Small Pellet Stoves: Wood-Burning Stoves for Small Spaces

Small pellet stoves suit rooms where a standard log burner would simply be too much heat. Wood burning stoves work in all sorts of homes, but the tighter the space, the more the details matter.

There is also something about a real fire that no radiator gets close to. The crackle, the glow, the flicker of it. Professor Edward O Wilson put a name to that pull back in 1984 with his biophilia hypothesis, the idea that people are wired to connect with the natural world, fire included.

So if you have a small room to heat, or a larger one that is very well insulated, a handful of things are worth sorting before you buy. Here is what we tell customers to check.

Things to consider when choosing a wood burning stove for use in a small space

Start with your local building regulations and any planning restrictions. The main question is whether your property sits in a Smoke Control Area, which covers most towns and cities. If you are not sure, DEFRA has an interactive map you can search by postcode .

Inside one of these areas, you can only use a DEFRA exempt stove. That means the stove has passed strict emissions testing and is recognised as clean burning. Your local authority can issue a fine of up to £1,000 if you get this wrong.

All our small pellet stoves are DEFRA exempt.

A “DEFRA exempt” stove has passed stringent emissions testing so it is recognised by DEFRA as being a clean burning stove. Your local authority has the power to issue a fine of up to £1,000 if this law is broken.

With a view to “future proofing” your investment in a wood burning stove or wood burner, you should consider the cleanest burning stoves available by looking at those on the Cleaner Choice scheme operated by HETAS. This scheme is unique in that HETAS is a third-party independent and impartial certification body that relies on first-hand review of test data from notified laboratories in checking that each stove meets, and in critical areas, exceeds some of the most stringent limits set by tested standards and test methods. To qualify for this scheme, the stove must be at least 50% cleaner than the “DEFRA exempt” emissions limit. HETAS has an interactive selection tool on its website.

Worth thinking a step ahead here. Emissions rules have tightened before and will again, so buying at the current legal minimum is a short-term decision. The Cleaner Choice scheme run by HETAS marks out the cleanest stoves on the market. To qualify, a stove has to burn at least 50% cleaner than the DEFRA exempt limit. HETAS is independent and checks the test data itself rather than taking a manufacturer’s word for it, which is what makes the badge worth something.

All our small pellet stoves are approved to the HETAS Cleaner Choice standard.

Location and Clearances

When siting your stove, it’s crucial to ensure it has adequate clearances from any combustible materials.
You must ensure you leave sufficient distance between the stove and things like wallpaper or plasterboard which can ignite if they get too hot. If you have a fireplace made of brick, stone or other non-combustible material then you don’t need to be as worried about the position of your stove.

However, you don’t want your stove to be too close to the fireplace as its performance may be impaired if there isn’t enough space to allow for the proper circulation of air. Our SKYE wood burning pellet stove requires at least 10 cm clearance at the sides and at the rear, see the link below for full technical details.
The 10 cm distance to combustibles of the SKYE wood pellet burning stove is much, much less than for a traditional log burner (which is typically 300 mm minimum distance to combustibles) and so the SKYE wood pellet burner makes an excellent choice for rooms where space is tight.

The SKYE pellet stove is truly a slim wood burner and is the smallest wood burning pellet stove on the market in the UK. There is no other pellet stove that comes anywhere close to it in terms of its small dimensions and small output, it can produce a maximum output of 3 kW and is fully modulating with
automatic control down to a minimum output of 1 kW.

At 58 cm High, 58 cm Wide and only 40 cm Deep the SKYE is a small wood burning stove that can pretty much fit anywhere and is ideal for smaller spaces and for applications where the heat load is less than average, such as in small rooms or in extremely well insulated spaces. Typical applications include passive houses, terraced housing, cottages, mews houses, garden offices, glamping pods and boats.

Ensure you have proper ventilation

A stove needs two things to burn: fuel and air. Starve it of air, and the fire dies. Most stoves pull that air from the room they sit in, so in a small, well-sealed space you need to work out whether there is enough of it and whether you need a vent fitting.

A balanced flue sidesteps the problem entirely by drawing air in from outside through the flue itself. Nothing is taken from the room. We have covered how that works in our blog post on balanced flues, and the SKYE is a good example of a small stove that uses one.

What wood fuel to use – wood logs or wood pellets ?

Logs or pellets?

There are two fuels commonly used in UK wood-burning stoves: logs and wood pellets. They handle it very differently day to day, particularly on storage space, which matters in a small home. Our guide on choosing between a log burner or a wood pellet stove walks through both.

Need a hand?

Island Pellet Stoves Ltd has been designing, manufacturing and installing wood-burning pellet stoves across the UK since 2015. If you are weighing up whether a small pellet stove will heat your space, tell us the room size, and we will give you a straight answer. Our resources and FAQs cover most of the planning questions, and our guide to wood burner installation costs breaks down the budget side.

Contact us or call 0330 111 4747