Pellet Stoves and Wood Burners in Cyprus: How to Get Winter Right
Cyprus winters are short. Anyone who has spent January in an uninsulated house here knows they are not mild indoors.
A pellet stove or a wood burner heats the room you actually live in, quickly, without running the air conditioning flat out. Which one suits you comes down to how you want to live with it. Here is how to choose, what to burn, and how to keep it running safely.
Pellet or wood: the practical difference
Both give you dry, radiant heat and a real flame. The difference is how much of the work you do yourself.
Pellet stove | Wood burner | |
|---|---|---|
Fuel | Wood pellets, in 15kg bags | Seasoned logs or briquettes |
Day to day | Fill the hopper and it feeds itself | Light it, tend it, reload it |
Controls | Thermostat and timer; many models have WiFi and a phone app | Manual, using the air control |
In a power cut | Stops. It needs electricity | Keeps burning |
Ash and cleaning | Very little ash and an almost smokeless burn | More ash, more sweeping |
Typical lifespan | 15 to 20 years | 20 to 25 years, often longer |
Stove prices from | €3,045 incl. VAT | €920 incl. VAT |
Choose a pellet stove if you want heating you can programme: warm before you get up, warm when you get home, and no logs to carry. As a guide, a 10kW stove running five hours a day uses roughly one 15kg bag every three days.
Choose a wood burner if the fire itself is the point, you have somewhere dry to store logs, and you like the idea of heat that does not depend on the mains.
Three ways a pellet stove can heat your home
A pellet stove is not limited to the room it stands in. There are three set-ups, and the right one depends on your house.
- Fan-assisted, for one main space. Fans at the base draw in cool air and push warm air out at the top, so the heat spreads evenly through the room. The design still exchanges heat by natural convection when the fan is off.
- Ducted air, for several rooms. Warm air travels through ducting to other rooms, with the fans working independently so each room can sit at its own temperature. It is a straightforward way to get central heating into an existing home that was built without it.
- Water, for radiators and hot water. A pellet boiler, or a stove with a back boiler, heats the water for your radiators and your taps. It can run on its own or alongside an existing oil or gas boiler, solar panels or a heat pump.
Wood burners have options too. Heat can be spread by natural convection or forced ventilation, and a back boiler can feed radiators and hot water. If you have an open fireplace that sends most of its heat up the chimney, an insert turns it into an efficient heater without losing the look.
Prices are for the stove as listed in our online shop. The right size depends on the room, the insulation and the flue route, so ask us for an installed quote before you choose a model.
The fuel matters as much as the stove
A good stove burning poor fuel gives you less heat, more ash and a dirtier flue. As installers, we see the results, which is why we are particular about what we sell to burn.
- Wood pellets. Made from compressed waste sawdust and certified to ENplus A1 and DINplus A1. They come in 15kg bags. Buy them from the shop, or have them delivered to your home free of charge on orders of 30 bags or more.
- Firewood. Imported seasoned oak and ash, both dense hardwoods with a high heat value, split and cut to about 30cm so they stack easily and fit smaller stoves. We also stock hard local wood, mainly almond, lemon and eucalyptus.
- Wood briquettes. RUF-type briquettes in 10kg packs. Burn them on their own or mixed with logs. Small quantities from the shop, with home delivery on orders of 250kg and over.
- Kindling and firelighters. Our bio firelighters are wood wool infused with natural oils: safe, non-toxic and odourless.
Fitted properly, looked after every year
A stove is only as good as its installation. Our installers are trained by the manufacturers we work with, and we handle the job from choosing and designing the system through to commissioning it. That applies whether you are renovating an old fireplace or planning the heating for a new build.
After that, the rule is simple: service it once a year.
- Chimney sweeping, from €60. A clean flue cuts the risk of a chimney fire and gives you a better, cleaner burn.
- A full check of the appliance. We look at the parts that wear, such as door seals and the internal stones.
- Parts on the shelf. We stock fire cement, fireproof sealing rope in several sizes and vermiculite boards, so we can deal with what we find.
The best time to book is now, before the first cold week, when everyone remembers at once. And if something goes wrong mid-winter, we are local and our service team is on call 24/7.
A word on the home energy grant
The government’s €20 million home energy upgrade scheme opens for applications on 20 October, and the obvious question is whether it covers stoves. It does not. Pellet stoves and wood burners are not on the ministry’s list of eligible measures, which covers insulation, windows, shading, solar water heaters, air conditioning, heat pumps, photovoltaics and batteries.
The upside is that a stove comes with no paperwork. There is no energy certificate to obtain, no 60% saving target to hit and no application window to wait for. You choose it, we fit it, and it is heating your home as soon as it is commissioned.
Come and see them
Photos only tell you so much. Our showroom is at Arsinois 3 in Polis Chrysochous, and we supply and install across the island.
Call us on 96 578 001 or book an appointment. Tell us about the room, the house and how you like to live in it, and we will tell you honestly which stove makes sense for your place.
