Climate Change

Far from banning stoves the Government is now offering helpful advice on how you can use them to burn wood efficiently with the minimum impact on local air quality in Defra's 'Burn Better, Breathe Better' campaign... more

Please don’t. Instead, if you can, think seriously about installing one of the new breed of highly efficient, low emissions Ecodesign stoves. One of these will make your fuel go up to four times further than an open fire as well as save you serious money, both on the cost of your fuel, and also on how much you will need to use your gas or oil-fired central heating… read more

All homes should have built-in energy independence

This is perhaps, the one lesson that should be learned from the war in Ukraine and the additional impact it has had on our energy prices. Energy prices go up all the time but this year the average homeowner can expect to see a staggering increase of £700 added to their £1300 annual bill. In the meantime wholesale, oil and gas prices are still rocketing (check out the graph below of the last 7 weeks)... read more.

After all the scaremongering and misinformation about stoves a national daily paper finally sets the record straight with a factual article on exactly what it costs to run a wood burner compared to electricity and gas. The Sun article makes welcome news to stove lovers everywhere who probably knew all of this anyway. Since the article was written before Firmus, one of Northern Ireland's two gas suppliers, announced that their price will rise by 38%, adding a further £267 to a typical annual gas bill, the comparison will now be much more in favour of stoves.

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Time to take a reality check about stoves and air quality. We recently came across this well-considered article 'Ban wood burning stoves? I think not' by Michael Bye at Ceramic Glass. In it he perfectly and reasonably challenges some of the hysterical press and TV coverage about stoves... read more

We've attached a link to great article with a comprehensive overview of everything to do with climate change and the future of energy in Northern Ireland, including what's likely to happen to your oil and gas boilers and if these fossil fuels are likely to be replaced by hydrogen. The article is featured on the Energy Saving Trust website and we would urge anyone interested in these topics to read it, especially when it comes to trying to understand the fundamental differences between the two competing NI Climate Change Bills. We certainly learned a lot. Read more...