There seems to be a lot of questions at the moment with regard to what you can and can’t burn on your multi fuel stoves.

We’ll try to answer some of the common questions.

Will smokeless fuel damage my liner?

If used correctly, using smokeless fuel on your multi fuel stove will not damage your liner.

If you’re leaving your fuel to burn throughout the night or over prolonged periods it is advisable to thoroughly warm the liner up every couple of days. This will burn off the deposits on the inside of the liner. These deposits are left by all fuels including logs/wood, not just smokeless fuels.

It is a common theory that sulphur in the fuel causes problems in the future. If you use HETAS or DEFRA approved fuels which have strict sulphur limits then they will not cause any premature failures.

How often should I clean my chimney/liner?

When burning logs or smokeless fuel you should have it cleaned by a competent chimney sweep at least once a year. The chimney sweep will give you a certificate that will then validate your buildings insurance for a further 12 months. This is often overlooked and it is becoming more of a problem should there be a claim in the future. Basically, if you have your chimney swept once a year and burn good quality fuel then you wont have a problem.

Are the government going to ban coal?

At the moment (Jan 2019) the government is trying to pass a bill to ban the sale of bituminous coal. This is the fuel that is mined direct from the ground and produces a lot of smoke and soot. This is not the kind of fuel you’d burn on a multi fuel stove. The sale of “wet” or “green” wood would also be banned. Again, you wouldn’t want to be burning this on your stove either.

The sale of smokeless fuels wont be affected. The same thing as done in the Republic Of Ireland a few years ago.

A lot of people ask what the difference is between burning logs smokeless fuel, the Coal Merchants Federation has produced a quick and simple video briefly showing the differences.

Please click on this link to view: