Mastering Your Hearth

The Larkins Guide to a Perfect Fire

Mastering Your Hearth: Expert Advice from Your Local Approved Coal Merchants since 1922

🔥 The Larkins Appliance & Fuel Matcher

Using the right fuel ensures more heat, a longer-lasting fire, and a healthier chimney flue. Find your appliance below:

🪵 Wood & Heat Logs Performance Guide

Based on generations of solid fuel testing, here is how our kiln-dried hardwood range compare:

🔥 The Smokeless Fuel Performance Guide

All premium manufactured briquettes listed below are fully smokeless certified and authorised for use in local areas. Compare features to find your ideal home appliance match:

🔍 Getting the Most From Your Stove: Check Your Grate

The secret to a perfect fire is matching your fuel to your stove’s internal base design. Before ordering your winter stock, take a quick look inside your stove box:

• Flat Firebed (No Grate): If your stove has a solid flat base, it is a dedicated wood burner. Wood performs best when it sits directly on a 1-inch sand bed of ash with air drawing down from above. Our kiln-dried hardwood logs are the absolute perfect choice here.
• Raised Grate (with Ashpan): These are multi-fuel stoves or traditional open fires designed to feed oxygen directly up into a bed of coal. You can safely burn all of our certified smokeless coals on these grates, as they rely on this bottom air flow to create a deep, steady heat throw. Wood logs, however, tend to burn through fast on these grates because of the constant primary air drawing up from underneath.
• 📍 Larkins Tip: The Multi-Fuel Wood Trick
  If you are burning wood on a multi-fuel grate, you can slow down your wood burn dramatically by allowing a deep, one-inch layer of log ash to completely choke the bottom grate bars. This forces your stove to draw its air from the top controls instead, making every log last significantly longer.
• ⚠️ Critical Note for Multi-Fuel Coal Burners: Always clear this ash bed out entirely before you light a fire with smokeless coal. Coal requires continuous bottom ventilation to burn efficiently. Leaving the grate slots choked with wood ash will smother your coal briquettes and can trap enough fierce, intense heat to permanently warp or twist your stove's heavy cast-iron grate bars.

🔥 The Ultimate Blended Firebed
If you have a multi-fuel stove, using a mix of both fuels is the traditional trade secret to a perfect winter hearth. Burning our kiln-dried logs during the evening gives you a beautiful, lively flame throw, while banking the firebed with a few coals before bed keeps your room warm right through until morning.

☀️ Planning to Stock Up Early for the Season?

The earlier you fill your woodstore, log shed, or fuel bunker, the more you save. Throughout our off-season summer phases, we offer our deepest trade discounts on both fuel bundles and volume coal orders before peak winter heating rates apply across our regional rounds.

View Our Summer Savings Roadmap

🔥 The Merchant's Secret: Lighting & Burning

To get the highest burning efficiency and fastest heat draw from your fuel, always match your lighting strategy to your specific appliance fireplace grate. Here are the two traditional merchant methods for a clean, efficient burn:

• For Kiln-Dried Hardwood Logs (The Top-Down Method): Always light wood from the top. It is the cleanest, most efficient way to light a modern wood burner or open fire, and reduces initial smoke by up to 50%. Stack your thick hardwood logs on the flat firebed first, layer your smaller kindling sticks on top, and place a single Flamer firelighter right at the very peak. Lighting it there allows the flame to burn cleanly downward—instantly warming your chimney flue, saving fuel, and keeping your stove glass crystal clear.
• For Manufactured Smokeless Coals (The Bottom-Up Method): Because dense briquettes require continuous air draw from underneath the fireplace grate to burn correctly, you must light them from below. Place your kindling and firelighters—such as our extra-long KindleFlamers—on the bottom of the bars first, then loosely layer your coal over them. This ensures the intense heat drives straight up into the core of the coal bed to get your chimney pulling in no time.

🔍 The Larkins Fix (Cold Flues): Smoke entering the room? Your chimney flue might be cold. Warm it by holding a lit KindleFlamer near the top entry of the stove for a minute before lighting the main fire to establish a strong upwards draft.

🔍 The Larkins Fix (Soot Management): Glass turning black? You might be "slumbering" the fire too much. Give it a blast of high heat once a day with two premium hardwood logs to burn off the soot naturally.

🪵 Log Storage & Care: Protecting Your Wood

If wood is over 20% moisture, your stove spends its primary energy boiling off water rather than heating your room. Our logs are kiln-dried to 10-15% for immediate heat output.

The 3 Rules of Wood Storage:

• Airflow over Tarpaulins: Never wrap logs tightly in plastic! Use a slatted wood store with a weather roof but open sides to let the dry local breeze through.
• Up & Away: Keep logs stacked 4 inches off the ground (on a pallet) and 2 inches away from solid walls to prevent dampness from drawing back in.
• The 24-Hour Warm Up: Bring a day's worth of logs indoors 24 hours before burning. A warm log catches instantly and burns much hotter.

🛠️ The Safety & Maintenance Standard

Keep your appliance operating safely by following these foundational home fireside rules:

• Annual Chimney Sweeping: Essential for home safety and stove manufacturer rules. Sweep your chimney at least once a year even when burning clean fuel.
• Ash Disposal Rules: Only ever use a metal bin for clearing grate leftovers. Embers stay hot enough to start fires for 48 hours—always move bins outdoors immediately.
• The Ash Hack: To clean cloudy stove panels safely, dip a damp newspaper into cold wood ash and rub gently. This lifts baked soot layers without scratch risks.
• The "Paper Test": Close your stove door on a sheet of paper. If it pulls out easily, your door rope seals are leaking air and need replacement.
• Carbon Monoxide Alarms: Ensure your CO alarm is tested regularly. Place it in the same room as the appliance for safe readings.

🌱 Solid Fuel Laws: Is Burning Wood & Coal Legal?

Are you confused by recent reports regarding domestic fuel restrictions? Let us put your mind at ease. It is completely legal to burn solid fuel in your home stove or fireplace across Norfolk and Suffolk. The legislation simply outlaws smoky, unseasoned wet wood and traditional house coal in favour of cleaner, higher-efficiency alternatives.

• 🔥 For Multi-Fuel Appliances & Open Fires: Traditional house coal was banned from retail sale in May 2023. You must now burn manufactured smokeless ovoids (like Newburn or Oxbow Newheat). These emit up to 80% less smoke and 20% less CO2 while giving out a deeper, longer-lasting heat base.
• 🪵 For Dedicated Wood Burners: Stick to Ready to Burn certified hardwood. Sourced from our premium partners at Certainly Wood, our logs are screened down to a strict 10–15% moisture target to prevent soot build-up, protect your flue lining, and keep your stove glass crystal clear.

As a certified Registered Approved Coal Merchant, we guarantee that 100% of our stock complies fully with all modern UK Air Quality standards.