HETAS is the independent UK body recognised by Government and essentially its remit is to ensure the safe installation, operation and maintenance of safe and efficient wood burning and multi fuel stoves and boiler stoves. As part of this process it produces an annual list of products which they have checked and approved. It is important to point out that whether or not a manufacturer chooses to submit their products to appear on the list is purely voluntary. This therefore means that the Hetas Approved Appliance is not comprehensive and that there are many perfectly good, perfectly safe and efficient CE tested stoves which do not appear on their list. 

The stoves on the list are not physically checked or tested in operation by Hetas either. What Hetas actually do is a paper exercise to ensure, among other things, that the CE test and certificate is genuine, that the appliance efficiencies quoted in the CE certificate meet the efficiency requirements as set out in Building Regulations (ie gross efficiency of 65% or better) and that the instruction manual is written in English and covers all of the relevant points to ensure safe installation and operation – including health and safety issues for the installer. 

There are a number of reputable manufacturers and importers, with many CE tested appliances (some with additional and more stringent certification than the basic CE, for example DIBt), who are not keen on supporting another level of 'red tape' with its associated costs when they already satisfy all of the UK's legal requirements and therefore they will never submit any of their products for approval. You will also find that some manufacturers and importers who are already listed only submit a few of their products for the same reason. 

What concerns us at The Stove Yard, as well as others in the stove industry, is that some Hetas installers seem to think that they can only fit Hetas Approved Appliances. They're wrong – and to ensure its legal position Hetas would be the first to confirm this. Their website clearly states:

"When an installer installs a solid fuel, wood or biomass appliance they must satisfy themselves that the installation and associated work meets all the relevant Building Regulations (primarily Regulations 4 and 7). This includes: a suitable appliance and any associated ancillary systems such as chimneys, vents, carbon monoxide alarms, hearths etc."

To clarify this, correspondence from Hetas to both Morsø and The Stove Yard stated: "When fitting an appliance that is not Hetas Approved installers should make a little effort to check that the appliance can be fitted in accordance with the requirements of Building Regulations e.g. that the gross efficiency is 65% gross or better." Please note the use of the term 'a little effort'. Therefore a Hetas Registered Installer, if installing a stove which is not Hetas listed, only needs to ensure that the stove has been genuinely CE tested and that it meets the minimum 65% gross efficiency. They do not have to ensure that it is on the Hetas list.

In 2013 the Construction Products Regulation (CPR) made it a legal requirement for all stoves to be CE tested by an approved laboratory and also made it illegal to sell non-CE tested stoves. This certainly reduced the number of non-compliant stoves but unfortunately did not remove them from the market altogether. Some seven years later there are still many available on a certain well-known auction site. Having said that, virtually all stoves sold today through reputable stove dealers are CPR compliant. In The Stove Yard's experience any Hetas installer worth their salt would never fit a suspect stove. They can easily recognise a well-made functionally safe stove from a reputable supplier from one that isn't and know too well that a badly made stove will more than likely come back to haunt them.  

In the opinion of many manufacturers all of this has effectively eliminated the need for the Hetas Approved Appliance list and therefore 2020 has seen the list severely reduced. Instead it is the newly launched clearSkies scheme, which sets out to differentiate the emissions advantages of one stove over another, that their support has shifted to. Again, this scheme is voluntary (and also paid for) and at this early stage is by no means comprehensive. Our view is that if your stove choice is Hetas approved or clearSkies emissions verified then that's a bonus, but it shouldn't be the be-all and end-all of whether it is a suitable stove for you or not. 

NB The Stove Yard are active supporters of Hetas and their aims to promote best practice and are currently represented on the Hetas Technical Committee and Hetas Installers Committee.