Fireplace Fitting Guide Wooden Mantel

 

Fireplace Fitting Guide Wooden Mantel

This Guide from www.castfireplaces.co.uk ltd is designed to give information to the customer for reference in fireplace suitability it MUST NOT be used as instructions for fitting.
We recommend the fitting of all fireplaces to be undertaken by a competent fitter with HETAS (for solid Fuel) and CORGI (for gas) certificate.

Assemble all the pieces that have come with your fireplace and make sure the opening is large enough not only to take the cast iron back but also on tiled fireplaces to make sure the tile cheeks fit into the builders opening of the chimney breast
When you buy 1 of our Bargain Wood Gas Packages or 1 of our Bargain Wood Solid Fuel Packages you can be assured that all the items fit together and are designed to be used with the appropriate fuel so you don’t need to worry whether the items are compatible.

You should now measure the opening to decide if any of the brickwork needs to be cut away to form a larger opening. Most Older houses will have an original opening of around 36” x 36” it may have been bricked or plastered up over the years to reduce openings to what ever fireplace was used.
An average opening for a tiled fireplace needs to be 18” wide 26” high and 9” depth for arched inserts it needs to be 22” wide 30.5” high and 6.5” depth.
If you have that opening there is no need to alter opening.

The 1st job is to lay the Hearth on a thin layer of sloppy mortar this needs to be level as everything sits on top of the hearth once you are happy this is level fill the area inside of the chimney breast up to the level of the hearth with cement mix and allow to set.
Sit the fireplace surround on the wall so its flat at the outer legs measure the distance from the wall for the rebate for arched insert use the standard 1” rebate and for tiled remove the inner strip of the surround to make it 3”.

Now this has been checked it is time to fix the Arched Insert or Tiled Insert to the wall we use bonding plaster for the arched inserts as you will have a 1” gap behind the cast fireplace. For the tiled inserts cut some brick slips and use these either side or a small lintel across the top then seal with heat resistant silicone forming an airtight seal.

Once this has all dried and are happy with seal it is time to backfill the fireplace with vermiculite or small bits of rubble top it off with cement cap so all the soot will fall into the chimney breast.

The Timber Surround is then fixed in place over the fireplace insert it is fixed to the wall with Mirror brackets or simply grip filled in place all wooden surrounds must be fitted onto dry plaster.

That’s all there is to know but make sure you use a competent qualified fitter for both solid fuel and gas we never supply gas fitting instructions