After viewing the extortionate winter gas bill and uttering several expletives, my husband in all of his wisdom decided to rip out the uneconomical gas fire and open up the chimney so that we could have an open fire. He also decided that we were no longer going to pay for fuel when there were plenty of things around that we could burn for free, including all of our paper recycling, so I decided to save up for an Amazon voucher from my Dooyoo earnings, and I put it towards a paper logmaker - it cost me £18.99 so was it money well spent? We were full of excitement when the log maker promptly arrived; we had read up thoroughly on it, and we had even ...  Read the complete review

Last Christmas Santa brought a surprise, a paper log maker. Admittedly I'm a trainee Eco warrior and I'd been coveting this from afar but I couldn't bring myself to part with £20. Fortunately someone who knows me far too well splurged on my behalf. Needless to say I was itching to try it out and made my first and incidentally my prettiest ever paper log using the Christmas wrapping paper. We only use the solid fuel stoves in the winter so this had been tucked at the back of a cupboard until it was needed again. After last weeks £180 log delivery and the revelation that coal has gone up again to £17 a bag, of which we use between four and six a month dependant ...  Read the complete review

When we first moved into our house, we had a Multi-Fuel stove installed to supplement the oil-fired central heating. It's been one of our better purchases and as men will tell you, it feels good to chop sticks and split logs. However, to buy barn dried logs that will burn well and give out good heat is expensive. We use a mixture of coal and logs and as from earlier this year, we also occasionally use a home made log using our new paper compressor. We bought it on impulse rather than as a part of any environmental crusade, because over a period of years travelling up and down to London, we had amassed a bit of an over-supply of free newspapers which ...  Read the complete review

The Eko-mania briquette maker is a household gadget for making fuel for your fireplace or wood-burning stove out of waste paper, and it seems like a brilliant idea. You can use any kind of paper - old newspapers, phonebooks, junk mail, old letters - anything at all, to make the combustible bricks. Basically with this, you're reversing the process of paper-making to some extent, in that you're taking sheets of paper, pulping them down in water, compressing them - using the briquette maker - then drying them out to make 'logs' that will burn over a long period - just like wood. The briquette maker itself is like a slotted metal hand-press which shapes your globs of ...  Read the complete review

These eco friendly contraptions are exceptionally good if you have a wood burning stove/ open fire in your home and want to reduce heating costs as well as becoming more environmentally friendly with old newspapers. To make a paper log to burn on the fire, all you simply have to do is soak old newspaper in water for around 24 hours before adding them into the log press and squeezing out the excess water. Beware of the water that the log maker squeezes out of the paper as it gets you very wet if you are not expecting it. The logs can be as fat or as thin as you like, however the thicker you make them, the longer they burn for. I was surprised at how long ...  Read the complete review