Patio heater, chimnea or fire pit?? (merged threads)

Hi I would just like some advice as to which of the above you would recommend to buy for my garden for use on those chilly British summer evenings? and are any of them more enviromentally friendly than others?

Thanks
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  • floyd
    floyd Forumite Posts: 2,722
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    We have a fire pit which throws out a heck of alot of heat compared to a chimenea but can get smoky if there is a breeze. I would like a patio heater as they are cleaner to use but do cost more in fuel
  • nickj_2
    nickj_2 Forumite Posts: 7,052 Forumite
    if you use wood on your chimenea or firepit then they would be carbon neutral
    plus a real fire looks better
  • gamston
    gamston Forumite Posts: 684
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    i've a chimenea, there ok if you have a supply of wood,
    looked at the fire boxes, but thought the smoke would come out so low that if you are sitting by it the smoke would hit you, at least the chimema chimney the smoke should be higher than your head when sitting down.
  • Gettin_me_own_back
    Gettin_me_own_back Forumite Posts: 241
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    We have a chimenea which I can only recommend. However we tend to go out there with a bottle of wine and the front of your body gets nice and warm, however unless you rotate yourself your back gets a bit cold. So we bought a patio heater as well, not so nice as the chimenea, and a bit over the top but it does the job.
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  • pol76
    pol76 Forumite Posts: 7
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    I took the metal drum out of my old washing machine and them used the belt pully for the base
    free,good to look at silver in color and due to hundreds of little wholes good heat flow
  • thecornflake
    thecornflake Forumite Posts: 337
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    We've just got a cast iron Chimenea, and was wondering if it's ok to use those instant lighting bags of charcoal you have for BBQs in it? A few things on the web say intense fires are bad for them, and the bags go upquite quickly when first lit, but when we have the odd one left over I thought it would be quite a good thing to use and the charcoal should give off quite a lot of heat with very little smoke.
  • wyebird
    wyebird Forumite Posts: 755 Forumite
    I think it probably matters more with the ceramic ones than the cast iron ones. We have used charcoal in ours without a problem,
  • dandydeels
    dandydeels Forumite Posts: 271 Forumite
    edited 5 May 2009 at 5:24AM
    Go for a walk in the woods and collect some fallen twigs or go skip diving for odd scraps of timber (preferably without paint). Buying charcoal isn't moneysaving and I found that small chimenea's were a waste of time. They just don't give out appreciable heat. We bought a larger, industrial style, iron burner from a scrapyard and painted the outside with fire resistant black paint- you can have a good burn in it and you can actually feel the heat up to 3m away. When it is glowing red hot it's great to look at. All the ash goes on the compost heap.
  • Pink.
    Pink. Forumite Posts: 17,675
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    Hi, Martin’s asked me to post this in these circumstances: I’ve asked Board Guides to move threads if they’ll receive a better response elsewhere(please see this rule) so this post/thread has been moved to another board, where it should get more replies. If you have any questions about this policy please email [EMAIL="abuse@moneysavingexpert.com"][email protected][/EMAIL].
  • thecornflake
    thecornflake Forumite Posts: 337
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    Thanks for the replies.

    We gave it a go last night, using soem newspaper, twigs from the garden and some of those heat logs you can buy. Worked pretty well and after about half an hour the temperature difference nearby was quite noticeable.

    Keeping an eye out for skips etc...
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