Moved into a new house this year and had a fireplace with a gas fire. The gas fire has all been removed and I've been left with a brick opening to the fireplace, a black granite surround and a one piece black granite hearth. Inside the fireplace is a concrete slab which isn't connected to the hearth. The chimney has been swept and I've lit some news paper on the concrete slab to check its drawing and smoke is being pulled straight up.
However the sweep advised me the hearth, and surround is most likely for a gas installation and wouldn't withstand the heat. He gave me horror stories of hearths cracking and surrounds coming away from the wall and smoke seeping through the top of the surround. Although no advice on the inside of the fireplace, its bare brick, with the sides filled in with some sort of mortar which looks like its covering pipe holes from a previous back boiler.
However I'm determined to have an open fire and I would quite like to put in a basket with a cast iron fireback and get on with it. If the surround comes away or the hearth cracks, so be it and I'll have to stop and replace them. I'm struggling to see how the hearth can heat up so much in the middle if the basket is first of all sitting on the concrete slab inside the fireplace.
What are people's experiences of this? I feel if I walk into a fireplace shop, they are going to make me spend £1000's just to get it going when in the late 1960's (when the house was built) these fireplaces were the norm and most likely worked fine! And I know it has been used with all the soot that came out with the sweep.
(By the way, the choice of an open fire is something I've always wanted for the sight smell etc, so not interested on heat saving with wood stoves etc )
However the sweep advised me the hearth, and surround is most likely for a gas installation and wouldn't withstand the heat. He gave me horror stories of hearths cracking and surrounds coming away from the wall and smoke seeping through the top of the surround. Although no advice on the inside of the fireplace, its bare brick, with the sides filled in with some sort of mortar which looks like its covering pipe holes from a previous back boiler.
However I'm determined to have an open fire and I would quite like to put in a basket with a cast iron fireback and get on with it. If the surround comes away or the hearth cracks, so be it and I'll have to stop and replace them. I'm struggling to see how the hearth can heat up so much in the middle if the basket is first of all sitting on the concrete slab inside the fireplace.
What are people's experiences of this? I feel if I walk into a fireplace shop, they are going to make me spend £1000's just to get it going when in the late 1960's (when the house was built) these fireplaces were the norm and most likely worked fine! And I know it has been used with all the soot that came out with the sweep.
(By the way, the choice of an open fire is something I've always wanted for the sight smell etc, so not interested on heat saving with wood stoves etc )