Review of Esse Ironheart cooking range
Esse Ironheart
We wanted a stove for the kitchen that could be used for cooking; most of the solid fuel cookers seem to put out only a modest amount of heat to the room, and for technical reasons we would not be using it with a back boiler. The Esse seemed to be the best of the limited options.
We have the Ironheart delux with the pan warming cupboards and pan drawer, and I would give this stove a 4 star minus or 3 star plus. We use only wood, which I test for moisture content, in the wood burning box. Good points It fulfills our basic requirements admirably. Once the large mass of metal is up to temperature, it belts out a goodly amount of heat. We have another WBS of 10kW, and together with the Esse, these are generally enough to heat the whole house to our satisfaction (total heat needs assessed as 35kWh). Cooking, something of major importance to my other half, has been easy. The oven will get up to about 200F, and it turns out excellent sourdough bread, stews, etc and does general baking jobs very well. The hot plates are excellent. Obviously you cannot expect it to cook things that need precise temperature regulation. The glass has remained reasonably clear, with only some soot deposits around the edge of the window where it is cooler. Drawbacks You cannot regulate the burn easily. Even with all the air controls closed, you can see there are strong draughts within the firebox, and the wood always burns quite strongly. You cannot load the stove and then forget about it for several hours while you go out. If you do then there will be loads of hot ash and charcoal left in the firebox and you have to put on some small kindling, and often the fire needs some resuscitation by blowing etc. If you load with normal size logs, they just tend to smoulder. We have not tried to keep the fire in overnight for this reason. Our other stove has much more sensitive air flow controls, and you can regulate the flames much more precisely to obtain a controlled burn and it will keep in overnight with wood only. To be fair to Esse, they do say in their instructions that the fire is not designed to be a slow burning stove, and recommend running a hot fire at least once a day. We use about a large wheelbarrow load of wood per day. It is not so easy to keep it looking pristine because of food splashes etc, We are not particularly bothered about this. Removing and replacing the hot plates after cleaning is not easy. The securing nuts under the hot plates have to be positioned in exactly the correct place to meet the bolts. As you lower the heavy hot plates into position, you loose sight of the nuts and cannot assess what is happening if they do not meet. Customer service is poor. Esse provide email contact addresses for queries, but they do not reply when I have emailed them for assistance!- Be the first to comment
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