If you want to get a stove for your home, you have a range of options to choose from, starting with a wood-burning stove all the way to the modern electric stoves. Even if you know that the type of fuel used is the main factor that dictates the properties and function of the stove, it’s still easy to get lost between the choices (wood-burning or coal-burning? Gas stoves or oil stove?). That’s why when looking for a stove the most important thing to do is to assess your situation.

How much money are you willing to spend (electric stoves are usually the cheapest all around)? What do you want to do with the stove? Are you planning to use it to keep you warm, heat up water, for aesthetic pleasure, or for all of this plus more? And, are you planning to install the stove in your home were you’ll live for the next ten years, or are you moving often?

If it’s the latter, the most viable choice for you is eithergas stoves or electric stoves. The reason behind this is simple. All other stoves typically involve high installation costs. A wood burning stove is a good example. It requires making changes to the house itself, as at the very least you will need a chimney. Factor in a place to store wooden logs, costs of the installation and other problems, and you’ll see that it’s not really a good decision if you’re planning to move in a few months or in a year. Gas stoves and electric stoves, on the other hand, don’t necessarily mean structural changes. In fact, most modern models hardly require much installation effort at all. If you have gas stoves with no vents, you have to hook them up to the gas supply, and you’ve got yourself a working stove. And it’s even easier with electric ones. You just have to plug it into the socket, and you’ve got yourself a working stove.

Two questions are left to answer to decide what kind of stove you should get, and one of them is: what do you plan to do with the stove? What do you want to use it for? If your primary concern is heating, consider that gas units typically provide twice as much warmth as electric stoves within the same price range. On the other hand, if you don’t plan to use the stove as your primary source of heating, instead using it in conjunction with an air conditioning or with central heating, you’ll be fine with an electric unit. You’ll also find that the typicalgas stoves will look a bit less aesthetic than electric ones of the same price. However, the gas unit will have a real flame as opposed to the fake flames of electric stoves. Cheaper electric units can look very corny once on, which is not an issue with gas stoves.

Finally, a note regarding the price. There’s a tie here between both types of stoves, and you need to factor in local gas and electricity costs. However, electric ones tend to be a bit cheaper, since in some places a gas stove can be only installed by a specialist, incurring additional costs.
If you’ve decided that a stove is for you, but don’t want to invest in a wood-burner, check out these gas stoves http://www.stovebase.co.uk/gas-stoves.html and electric stoves http://www.stovebase.co.uk/electric-stoves.html that require minimum installation effort.