Preston is a straight run down the M55 for us, and its Victorian terraces have some of the best original openings on our patch. Openings formed, chimneys lined, oak beams and slate hearths set, tested and signed off across Preston and the PR1 postcodes around it.
Preston is a city with street after street of Victorian terraces, which usually means a sound but oversized masonry flue, a boarded up opening waiting to be found, and a straightforward job once the breast is open. In practice most of what we are called out for around Preston is Victorian terrace breast openings, with everything else on the list available alongside it.
A woodburner fitted properly is one visit from an empty chimney breast to a stove burning in front of you.
/02A multifuel stove has a raised grate and an ashpan underneath, so it will burn smokeless fuel as well as wood.
/03Most of the work in a good stove installation happens before the stove arrives.
/04The flue is the part of the installation nobody sees and the part that decides whether the stove draws, stays clean and stays safe.
/05The beam and the hearth are what turn an opening with a stove in it into a fireplace.
/06The inside of the chamber is what you actually look at when the stove is lit.
/07Two very different looks from the same job.
/08Victorian chequer, patterned encaustic, plain slate and quarry tiled hearths, laid to a set out that lands the pattern centrally on the opening rather than wherever the first tile happened to go.
Across Preston (PR1) it is mostly Victorian terrace breast openings, flexible liners and tiled or stone chambers. Preston is a city with street after street of Victorian terraces, which usually means a sound but oversized masonry flue, a boarded up opening waiting to be found, and a straightforward job once the breast is open. Every job starts with a free survey of the actual chimney breast and the stack, because a price given over the phone for work like this is a guess.
No. Travel is included in the price. Preston is about 23 km from our Blackpool base, which is well inside the patch we cover as a matter of course, so you are paying for the stove and the work rather than for the van.
Yes. Preston is a straight run down the M55 for us, and its Victorian terraces have some of the best original openings on our patch. We are happy to talk through the kind of installs we have done near Winckley Square when you call, and to explain how we would approach yours.
Yes, and mostly in your favour. Terraced property in Preston nearly always has a masonry flue already there, so the job is opening the breast back up, checking the stack and dropping a liner in rather than building a chimney from nothing. The two things we look hard at are the state of the stack head, which is where the weather gets in, and whether the flue is shared or has been broken into by a neighbour’s work, because both change what the install needs.
A clean install into a sound existing chimney is usually a single day on site in Preston. Opening a blocked breast, rebuilding the chamber, fitting a beam and hearth and making the plaster good runs to two or three days, and a twin wall system through the roof is normally two. You are told which of those yours is at the survey, along with the price, before anything is committed.
That is the order we would rather do it in. The survey tells you what the chimney can take, whether it needs a liner or a twin wall system, what size appliance the room actually wants and what the builder work will cost. Choosing a stove first and finding out afterwards is how people end up with something that is too big for the room or will not fit the opening.
Yes. The installation is notified through the HETAS scheme, so you get a certificate of compliance with Part J of the Building Regulations without needing a separate building control inspection. Keep it with the house paperwork, because it is what a surveyor, a solicitor and your insurer will ask to see.
Send a photo of the chimney breast and David will come back with a price.