Under the Choko Tree By Nevin Sweeney

Wood Burning Heaters - Our Experience

When we moved into our house over 35 years ago, we decided that the first thing we wanted to have in our new home was an open fire place. It came before a lounge suite, a dining room table or even a decent bed (we were sleeping on a mattress on the floor). In the intervening years we have picked up some experience with wood burners which I would like to pass on to those who are interested.

The Burning Log Open Fireplace


We looked around at what was available on the market and even then good wood burners were expensive, but we settled on a “Burning Log” brand open fireplace made in Australia and it cost us about $700. Burning Log are still around but no longer make open fire places, I assume because of tighter emission standards. It was basically a double skin black sheet metal hood mounted on a raised brick hearth and a sheet metal chimney, with a plain chinamans hat on the top and lead flashing. The hearth could be mounted on the ground or raised up three bricks to allow wood to be stored underneath, it was also more comfortable to sit on at that height so that is the one we chose. They were originally made with a single skin which got hot and radiated heat into the room but by the time we bought one they had the double skin, which kept the outer skin cool. This meant that although you were less likely to get burned if you touched the outer skin, more heat went up the chimney and less went into the room.

The first year we had it was particularly cold; we did not have any doors fitted to section off the lounge room from the rest of the house and no insulation in the roof. We spent a lot of time sitting on that brick hearth trying to keep warm! After putting in the doors and the insulation it worked much better for the next winter but it was a true open fire place and a lot of heat went up the chimney. There was a damper where the hood met the flue but if you closed it down at all the only result was to get smoke in the room so the only time it was used was if there was a lot of wind and the fire wasn’t going, it stopped any heat getting sucked up the chimney.



OK, so it wasn’t super efficient, but it was 110% on atmosphere and ideal for those winter nights at home just the two of us (well the house kept us broke so we had no money to go out) and when the kids came along they loved it too. Family winter nights in front of the open fire, toasting marshmallows were absolutely wonderful and gave us memories we will carry for the rest of our lives. When we finally came to update it I thought our eldest would be upset but in the end the kids were OK with it.

We did cook on the open fire occasionally but for the most part we used it for heat only. It heated the lounge, dining room and kitchen very well but due to the layout of our house the other end, comprised of bedrooms, bathroom and toilet stayed pretty cold. If we waited for the lounge room to heat up and then opened the connecting doors we were able to get some heat up the hall, but the bedrooms themselves just about had the chill taken off them. Hence our next foray into wood heating.

The Godin Slow Combustion Stove


When our eldest daughter was born there was no fixed heating up the bedroom end of the house and the thought of bringing home a baby in the middle of a bloody cold winter (she was born in April) did not fill either of us with enthusiasm. So we put a wood heater in the bedroom. It was a French brand, Godin and it was the smaller one of the two available at the time and hence was a “petit”. It is an upright cylinder approximately 26cm in diameter and about 65cm high. There is a cast top opening to admit the fuel which is covered by a decorative cast iron lid and a door on the front which has clear mica window set into it. With the cast iron lid down it looked very nice but seemed to reduce the amount of heat getting into the room quite a bit so the lid was left up while the fire was on and down only when the fire was not burning.

The door is opened for lighting and to remove the ash, and the chimney comes out of a cast iron fitting in the middle of the back. The place where the chimney is turned out to be very handy because rather than take the chimney straight up and out the roof, we took it through the wall and into our daughter’s room and then up through the roof. This enabled the hot flue gases to keep both rooms toasty.  

To get the most out of it we would light it up with the bedroom door closed and then when the bedroom got to the temperature where you couldn’t keep your clothes on, we would open the door. This allowed all the hot air to flow into the bathroom, toilet, other bedrooms and the hall. Unfortunately it wouldn’t really do much for the kitchen/dining room/lounge area and on rare occasions when we had all the family over we might keep both going for the night.



The Godin is a firebrick lined slow combustion heater which could theoretically be used for cooking on the cast iron lid where the wood went in but we never found it to be all that successful, it took forever even to boil water. The Godin is multi-fuel in that you can use wood or coal but we have only used it as a wood stove.

As it is slow combustion it is much more efficient than the burning log fire place, but it is an absolute bugger to start! I don’t know if it is because of the extra run of horizontal flue running into the next bedroom or if they are all like that. You have to get the fire burning hot very quickly, or you get no draw and a room full of smoke. This happened regularly at the start of every winter until I got the knack of how to do it back; I was not popular on those occasions! The trick is to put enough scrunched up paper and thin twigs in to get it going quickly, but not to obstruct the place where the smoke exits at the back of the stove. A little bit of encouragement in the form of a firelighter or some metho helped, but if you didn’t have the packing right, you were going to take up smoking quick smart.



The other problem was that the firebox was too small to be able to efficiently bank it so that it would burn overnight. Whatever I did I had to get up at 3:00am and refill it or it would be stone cold by morning.

Apart from those minor flaws the Godin has given us great service for over 30 years and is still going strong, although with our new and improved wood burner in the lounge room, we did not use the Godin at all last winter. Which brings me to –

The Nectre Stove


We all dearly loved the old burning log, but I was concerned that after 35 years it was starting to get a bit tired, and it was as inefficient as hell so I decided before the winter of 2013 was on us, we would have a new wood burner. We had seen a wood fired heater that was also a baker’s oven the previous winter and after much searching, many enquiries and several quotes we decided that the Nectre bakers oven was the one for us. Again, it was Australian made and the guy who installed it for us was a local fellow who made his own flues. To remove the old one (we kept the bricks) buy and install the new one didn’t give us much change out of $4000.



It has been pretty much worth it. It has a good draw and is easy to light, as with all slow combustion stoves it takes a while to get going and it takes a while for the oven to heat up to baking temperature. It is far more efficient than the old open fire so we use less wood and because it is easy to cook on we use less gas during the winter. I cook on it as much as I can and Linda doesn’t mind cooking on it either. Even a simple task like boiling the kettle for a hot drink can be done by putting the kettle on the cook surface rather than the gas stove. It also warms the house better. We have experimented with fans to push some of the hot air up the other end of the house and they work OK, but if the Nectre is going all day it will keep the almost the whole house comfortable and the lounge, kitchen, dining area toasty!



According to the blurb you can bank it up, close the vents down, it will smoulder all night and be ready to go the next morning. We have not tried that yet. One issue has been that the fire box will not take the size of logs the old open fire would, but this just means chopping the wood up into smaller pieces. Remember heating with wood warms you twice, once then you chop it and once when you burn it!

Feeding the Fire


When we got the open fir originally put in I needed to get some wood, so I went to see our local timber yard (yup 35 years later it is still there!) and talked to one of the managers. Every few days they would send a dump truck full of off cuts and sawdust and crap to the tip, so I took in a slab of beer for him and the driver and a load appeared beside the house the next week. This was back before the garage so we had an open area for the truck to dump in. The sawdust was composted and the off cuts kept us going for most of that winter, but they were all softwood and burned away pretty quickly. It got very tedious constantly feeding the fire but the price was right and we did it a few times the first couple of years to keep us warm.

After those years our wood came from a number of sources. We bought some, some loads I was to get through friends who had properties or waste wood floating about. Having a chain saw was certainly a help and enabled me to cut stuff up that was too big to get into our little Toyota station wagon. Even if you live in an urban area you can pick up a surprising amount of unwanted wood, some we got in some area which had been left treed by the developers (not a lot) and these trees would drop limbs every so often. Over the years we have cut down an apple and a carob tree, both of which provided lots of good burning wood, and we also burn off cuts from the melaleucas and the mulberry tree regularly.

One thing which can be difficult to do but is important to remember is that you should not burn wet timber in any wood burner. This can cause tar and creosote to distil out, head up the chimney and then cool on the inside of your flue, forming a layer on the inside of the flue which builds up over the years. This layer is combustible and under the right circumstances can catch on fire resulting in a flue fire, which is bad news indeed. To prevent this only burn wood which has been seasoned or dried for at least 12 months.

Around here lots of wooden fences were replaced over the years by colourbond steel fences and I know that some people took advantage of the free wood for wood fires or worse yet, barbecues. Unfortunately the fences had been treated with CCA (copper chrome arsenic) and I would never burn them due to the risk of poisoning. Another trick we tried was to burn some particle board off cuts we were given. They really burned very quickly and very hot, I was afraid that I might do damage to the hood of the fire, especially when it started giving off a hot metal smell we had not had before. We let the fire die down and didn’t try that stunt again.

We have tried using newspapers with only limited success. The first time was with a newspaper roller where you wet the newspapers, roll them tightly together and the tie them off and let them dry. When dry you can burn them like normal logs, or so the blurb said. The just seemed to continuously come apart and the burn like........well, sheets of paper! Out it went. I did try another type a few years later; this was more like a steel box with lots of holes in it. You soak the paper and tear it up, which was remarkably time consuming, then scoop it out (cold and wet!) and place it in the box. The lid of the box was then levered down onto the paper, forming a brick, which was again left to dry before burning. It worked better than the roller but was still a lot of work and did not burn anywhere near as well as the wood. Bugger!


The wood heaters have been a wonderful part of our family and they still continue to be of service. They allow us to make use of our own sustainably grown timber as well as found wood, supplemented by some wood bought in. They are a great way to keep warm sustainably, but if you want to get one do your homework and make sure you find the right one for you.

Click Here to check out our YouTube Channel