How much does it cost to maintain a wood burning stove?

Stove maintenance

Maintenance of the stove itself is an important consideration in choosing a wood-burning stove, and one that you should always try to discuss with your stove dealer to ensure that you will enjoy hassle-free enjoyment of your stove for its expected life. If you maintain a good stove from a good manufacturer, it might well outlast you (we frequently come across lively and daily-used stoves from venerable old brands 30 or 40 years old), so this is not a matter to treat lightly.

Every stove contains a number of ‘consumable’ components. While the stove body and door are usually covered by a lengthy warranty, the glass, baffle plate, door rope and fire bricks, as well as grates and log retainers are frequently exempted. All, however, should be replaceable. In treated well, all of these components should last for many years, but replacement costs and availability can vary considerably.

Factors to consider are:

• Provenance: where are the stoves built? Where are spares shipped from?
• Generic parts: are the spares entirely specific to the stove, or can you deploy generic materials (square or rectangular vermiculite firebricks can be cut from board. Flat, square replacement glass can be ordered made-to-measure from specialist stove glass suppliers etc.)
• Ubiquity: some manufacturers with high turnover of models will stop producing spares after a number of years.
• At the budget end of the market, it might be impossible to track down a source for spares at all, if they are even manufactured separately. Beware!
• Complexity: Some stove are more ‘engineered’ than others. The more complex the design, the greater a premium the parts will carry, and greater skill and familiarity will be required to fit them.

A good rule of thumb is to keep and file your paperwork relating to your stove purchase. It’s surprising how many owners shop for spares after ten years, but have no idea what the make or model of their stove is.

Some stove models have been through numerous iterations of the same design, and the parts are not necessarily common to all the evolutions. Knowing when your stove was built, or at least when you purchased it, can be an important guide to procuring the right parts when you eventually need them.

Fire bricks

Most fire bricks these days are made from vermiculite. Vermiculite bricks are quite frangible, but once installed, if used carefully, should last for many years (throwing logs into a stove is a perfect way to wreck them quickly). A full replacement set can cost from £50 to well over £100. Many stoves have just three bricks, others have up to a dozen. Scandinavian barrel-shaped stoves may well have curved bricks that you will only be able to source from the manufacturer. Complex shapes will always be trickier to replace. Some manufacturers, like Barbas from the Netherlands, make ceramic fire bricks, which are considerably more durable and more resistant to abuse, but are also slightly more expensive.

Door glass

Door glass should last for a very long time too, but occasionally it cracks or discolours. Square replacement glass usually costs from £30 to £60 per sheet, depending on size, but a large curved piece of glass might cost £150 to £200. Another potential headache with door glass exists precisely because of the infrequency with which replacement is required; all too frequently, the retaining screws seize up over the course of several years and can be very resistant to removal; sometimes they respond to a good soaking with oil. A good prevention is to loosen the screws on a new stove and lube them with copper grease, but at the worst, if they jam completely, they can usually be drilled out and replacement holes can be drilled and tapped. This is easier on some stoves than on others; where such flexibility is possible, it is often by design and usually down to the foresight of the manufacturer.

Baffle plates

Such resilience is built into the best stoves: for instance, baffle plates, which sit at the top of the stove, are another part that will eventually need replacing. These should ideally sit on, and be supported by, the firebricks. On some stoves, the front of the baffle plate is supported by a screw or metal support fixed into the body of the stove. It might take a decade for this to burn out or collapse, but when it does, it is nigh-on impossible to set a new baffle plate in position, rendering the stove useless.

Simple, thoughtful design is best, and allows for years of easy maintenance; ad hoc, convenient construction will eventually entail a headache.

Door rope

Door rope comes in a variety of diameters; you can normally either buy replacement rope in pre-cut lengths with adhesive, supplied by the manufacturer, or buy it off the reel with generic rope glue from good stove shops.

We can usually get spares from our UK suppliers in a matter of days. Spare parts for our European stoves often take a little longer to arrive.

Surface repairs

In terms of surface damage to stoves, most stoves are re-paintable. Faded or scratched paint can be given a fresh coat, rust marks can be rubbed down with wire wool and re-sprayed, and the stove will look like new. There are some important exceptions; some stoves, usually convection models with multiple panels, will have powder-coated components; often these cannot be re-sprayed, or if they can, the new paint may not key in with the other metal parts of the stove, and might necessitate the purchase of another complete replacement panel. A can of paint is usually about £15. A new side panel for a convention stove is more likely to set you back a hundred or so.

On the whole, stoves are eminently repairable: we have supplied replacement doors to customers who have shattered the hinges by hitting them with a hammer; new air-control rods for kicked-and-bent ones, new lids for stoves that have been warped from over-firing. But there are limits, and prevention is the best cure; treat your stove like an old friend (i.e. no hammers, no kicking!) and it should give you many years of faithful service.

In brief, if you treat it with even moderate care, your stove should be inexpensive to maintain and you should be able to do it yourself; if your experience is otherwise, give us a call. We might be able to help.