Do you need a fireguard for a woodburning stove?

Even fifteen years ago, we used to stock and sell a great number for fireguards, but demand has reduced to a trickle as open fires have been largely phased out and replaced with stoves or gas fires.

The main role of traditional fireguards was to prevent sparks from the fire splashing beyond the hearth and onto your floor.

Stoves, however, are classified as closed appliances, and normally operate with the door closed, so wild sparks are contained inside: beautiful rather than dangerous. Even though you need to open the door to re-fuel, potentially allowing sparks to escape, you would have to move a fire guard out of the way anyway, making them redundant in all but the most unlikely of scenarios.

The other function of fireguards, however, is to create distance between a hot stove or fire and unwitting creatures who might otherwise accidentally burn themselves on it.

The evidence for such dangers is, perhaps counter-intuitively, pretty scarce. It’s easy to imagine, but rarely seems to happen. Most children seem, like dogs, to be aware that intense heat equals danger. The animals that are anecdotally the most likely to suffer burns from a stove are cats. This is because, unlike dogs and children, who approach a stove on foot and feel the radiant heat as a warning, cats often leap from a distance and by the time the danger becomes apparent, it’s too late. (If you have cats and a newly-acquired stove, habituate him/her/them to the heat of the stove by holding them close enough to feel it – they’re smart animals and learn quickly enough. If you’re really worried, the Fort Knox of fireguards is a childguard with complete vertical and horizontal caging around a fireplace that should frustrate the nimblest of ninja cats; however, it will also frustrate your access to the stove.)

However, adults are understandably nervous leaving children in a room with a lit stove. Hence, the few fireguards we do sell are mostly at Christmas, and mostly to grandparents. None of them are fail-safe – the enterprising adventurer will always find a way through - but some fireguards are pretty good. The most popular of them is the one in the picture above, excellent for free-standing stoves, with long returns that can be fixed to the wall and a gate at the front to allow access to the stove door (pictured here with our Charnwood Arc 7 woodburner).

If you’d like to discuss the options, call us on 01425 617610, drop us a line at info@newforestfires.co.uk or stop in and see us.