up a little bit.

So they call these like, a hotbox fire. They were around 20% heat efficient. So 80% of that heat is actually being used in the burner itself and going straight up the flu. So you're getting 20% of the heat that’s radian heat only - any warm air it might, it produces getting sucked straight back up your chimney, because chimneys are always drawing.

So that's why the old type are not very efficient and nowadays not being very efficient, isn't a good thing. So that's brought gas-fired manufacturers onto making them as efficient as they possibly can. So what they've actually achieved now, it's gone from 20% radiant heat, only with heat loss - up to anything up to 90/95%.
radiant heat with warm convected air and very little heat loss. And I'll show you how they achieve that with these fire next to me.
All right, so same size fire, what we call a 16 by 22 inch standard gas fire, obviously you probably see straight away that they have, a more pleasing fuel bed and more realistic.

This one happens to be a log one, but let's talk about why these are more efficient. The way these work in the same way with a burner underneath. Okay. With your controls. Gas coming through into that hot box environment, if you like, and that's kind of it, where they're similar.

How this produces heat is this has an air space around it and that air space goes over the exhaust outlets, which are pipes within the fire. So like any other radiator in your room, once this builds up heat, it naturally draws cold air towards it. So that cold air goes through the fire, through the bottom, here goes around the back of the fire, over the exhaust outlets, and comes through here as warm air.

The rest of the scrip here:

[yvonnejohnson]

We’ve had our old one for over 15 years the same as the one you showed first and it suddenly stopped turning on. It’s remote controlled so we just thought that we’d get a new insert and the workings underneath but the gas man wouldn’t touch it. My daughter went to a showroom today and they said that we needed a new fire excluding the pale limestone surround which is similar to all of yours. It’s going to cost over 4, 000.00 but after seeing this I can understand why, they all look so beautiful. I’ve found it unpleasant to sit in my lounge for a few years now. I actually bought a Carbon Monoxide monitor because I felt so ill and I thought it was the gas fire. Thank you for the incredible demonstration, I’ll be showing this to my husband tomorrow.

[eamonhannon]

Beautiful fires ! Well done . They look great !!

[NewVsOld]

Helpful video. Only wish you had showcased the open fronted convector fires as a middle ground option

[yaulkwong]

I had the old one same as what you've shown, how much it cost to upgrade to that new one.? Is there any safety concern, e.g. the air is not drawn out to chimney? I do have a chimney connected to my old one, it works well but I just thought many heat lost.

[irenestephenson]

So a gas fire not giving out much heat I have a small insert one bought second hand not sure if I should insert

[omarismith]

Hi id like to purchase the 2nd gas fire in the picture

What price am I looking at ? Thanks

[lionofjudah]

Hi. How do you clean the flu to these gas fires. As the test it had some smoke didn't all go up the flu. Som didn't all go up there. Is it best to clean the flu on the fire

[lionofjudah]

Do we need to use the flu for.the gas fire then. As the gas man who we bought the fire and surround from has called it off for some reason. Do we actually need the flu. Where else could the fumes go from the fire

[atifmanzoor]

Hi can you tell me if I get a glass front fireplace would it have a negative effective on a limestone fire surround

[eamonhannon]

If air is drawn from room, you need vent, this compromises airtightness and der-rates the energy rating . Need a balanced flue in this case .

[katemcalindon]

Thank you for your video. We are not on mains gas but would like a gas fire/stove in our loft conversion. Could it be fuelled from an external pipe to bottled gas?

[mikeonbc]

Very helpful video but I wouldn't touch Gazco with a bargepole after having to deal with the rubbish one that was (new) in my house when I bought it, having been installed by the previous owner. It almost always fails to light and even after calling out an engineer (several times) it almost immediately goes back to its old unreliable tricks after they've left. Some of the engineers didn't even really seem to understand what to do with it, and the one proper Gazco engineer who called was based in somewhere like Swindon (and I'm in Manchester). If this is British engineering at its best (and at the prices Gazco cost) then lord help us!!! The existing one is probably about 10% efficient anyway (lovely yellow flames of incomplete combustion but very little radiated heat and no convective heat but hey, for people with more money and blingmania than sense Gazco will happily heat the planet). SO I'm watching this video to fins a simple replacement (one that can be lit with a match if need be - it seems the old 1960s ones with ceramic candles can still be got and are claimed to be 82% efficient, so what's new!)

[xlman]

Just found out the 90 percent efficiency of he fires only applies to full output.. at minimum outpout( which is about half power or 2 kw the efficiency falls to 50 percent.. funny nobody ever points this out

[Martindyna]

It's a great shame that manufacturers for the UK market believe that it's OK to burn natural gas with a yellow flame (which every school girl / boy knows is inefficient), I would never buy a gas stove with a yellow flame burner.
I've got an old 1970s Radiation Ascot SuperSaver 70 with a blue flame burner (the flames have tongues like a bunsen burner) with the old style ceramic radiants laid fairly flat and with ceramic `coals' laid on top and a glass front and a strong convector. This gives an orange heat (hotter than red hot) coke fire effect and I wish the manufacturers would design their fires along these lines.
In (roughly) the 90s Glow-worm in the UK offered a condensing gas fire with 3 kW output & fan powered balanced flue but again made the mistake of thinking that a gas fire must mimick a coal fire with some yellow flame unfortunately. It was not a great commercial success probably due to it's cost for a relatively small heat output; however it did have an efficiency of I imagine around 80%.

[macraghnaill]

Inset gas fire swith a convector are not new, I had one as far back as 1996 [Cannon[ and replaced with a Valor with convector in 2010

[jspope]

What if you don’t have gas at the house ?