Check out this wood burner alternative that you can use in the house and as a patio heater

(Image credit: Le Feu)

last updated 16 June 2021

Two of the most pressing 1st-world problems of our age are 'How can I stay warm in my garden this summer when the sun vanishes?' and 'How can I have a fire in my home now they have banned wood?' Well, there's a product intended to solve both those thorny issues. Le Feu is a very stylish, wood burner style product. Except it doesn't burn wood – good – and it doesn't need a chimney or any other form of ventilation – even better! With a choice of four colours and four stands, that means a total of 16 possible configurations, by my maths. The really clever bit is that some of those can even be taken outside to work as a super-sexy patio and garden heater.

Le Feu is French for 'The Fire', but the product actually comes from stylish Denmark, home of the Vikings and bacon. The Danish brand claims Le Feu is ‘the greenest fireplace on the market,’ and it's certainly among the most attractive.

Le Feu burns biofuel or, more specifically, bioethanol derived from commercial cooking oil waste. This is better for the environment overall. Perhaps more importantly, burning biofuel means Le Feu can be completely sealed, so there's no need for a chimney and no noxious fumes or particles emitted – good news for your air purifier and also your lungs.

This is no small matter, as wood burners have turned out to be not only worse outdoor air polluters than cars, but also to be potentially horribly injurious to your health. Potential side effects of living with a traditional fireplace or wood burner are said to be not just respiratory problems but also 'a decrease in intelligence', presumably caused by starving your brain of oxygen. Are you willing to run the risk of becoming not just less healthy but also stupider?

• My air purifier has made me paranoid about my home's air quality

These 'beautiful, contemporary fireplaces' as Le Feu modestly put it, have another Ace up their industrial designer sleeves. These burners are not just eco-friendly and stylish, they're also portable. So in theory you could use one during summer nights in the garden, then shift it indoors when winter draws in. Perhaps more realistically you could buy one for outdoors and one for the lounge. They're only as little as £1,600 in the UK or from $1,895 in the US – that's equivalent to about AUS$3,000.

This style, which attaches to your ceiling, is obviously not so portable but there are free-standing options on high or low legs.

Le Feu is available in the UK at Selfridges.

• Buy Le Feu in the UK now from £1,600

• Buy Le Feu in the USA now from $1,895

Find out more about Le Feu

Duncan is the former lifestyle editor of T3 and has been writing about tech for almost 15 years. He has covered everything from smartphones to headphones, TV to AC and air fryers to the movies of James Bond and obscure anime. His current brief is everything to do with the home and kitchen, which is good because he is an excellent cook, if he says so himself. He also covers cycling and ebikes – like over-using italics, this is another passion of his. In his long and varied lifestyle-tech career he is one of the few people to have been a fitness editor despite being unfit and a cars editor for not one but two websites, despite being unable to drive. He also has about 400 vacuum cleaners, and is possibly the UK's leading expert on cordless vacuum cleaners, despite being decidedly messy. A cricket fan for over 30 years, he also recently become T3's cricket editor, writing about how to stream obscure T20 tournaments, and turning out some typically no-nonsense opinions on the world's top teams and players.

Before T3, Duncan was a music and film reviewer, worked for a magazine about gambling that employed a surprisingly large number of convicted criminals, and then a magazine called Bizarre that was essentially like a cross between Reddit and DeviantArt, before the invention of the internet. There was also a lengthy period where he essentially wrote all of T3 magazine every month for about 3 years.

A broadcaster, raconteur and public speaker, Duncan used to be on telly loads, but an unfortunate incident put a stop to that, so he now largely contents himself with telling people, "I used to be on the TV, you know."