INSTALLING YOUR SLATE HEARTH

  • Nation wide deliveryNation wide delivery
  • Quality SlateQuality Slate
  • Made to MeasureMade to Measure

Advice and instruction on how to install your slate hearth safely and effectively.

Open Fire or Closed Fire

To start with you need to decide on the fire you will have. Basically, you have two options. Open fire, or a log/multi fuel burner. The difference is that one is enclosed, and the other is sat on top of the slate.

Open Fires

With open fires the heat will be extreme. Because of this, you will have to construct a sectioned slate hearth split into three or four pieces.

Closed Fires

If your fire is an enclosed fire that is radiating heat our slate would be fine as a single piece note that you will have to make sure that the slate has enough room to move on each side of your opening. It is important to measure correct to allow for expansion on each side this will also help when fixing.

INSTALLING YOUR SLATE HEARTH

Fixing your slate hearth to you floor is simple. All you need to remember is that you do not need any voids or spaces underneath the slate hearth. It is important to make sure that there are no honey combs below or this will weaken your slate hearth.

With cold floors, all ways fix you hearth with either flexible tile adhesive (if you need your slate hearth to sit low on to your floor). Spread the entire surface, or sand and cement mortar (semi dry) and ensure your floor is solid before you start.

If the floor is constructed of timber you need fix a sheeted material (ply) on to the existing floor. This should be fixed every 100mm of canters and then bond the slate hearth with flexible tile adhesive.

Please note: mortar will not bond to timber.

Measurements

When measuring your new slate hearth, you need to make sure you have allowed enough room for the slate to fit into the recess. We recommend 5mm all around the back section between the wall and the slate hearth. Don’t worry, the gap can be filled with a dark colour flexible grout.

The second reason for this, is to allow the slate to breath or expand slightly. Building regulations do state that your slate hearth should be 300mm from the front of your fire stove, so when measuring please remember this as you need to measure twice and we need to cut once.