Advice and tips on replacing your glass panel

Your glass has given way, it's cracked or completely shattered. Good news: replacing an insert or wood stove glass can be done at home, in under an hour, with a simple screwdriver. Most of our customers handle it themselves. The real sticking point isn't the fitting, but knowing which glass to order. We'll go through everything together, step by step.

Step 1: identify your glass

This is the point that most often causes difficulty. There are three possible scenarios depending on what you know about your appliance.

Start by looking for the rating plate. It's most often fixed to the back of the stove, sometimes under the ash pan, and carries the make and model. The manual will do too if you've kept it. With these two pieces of information, head to our glass by make page. We list more than 300 makes, from Invicta or Godin to manufacturers no longer stocked by anyone. The glass arrives already cut to the correct dimensions, so you have no measurements to take.

If your appliance is old, if the plate has disappeared under the paint or if the model appears nowhere, move on to measuring. It happens often and it's not a problem.

Step 2: taking measurements without going wrong

This is where most ordering errors occur. We cut to the millimetre, so an approximate measurement gives an unusable pane of glass.

The choice of tape measure matters. Use a DIY tape measure, the kind that retracts on its own. A sewing tape stretches under tension and throws the measurement off by several millimetres. A folding rule introduces slack at each joint. Pull the tape taut from one edge to the other without letting it sag.

Measure the metal frame, not the visible part of the glass. A good portion of the glass sits under the frame, and it's this total dimension we need. Many customers note down the surface they can see, then receive a glass that's too small and doesn't sit in its housing.

When the glass is broken, you've nothing left to measure on the glass itself. In that case, note the internal dimensions of the frame and take off 5 mm in each direction. These 5 mm are the clearance the glass needs to expand without being constrained against the metal. Also bear the thickness in mind: measure it on a fragment of the old glass, or look it up in the manual. It determines the mechanical strength and the fit within the frame.

Shapes that aren't rectangular

Our catalogue covers around twenty shapes: round, oval, trapezoidal, prismatic, cut corners, drilled, and a few others. For a curved, domed or thermoformed glass, measurements are taken on the outer face, the one facing the room. The simplest approach is to lay a piece of string along the curve, then transfer it flat onto the tape. A rigid tape follows a curve poorly.

For a bent glass, measure each section separately, always on the outer face, as though the angle were pointing outwards. Then check the angle of the bend with a protractor. If you don't have one, give us the measurement as you took it and we'll do the calculation. Some corner fireboxes have two or three panes, rarely identical: always specify which face is involved.

One last word on dimensions: if you're in doubt, don't guess. Send us a photo of the appliance, the rating plate and the glass in place via our quote request. Our team checks before starting the cut, it's free, and it avoids a £100 mistake.