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Is a heater on a marketplace that looks barely used, at a fraction of the price of a new one a good deal? One thing you don't know is that the one photo you have on the listing tells you almost nothing. Five checks decide whether it is a bargain or a trap, starting with the one that stops an installer signing it off.

The wood heater in the corner has warmed the same lounge room through fifteen winters. The kids grew up in front of it. Now it is starting to show its age, and you are weighing up whether it has years left in it or whether its time is nearly up. 

For the right home, yes. A wood heater earns its price when you have a large or open-plan space to heat, reasonable access to firewood, and a genuine cold-climate winter. It’s the wrong buy for a small apartment, a smoke-restricted block, or anyone who wants warmth at the push of a button with nothing to load, light or clean. Everything below is the detail behind that answer, including the honest pros and cons.

Every wood heater can look much the same at first. A black box, a glass door, a price. Stand a few side by side and they start to blur together. It is hard to say what really sets one apart from the next. If this is your first wood heater, finding one is easy. Knowing which one suits your home is the hard part.

You can picture it already. The fire sits flush in the wall, framed by the plaster, throwing warmth across the lounge on a grey Melbourne afternoon. No box standing out on the floor, no legs, just flame set into the room like it was always meant to be there. That look has a name. It is an inbuilt wood heater, and the reason it looks so settled is that the choice to have one is made early, before the plaster goes up and sometimes before the frame does.

A wood heater runs for hours. On a cold Ballarat night it can stay lit from late afternoon until bedtime, and the metal and glass hold their heat long after the flames drop away. That is a lot of heat at floor level, right where a crawling baby or a new puppy spends the day. If you have just brought home a wood heater, or a new baby, one question tends to arrive first: how do you keep small hands and paws off it? A fitted fire guard is the usual answer. It is also only part of the picture.