New fire . Gas or electric .Any recommendations.

Thank you all so much for your opinions.Dh is adamant he wants electric and Franbern review backed by Gagagrans will have me searching on line.Love the look of Optymist range but numerous bad reveiws mostly regarding the water system calcifying ?

We recently took out our log burner and installed an electric one which has the same sort of effects as Franbern describes above. Well pleased with it and so much cleaner and easy for our decrepit knees to cope with!

One of my daughters has a lovely electric fire in her main living room. Instantaneous heat first thing in the morning. It works with a small remote control, looks like a log fire, very realistically, even has 'smoke' rising from it when on. Can have the lighting effect on without the heating if required.

We have oil central heating which also needs electricity to work. We don’t have gas here so have a gas cylinder for the fire in the sitting room. I have never noticed any noise and we can keep warm in the winter if there is a power cut.
Are there any rules about installing a gas fire these days? The new eco aware rules seem to change and I for one don’t know what they are.

I always had gas untill i moved in with dh.
Central heating throughout,which is fine until theres a power cut,at least with a gas fir you don`t get that problem.

Our gas fire was considered dangerous by the gas engineer when he came to service it so that was that. I really wanted another gas fire but regulations have changed and it would have cost so much money. We bought the most realistic electric fire and it cost quite a bit but looks like a real fire. There is a slight humming noise but it's much cleaner.

Don’t buy a Dimplex Optymist electric fire. They look lovely in the showroom but are very temperamental. Ours was a complete waste of money and Dimplex customer service was very unhelpful and more or less said it was our fault. When we went on line we found that there were lots of complaints about the system. In the end we got rid of it as it only worked for a few days at a time.

A friend has a gas fire which works with a remote control, so no need to get down to the floor to light it.

I love my gas fires and I don’t notice any noise coming from it they give out a superior instant heat to electric ( I think ) and look warmer The look actually makes you feel warmer I would never trade a gas in for an electric
What’s dirty about a gas fire henetha a ? No coals no smoke no bits !!!

I love gas fires, but I think electric ones are more practical and cleaner.

We had a lovely gas fire in our old home, the coals were so realistic, visitors mistook it for a real fire.
Gutted to leave it behind when we moved as the new chimney wasn’t the right flue size.
Bought a wall electric one, hardly ever have it on as a) the room is warm enough without and b) it makes a humming noise which irritates DH.
Still miss the old one though.

We had a similar gas fire for twenty years and have recently replaced it with an electric one like you describe, ours has white pebbles to match the surround.

Although not as attractive as living flames like the gas one, I can’t tell you how clean the electric one is - I’ve noticed my dusters are much cleaner when I’ve finished not just the sitting room but everywhere.

I also expect not to decorate every two years either as there’ll be no discolouration as there was with gas.

I had a very similar gas fire to you 15/16 years ago and it is still absolutely fine there is no way I would go for an electric fire personally.I do have it serviced every two years and have bought new coals from Amazon on two occasions and also black spray paint to freshen the coals up...