Wood burning stoves
across Laois
Multi-fuel grates for turf and anthracite, 150 mm flue sizing done before you order. Free survey, the flue checked with a camera before you buy anything, certificate the day we finish.
In Laois the first question is not which stove. It is what you burn
Most stove advice written for Ireland quietly assumes you will burn seasoned timber. In a lot of the country that is a safe assumption. In Laois it is not.
Census 2022 recorded 11.5% of Laois households heating mainly with peat, including turf, against 3.7% nationally. In the south of the county the fuel tradition is anthracite, because the Leinster Coalfield was worked at Wolfhill and Doonane until 1969. Add the oil-heated commuter belt around Portlaoise and you have three different households wanting three genuinely different specifications.
That matters before you choose anything, because fuel decides the grate, the flue diameter and in some cases whether the stove you were looking at is suitable at all. A wood-only stove will burn turf badly. A 125 mm spigot is not legal for turf. Both of those are cheaper to find out now than on fitting day.
So the order of work here is: a camera goes up the flue before you buy anything. Not after the stove is ordered, not on the morning of the fit. The survey establishes what the chimney can take, whether it needs lining, and what the whole job costs, and it happens before any money changes hands or any model is chosen.
The flue decides the budget far more than the stove does. A liner adds €1,000 – €2,500. A twin-wall flue where there is no chimney adds €1,800 – €3,200. Finding that out after you have picked a stove is the wrong order to do things in.
Straight about distance: the van works out of Clonegall, Co. Carlow, so Portlaoise is around an hour and the south of the county is closer. A supply and fit, particularly with a liner, is a full day or more and absorbs that comfortably.
This is one of the counties where the sums genuinely work
On the SEAI domestic fuel cost comparison, in cent per useful kilowatt hour delivered: bulk loose softwood about 8.5, wood pellets in bulk 10.25, softwood by the pallet 10.41, mains gas 13.00, hardwood by the pallet 14.40, hardwood in small bags 15.26, discounted kerosene 17.20, electricity on direct debit 34.38.
Two facts make Laois unusually favourable, and they compound.
First, this is an oil county. Census 2022 put 42.9% of Laois households on oil for central heating, above the national 39%. Oil is the most expensive of the common mains-alternative options on that list at 17.20 cent. The gap between kerosene and bulk loose softwood is the whole argument, and here it applies to more than four households in ten.
Second, and this is the part most counties fail, you can actually store the wood. The 8.5 cent figure is only available if you can take three cubic metres loose in summer and keep it dry. In a town terrace that is often impossible, which is why the honest answer in some counties is that a stove is a nice thing to have rather than a saving. Outside the Portlaoise and Portarlington estates, most of Laois has a shed, a yard or an outbuilding. The cheap number is real here rather than theoretical.
The caveat worth stating plainly: if you already burn turf you are not comparing against kerosene at all, and turf you cut or buy locally may well be cheaper than anything on the SEAI list. In that case the stove is not a saving on fuel. It is a large gain in efficiency and control over an open fire, which is a different argument and an honest one.
There is no SEAI grant for a stove. The Domestic Technical Standards document has a clause referencing them, but the eligibility table gives them no scheme coverage. If anyone tells you a grant is available, ask them to point at the table.
Running costs from the SEAI domestic fuel cost comparison.
Wood-only or multi-fuel, and why it is not a marketing distinction
This is the single most common specification mistake in a turf county, and it is easy to avoid once somebody explains the mechanism.
Wood burns best sitting on its own ash, taking air from above. A dedicated wood burner therefore has a flat bed, no grate and no ashpan, and its air comes in over the top of the fuel. Leaving a bed of ash in it is correct rather than lazy.
Turf and coal need air from underneath. A multi-fuel stove has a raised riddling grate with an ashpan below, so primary air comes up through the fuel bed and the ash can be riddled clear rather than smothering the fire.
Put turf on a wood-only stove and it will not get the air it needs. The result is disappointing rather than dangerous: a fire you spend the evening fighting, poor output, and a lot of smoke that ends up as tar in the flue rather than heat in the room.
Anthracite is stricter again. It needs a strong primary air supply from below and a grate built to take the heat, so it wants a multi-fuel stove and ideally one rated for smokeless fuel specifically. In south Laois around Wolfhill, Doonane and Ballylinan that is a live question rather than a theoretical one.
So the specification conversation starts with what is in your shed, not with a brochure. If the honest answer is "turf mostly, timber when we have it, and bags of anthracite in a cold snap", that is a multi-fuel stove with a proper riddling grate, and there is nothing wrong with saying so.
| What you burn | Grate it needs | Minimum flue, TGD J Table 2 |
|---|---|---|
| Seasoned timber | Flat bed, air from above | 150 mm |
| Turf and peat | Riddling grate, ashpan, air from below | 150 mm |
| Bituminous coal | Riddling grate, ashpan, air from below | 150 mm |
| Anthracite and smokeless | Riddling grate rated for smokeless fuel | 125 mm permitted |
| Wood pellets | Appliance-specific | 125 mm permitted |
There is a wrinkle in that table worth pointing out, because it runs against the intuition. Anthracite is the one fuel on the list that may legally go down to 125 mm, and it is the fuel of south Laois. Turf, which most of the rest of the county burns, may not. So two Laois households buying the same stove can have two different correct answers about the liner, and the deciding factor is the shed rather than the chimney.
The stove selector asks about fuel first for this reason.
Will the chimney you have take a stove?
This is the question that decides the price, and it cannot be answered from a photograph of the fireplace.
Size first, and in a turf county this is the trap. Under TGD J Table 2, a closed appliance up to 20 kW burning timber, peat or bituminous coal needs a flue of at least 150 mm internal diameter. Only smokeless fuel or wood pellets may drop to 125 mm. A great many stoves ship with a 125 mm spigot, so it is entirely possible to buy a stove that is fine for somebody else's fuel and not for yours. Nobody in a showroom is going to ask what is in your shed.
The opposite problem is just as common here. Older Laois farmhouses very often have a flue built for an open turf fire, and those are enormous by modern standards because an open turf fire needed the volume. Connect a 5 kW stove to it and the gases slow, cool and condense inside the masonry rather than leaving the top. That is why relining is often the right answer even where the chimney looks perfectly sound from the road.
It is not automatic, though. TGD J asks that the flue be suitable, not that it be lined as routine. The camera decides.
Hearths. TGD J 2.7.1 calls for a constructional hearth of at least 125 mm, a free-standing stove on a non-combustible floor at least 12 mm, and a back boiler 125 mm, or 25 mm on 25 mm non-combustible supports.
Ventilation. TGD J 4.2.1 requires a permanent vent of at least 6,500 mm² of free area for any non-room-sealed solid fuel appliance, plus 550 mm² per kilowatt above 5 kW, so an 8 kW stove needs 8,150 mm². There is no under-5kW exemption in Ireland; that is UK Approved Document J, as are DEFRA exemption and Smoke Control Areas. HETAS withdrew from Ireland in March 2022.
For a rough read before booking, the chimney suitability checker asks five questions.
Airtight houses starve a stove
Laois housing stock grew 5% between 2016 and 2022, from 32,794 dwellings to 34,443, matching the national rate, and that growth concentrated on the Dublin side of the county. Portlaoise is a commuter town. Portarlington sits on the River Barrow and straddles the boundary with Offaly.
Those houses are airtight in a way the older stock is not, and it changes how a stove behaves.
A chimney does not suck. It is pushed. Hot gas in the flue is lighter than the cold air outside, so it rises, and the air it displaces has to come back into the room from somewhere. In a draughty farmhouse it arrives through the fabric of the building and nobody notices. In an airtight house there is nowhere for it to come from, so the flue stalls and the smoke comes into the room.
The fix is the permanent vent set out above, sized to the output rather than guessed. It is a small job at installation and an intrusive one afterwards, which is the argument for getting it right first time.
The version that catches people out is a house that worked and then stopped. New windows go in, the fabric tightens, and the stove starts smoking three weeks later. Nobody connects the two events, because they do not look related.
Why a stove on high ground can refuse to draw
The Slieve Bloom Mountains run along the Offaly border above Clonaslee, Rosenallis and Camross, and houses on that side of the county sit in conditions the Barrow valley does not experience.
The draw is a gentle force, and wind can overwhelm it. On high exposed ground, wind hitting a hillside, a gable or a stand of trees can create a zone of positive pressure right at the chimney top. Instead of drawing across the flue and helping it, the wind pushes down into it.
The symptom is a stove that behaves perfectly most of the time and fills the room with smoke when the wind is in one particular quarter. That intermittency is exactly what makes people assume the flue is blocked, and it is why the problem often gets misdiagnosed twice before anybody looks at the wind.
The fixes are ordinary. An anti-downdraught cowl handles most of it. Sometimes the flue needs to terminate higher so the top clears the pressure zone. Occasionally a different terminal type is the answer. All of them get decided on site, in the actual wind, rather than from a catalogue.
If you are up that end of the county, say so when you ring. It changes what gets budgeted.
Putting a stove into a house that stood empty
Census 2022 recorded 2,576 vacant dwellings in Laois, and 776 of them were recorded vacant in the 2016 census as well. Houses empty across two counts are being bought and brought back into use, and a stove is very often on the list.
None of this stops a stove going in. It changes the order of operations.
Jackdaws. An unused pot is an attractive nest site and a nest can fill a metre or more of flue. It is the single most common cause of a smoke-back on a first fire in a renovated house.
Nothing is documented. No sweeping record, no known history, no report. That matters later if there is ever a claim, and it is an hour's work to fix at the start.
Cold chimneys deteriorate faster. A stack unheated for six winters has had no warm flue drying it from inside, and nobody was living there to notice the damp patch appear.
The practical consequence is a budgeting one. Survey first and a liner, if it is needed, gets priced into the job. Survey last and it appears as a surprise on fitting day, which is the version everybody wants to avoid.
Getting the size right matters more than getting the brand right
The most common mistake is buying too big. An oversized stove gets run shut down to stop the room becoming unbearable, and a stove run shut down smoulders. Smouldering produces tar, tar coats the flue, and tar is what catches fire. The oversized stove is both less pleasant and less safe than the correctly sized one.
That argument carries extra weight in this county. A turf-burning flue is already laying down more tar than a timber-burning one, because turf carries moisture and burns at a lower flame temperature, so the gases cool sooner on the way up. Adding an oversized stove run shut down to a flue that is already working hard is how a chimney fire gets built over a couple of winters.
A rough starting point for a reasonably insulated modern room is the volume in cubic metres divided by fourteen. A 4 by 5 metre room with a 2.4 metre ceiling is 48 cubic metres, so roughly 3.5 kW. Most Laois sitting rooms land between 4 and 6 kW. An older farmhouse room with solid walls and single glazing needs more than the arithmetic suggests; a new Portlaoise build needs less.
The stove size calculator does this properly, with insulation and window area factored in.
On efficiency, EU Regulation 2015/1185 has required at least 65% seasonal space heating efficiency for closed-fronted solid fuel room heaters sold in the EU since 1 January 2022. Everything on sale meets it, so treat a shop presenting that baseline as a feature with some caution, and be wary of comparative emissions claims in either direction.
What a stove costs in Laois
Supply and fit, including VAT, labour, flue components, hearth work where needed, waste away and the certificate.
| Work | Typical range |
|---|---|
| Home survey | Free, no obligation |
| Inset stove, supplied and fitted | €2,200 – €3,500 |
| Freestanding stove, supplied and fitted | €2,500 – €4,000 |
| Boiler stove, plumbed to radiators | €3,500 – €5,500 |
| Chimney liner, if the survey calls for it | €1,000 – €2,500 |
| Twin-wall flue, where there is no chimney | €1,800 – €3,200 |
Two Laois-specific things to budget for rather than treat as extras. A 150 mm liner where a 125 mm one would have done, if turf or bituminous coal is what you burn. And an anti-downdraught cowl on an exposed Slieve Bloom foothill site. Neither is expensive. Both are annoying to add afterwards.
Indicative only. An exact figure follows the survey, in writing, before any work starts.
What the day actually looks like
A straightforward inset or freestanding fit into a sound flue is a day. Add a liner and it is a long day or two. A boiler stove plumbed into an existing heating system is two to three, because the plumbing is the bulk of it rather than the stove.
Dust sheets go down first and the fireplace opening comes out. If a liner is going in, it is fed from the top of the stack and connected at the stove, then sealed at the pot with a proper closure plate rather than mortar and hope. The hearth is checked or built to TGD J 2.7.1, the vent is cut in and sized to the output, and the stove is set, connected and levelled.
Then it gets lit and tested before anybody leaves, with a smoke test on the flue and a check that the draw is right with the doors and windows shut. That last part is the one people skip, and it is the one that finds a ventilation problem while there is still time to fix it.
You get a certificate of installation on the day, the old fireplace and packaging taken away, and a straight explanation of how to run the thing. That last conversation matters more with a multi-fuel stove than a wood-only one, because riddling and ash management are habits rather than instincts.
Full detail on the main stove installation page.
Where we fit stoves in Laois
Laois has one verified Eircode routing key of its own, R32 for Portlaoise. Portarlington sits on the county boundary with Offaly, so two neighbours on the same street can have addresses in different counties.
When you ring, the three useful things to say are the town, what you burn, and roughly how big the room is. Those three between them get the estimate close on the first call.
One tradesman, not a showroom
Johnny Roberts runs J.Roberts Solid Fuel Services on his own out of Clonegall, Co. Carlow. Ring the number and you get him. The person who surveys the flue is the person who fits the stove.
There is no salesperson in the middle and nothing being cleared off a floor, which is mostly relevant because it means the recommendation can be "the flue will not take that one" without costing anybody a commission.
There is no statutory register for solid fuel work in Ireland, so what is actually checkable is the insurance, the work itself and the certificate. All three are available to see.
Stoves in Laois. FAQ
Will a stove actually save me money in Laois?
In most of this county the sums work, and that is not true everywhere. Census 2022 put 42.9% of Laois households on oil, above the national 39%. On the SEAI fuel cost comparison discounted kerosene is about 17.20 cent per useful kilowatt hour and bulk loose softwood is about 8.5 cent. The 8.5 figure only applies if you can take three cubic metres loose in summer and keep it dry, which is where a lot of counties fall down. Laois is not one of them. Outside the Portlaoise estates most houses here have a shed, a yard or an outbuilding, so the cheap number is genuinely available rather than theoretical.
I burn turf. Do I need a different stove?
You need a multi-fuel one, and it is worth being clear why. A dedicated wood burner has a flat bed and takes its air from above, because wood burns best sitting on its own ash. Turf and coal need air from underneath, so a multi-fuel stove has a raised riddling grate and an ashpan below it. Burning turf on a wood-only stove is disappointing rather than dangerous: it will not get the air it needs and you will spend the evening fighting it. In a county where 11.5% of households heat mainly with peat, this is the single most common specification mistake.
Can I burn anthracite or culm in a wood burning stove?
Not properly, no. Anthracite needs a strong primary air supply from below and a grate built to take the heat, so it wants a multi-fuel stove and ideally one rated for smokeless fuel specifically. This comes up in south Laois more than anywhere else on this site, because the Leinster Coalfield was worked at Wolfhill and Doonane until 1969 and the local fuel habit followed the seams. Tell us on the phone if anthracite or culm is what you burn, because it changes both the stove and the grate we would put in.
Does burning turf change the flue size I need?
Yes, and this catches people out constantly. Under TGD J Table 2 a closed appliance up to 20 kW burning timber, peat or bituminous coal needs a flue of at least 150 mm internal diameter. Only smokeless fuel or wood pellets may drop to 125 mm. A great many stoves ship with a 125 mm spigot, so a Laois household intending to burn turf can buy a stove that is legal for somebody else's fuel and not for theirs. The survey establishes this before anything is ordered.
What does a stove cost fitted in Laois?
An inset stove supplied and fitted runs €2,200 to €3,500, freestanding €2,500 to €4,000, and a boiler stove plumbed to radiators €3,500 to €5,500. Add €1,000 to €2,500 for a liner if the survey calls for one, or €1,800 to €3,200 for a twin-wall flue where there is no chimney. On an exposed site in the Slieve Bloom foothills, budget for an anti-downdraught cowl rather than treating it as an extra.
Does my chimney need relining?
Not automatically. TGD J asks that the flue be suitable for the appliance, not that it be lined as routine. Relining becomes necessary where the flue is oversize for the stove, leaks between floors, or shows cracking on camera. Older Laois farmhouses very often have a flue built for an open turf fire, which is enormous by modern standards because an open turf fire needed that volume. Drop a small stove into it and the gases slow, cool and condense inside the masonry instead of leaving. The camera decides, not a guess from the fireplace.
Do I need an air vent?
Yes. TGD J 4.2.1 requires a permanent vent of at least 6,500 mm² of free area for any non-room-sealed solid fuel appliance, with a further 550 mm² per kilowatt above 5 kW, so an 8 kW stove needs 8,150 mm². There is no under-5kW exemption in Ireland; that is UK Approved Document J, as are DEFRA exemption and Smoke Control Areas. This matters most in the newer housing around Portlaoise and Portarlington, where the house is airtight enough that the flue has nowhere to draw its replacement air from.
What size stove do I need?
Most Laois sitting rooms land between 4 and 6 kW. A rough guide for a reasonably insulated modern room is the volume in cubic metres divided by fourteen, so a 4 by 5 metre room with a 2.4 metre ceiling is about 3.5 kW. Too big is worse than too small. An oversized stove gets run shut down to make the room bearable, and a stove run shut down smoulders, and smouldering is what tars a flue. In a turf-burning county where the flue is already working harder than average, that is worth avoiding.
The house was empty for years. Can a stove go into that flue?
Usually yes, but survey it first. Census 2022 recorded 2,576 vacant dwellings in Laois and 776 of those were recorded vacant in 2016 as well, so buying a long-empty house here is common. A dormant flue collects jackdaw nests, and there is no sweeping record and no documentation of its condition. None of that stops a stove going in. It just means the camera goes up before the order is placed rather than after, so the liner is priced into the job instead of appearing as a surprise on fitting day.
My house is on high ground near the Slieve Blooms. Any issue?
Possibly wind-induced downdraught, and it is worth mentioning when you ring. A chimney draws because hot gas inside is lighter than cold air outside, which is a gentle force that wind can overwhelm. On high exposed ground above Clonaslee, Rosenallis or Camross, wind hitting the hillside or the gable can create positive pressure right at the chimney top and push down into the flue instead of drawing across it. The symptom is a stove that behaves perfectly except when the wind is in one particular quarter. An anti-downdraught cowl handles most cases, and occasionally the flue needs to terminate higher.
Is there a grant for a stove, and do you actually come to Laois?
No grant. The SEAI Domestic Technical Standards document contains a clause referencing stoves, but the eligibility table gives them no scheme coverage, so if a retailer tells you a grant is available, ask them to point at the table. There is also no statutory installer register in Ireland for solid fuel; HETAS withdrew in March 2022 and is a UK body regardless. On travel: the van works out of Clonegall in Co. Carlow, so Portlaoise is around an hour and the south of the county is closer. A supply and fit with a liner is a full day or more and absorbs that comfortably.
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The survey is free and a camera goes up the flue before anything is ordered. Tell us what you burn when you ring, because turf, anthracite and timber each need a different specification.