Slate hearth on engineered hardwood floor

[hellopaul2]

Hello,

I am planning to have a Stovax woodburner, sitting on an 1800mm wide x 465mm deep x 350mm high steel bench. It will sit on an engineered hardwood floor which will be laid on (glued to) a cement screed. I am considering having a large (1950mm wide x 800mm deep x 30mm thick) slate hearth under the bench. I am assuming the floor will be dead level (the screed is very level, and there will be a latex screed going over the top of the cement screed before the floor goes down), but am concerned that any slight imperfections, coupled to the weight of the woodburner/bench, would result in the slate cracking.

Does anyone have any suggestions of what, if anything (am I worrying unnecessarily?) I should put between the floor and the slate to take up any slight imperfections? My first thought would be some kind of huge silicone mat - the kind of thing you'd use in the kitchen, but the same size as the chunk of slate - if such a thing exists!

Another option would be to have the hearth sitting directly on the screed, and floor up to it. I'd need to rebate the edges of the hearth so the flooring could slip slightly under the edges to hide the ends of the planks - I don't want any "trim" around the hearth where it meets the floor. But I don't think the timings of how everything is happening over the next few weeks will allow this.

I'd welcome any thoughts and suggestions, thanks!

~ Paul

 

[bsr]

I'd bed the hearth onto the concrete using tile adhesive.

Alternatively glue the hearth onto the wood. If it's a glue down floor the adhesive is silicone based and gap filling.

 

[Ivor Windybottom]

I'd recommend not getting a log burner.

Unless you like the idea of poisoning yourselves and neighbours and don't care if it makes the room colder due to all the ventilation needed.

Do lots of research, there are lots of issues with setting fire to lumps of wood in your house like it's 1824 not 2024. Don't blindly follow fashions. They'll probably be banned in a few years anyway.

 

[Ivor Windybottom]

Wood burning stoves: pollution and health impacts - Which?

Information about the environmental and health impacts of wood burning stoves can be confusing - here's the low down

www.which.co.uk

 

[Ivor Windybottom]

Avoid using wood burning stoves if possible, warn health experts

Charity calls for people to use alternative, less polluting heating and cooking options if they can

www.theguardian.com

Just two of many articles from googling "woodburner health"

 

[IJWS15]

I grew up with open fires and always wonder why people prefer them to simple, clean gas or electric.

They generally don’t spit embers out onto your floor either - was it sycamore that was notorious for this.

 

[Deluks]

I grew up with open fires and always wonder why people prefer them to simple, clean gas or electric.

Because the gas and electric companies are rinsing us dry with increasingly unaffordable bills.
The oligarchs and shareholders must be kept happy.

 

[Ivor Windybottom]

Not everything's a conspiracy. Solid fuel of all types are terrible, we learnt the lesson from all the illness and death caused by it decades ago, The Clean Air act banned a lot of it. Then a new generation comes along and decides it's all fine because it looks pretty. Thankfully this daft fashion seems to be coming to an end now, but still many wrongly think it's harmless.

 

[hellopaul2]

I have a free supply of many years-worth of firewood, and, as has been pointed out, gas and electric is shockingly expensive. And we'll all be dead from climate change soon anyway - one more woodburner isn't going to end the world when world war 3 is kicking off in the middle east and China is burning through more coal than ever! Yes, I'm part of the problem, not the solution, but the opportunity for solution passed us by many years ago.

 

[Ivor Windybottom]

I'm about to take the three chimneys down completely and install a heat pump. You stay a lot warmer if you don't have a gaping hole out of the roof in the living room.

No mains gas here, there's a woodburning stove that was already installed when we bought the place, we wiped a shocking amount of soot off the internal walls when we moved in, presumably the leftovers after the rest stuck inside the previous owners' lungs. This is a modern very expensive stove, with seals around the door. It will shortly be making its way to the scrap metal yard.

Setting fire to stuff is pretty primitive. Also a right pain having to drag lumps of dead tree into your house and take the ash out. Plus your neighbours will tut at you.

If your free firewood is treated in any way then burning it is very bad for you and your neighbours, it's also illegal. I regularly drive past a house adjoining a timber garden building company, with stinking filth coming out of their chimney.

But sadly everyone is free to make their own decisions. Until they get banned anyway, then you'll just have the draughts and a lump of useless metal to get rid of.

 

[hellopaul2]

I also have a heat pump, and the wood is not treated - it was a bunch of trees until a few years ago, and is now drying out nicely.