1. Lining your chimney with a twinwall flexible flue liner is safer.

Untrue. If your concern is with a chimney fire the best preventative action is regular and thorough sweeping, by an experienced sweep. The sweep will remove the combustible sooty deposits from either a masonry chimney or a lined chimney. An un-swept liner is just a likely to have a chimney fire. HETAS state "flexible liners... are not permanent and significant periods of slow burning with solid fuels or infrequent chimney sweeping can cause corrosion damage which reduces the expected life to less than 5 years". Most liners come with a 10 year guarantee.

2. Lining your chimney with a twinwall flexible liner is more 'efficient'.

Partially true, depending on definitions. It will certainly mean flue gases exit your property a little faster. However it will also mean a loss of conducted heat into the masonry and as such there is likely to be more heat lost to the environment.

3. Smoke leakage between the flues means we will have to line.

Not necessarily. If the smoke leakage is not leaking into habitable space this defect can be tolerated, depending on the extent of the leakage. Sometimes this problem is easily remedied with a small amount of work at pot level, to restore the 'feathers' (the bricks between the flues) which sometimes become dislodged.

4. Chinese made stoves are not worth bothering with.

Untrue, whilst there are some inferior Chinese products out there, there are some as good as anything domestically produced at a fraction of the cost. Firefox, Tiger, Sunrain (sold as Fireglow) and Clarke (Machine Mart) are all reputable Chinese brands sold at very low prices. I've yet to see a broken firebrick in a Firefox stove. Stoves such as Carron (JIG) are Chinese made although they trade on their British heritage. I've never cared much for County Kiln stoves however they are some of the few stoves marked as for continuous use.

5. The stove has to be installed by a HETAS engineer.

All solid fuel installations need to be signed off in law either by a qualified person enrolled in one of several competent person schemes. Such as those run by HETAS NAPPIT or NIC EIC else the work can be signed off by a local authority Building Control Officer for a fixed fee (in Brighton £150 approximately). I am a HETAS registered installer.

6. You can extinguish a chimney fire by putting salt on the fire.

Pouring slat over a fire does not stop it unless the quantity of salt used is enough to cover the source of fuel. While salt will not itself burn, there is no intrinsic property of salt that suppresses fire. Sand would create the same effect.

7. You have to use 6" (150mm) flexible liners if you are lining your chimney.

HETAS advice suggests this is the minimum size unless the appliance is certificated for smoke control areas (DEFRA approved), in which case a 5" liner is suitable. However this is not legislation (it is not part of Document J) this is advice and some chimneys simply cannot accommodate the installation of a 6" liner. I take the view I try to comply with HETAS guidance but cannot always.

8.  No CE plate means stove cannot be fitted legally.

Strictly speaking it means it can't be sold. The CE plate is intended as a 'product passport' throughout the European Union's single market. However there are some exemptions. British made appliances sold in the UK market are exempt until mid 2013. Also appliances that predate the CE legislation do not need to be retrospectively CE plated. Antique appliances or even appliances from only a few years ago are likely to be devoid of a CE plate. I take the view if they can be made conform to the building regulations they are OK to fit.

9. My gas liner is suitable for solid fuel usage.

HETAS advice states "Under no circumstances should a single skin flexible liner designed solely for use with gas fires be used with a solid fuel burning appliance". Gas liners whilst being made of stainless steel are not twin walled and whilst they may initially provide the desired effect they are unlikely to last for very long.

10. A little bit of CO never did anyone any harm.

CO is implicated in 4000 admissions to A&E departments and about 50 deaths in England and Wales each year  Solid fuel appliances are a significant though not the only source of CO in our homes.

It is thought that many ghost sightings can be put down to hallucinations caused by prolonged CO exposure from open fires in old houses.

CO exposure levels and effects
1-2 ppm†	background levels	nil effect
35 ppm	trigger point for most CO alarms	headache and dizziness within six to eight hours of constant exposure
100 ppm	OSHA* exposure limit	Slight headache in two to three hours
200 ppm		Slight headache within two to three hours; loss of judgment
400 ppm		Frontal headache within one to two hours
800 ppm		Dizziness, nausea, and convulsions within 45 min; insensible within 2 hours
1600 ppm		Headache, tachycardia, dizziness, and nausea within 20 min; death in less than 2 hours
† parts per million * US Department of Labor, Occupational Safety & Heath Administration source: www.wikipedia.org