Firefox 8 stove Hot

The stove looks brillant in our living room. We were advised to go for the 8 rather than the 5, due to the reason that it takes slightly larger logs and if the room got too hot we could just open the livingroom door and let it escape into the hallway! In reality there does not seem to be masses of heat. I bought a thermometer and have been regulating the stove at the optimised temperature. I am not sure why the room is not getting warmer, could it be because the stove is inset into the fireplace? Any advice would be much appreciated.

Stove Expert Replied: There should be a minimum gap of 150mm at the back, and either side with 300mm above the stove to allow for the generated heat to radiate freely. If you do not have this then it is likely to be a factor as to why you are disappointed with the heat generated and it may be worth looking at using a rear flue installation so that the stove will be more in the room!

I am very pleased with this stove and having owned 2 others in the past this is so far by far the best value for money.

Tweak 1) If you are using this for burning wood only or mainly only for wood then remove the grate and griddle assembly which just lifts out after you have removed firebricks and baffle plate. Unhook the Riddler lever and then leave the lever inplace after you have removed the grate and round riddle plates then simple replace the firebricks and the baffle plate, time taken 5 mins, cost savings BIG !!
The above tweak has 2 major benefits, firstly logs burn better on a bed of ash and do not want air to be drawn in underneath them which it does on this stove unless you remove the grate and riddle plates as explained above, if you do allow air under logs they will burn far too quickly meaning you will use lots more logs than is necessary for most of the heat to go up the flue !! remember we are aiming for a nice smooth slow burning flame not a rip roaring flame where most of the heat is wasted up the flue, we want to heat the stove sides and stove top not the flue !!! Removing the grate will allow for far more efficient burning and use alot less logs.

Tweak 2) The most annoying thing I found with this stove and my only gripe is the poor design of the front bottom edge of the stove which allows ash to fall out of the door at the bottom everytime you open the door which then has to be swept off the shelf at the bottom front of the stove. This is particularly annoying if you burn logs as the ash tends to be in bigger particles and so more likely to fall out the stove, a 1 minute tweak stops this problem completely. The problem happens because there is a small gap between the bottom edge of the log cathcer bars and the top lip of the door recess at the bottom of the stove, we need to fill that gap !!

You will need a thickish ie 1cm diameter or more piece of FIREPROOF ROPE I had some left from the stove installation or you can buy from DIY or ebay or The Range. Open the stove door and lift up the metal lip piece of metal which is meant to hold logs in and stop them falling out, it just slides up and then down back into place, remove completely if you wish and with a brush, paint brush is ideal make sure all ash and debris is removed from that area and then replace the bar but dont push it down all the way. Then measure the fire rope you have to length to fit in between the bottom of the bar and the floor of the stove and put it in place, finally tap down gently on the top of the bar with a wooden mallet or in my case back of wooden stove brush to squeeze the rope firmly into place between the log catcher bar you removed and the bottom of the stove. No more ash spillage and is really worth doing if you don't want to have to reach for the brush everyvtime you open the door.

Hope you find these tweaks useful
Adrian

Stove Expert replied: useful tips. Perhaps more customers should design stoves!!

My girlfriend and I bought out first home in early 2009. Its a farmhouse dating from around 1890, with various bolt on extensions. Located in Perthshire, Scotland. Two storey. Kitchen/diner, utility and bathroom through the back of the house in a flat roofed extension. Livingroom and dining room down stairs with two large bedrooms and a box room upstairs.

There is an open fire in the livingroom which we use most days and nights through winter. The dining room also has an open fire.

Last winter was the coldest in this part of the country since 1961. The house has no insulation, except for the 13" I put in the attic last year. Last winter (Nov,Dec,Jan,Feb) we used 2,200litres of central heating oil at 53p/litre = lots of bloody money!

My plan for 2010 was to install a woodburner! After lengthy investigation and finding this site amongst others, i decided on The Firefox 8 for three reasons. 1 good reviews. 2 price. 3 multifuel (so if i run out of wood i can burn coal)

I bought the stove online (£325) and installed it all myself for about £900 including cost of stove. I opted to fit the stove in the dining room as it was closer to the core of the house, plus it was always a bit risky having an open fire in a room when you aren't in it, even with a guard it can spark! That way we can run the woodburner when we aren't in the room with no risk of it going wrong!

I finished installation for September 2010. I am absolutely thrilled with this stove. It has been on 12hrs a day since i fitted it! As i said the house has no insulation, but the job for this year is to remedy that. As we insulate the stove should provide even more heat.

In mid-December we had 12 nights at 17oC to -19oC by night and it didnt get above -9oC by day. The stove was on constantly, the dining room (5m x 4m x 3m tall) sat at around 29oC, the hall (3m x 1.5m x 3m tall) 23oC and with both bedroom door open upstairs, they sat at around 13oC. I also had the fire on in the livingroom, but only to heat the livingroom.

I have been burning only seasoned hard wood with smokeless coal on occassion. I have recently started using house coal having found a good supplier. I bought 4 cubic metres of split seasoned hardwood locally for £200 delivered, of which i have about half a cube left. Once the stove is up to heat I turn both vents right down and add a log every hour or so. The fuel box isnt massive, though i gather a wood only insert is available.

This winter has been the coldest since the house was built! and so far we have used 500 litres of oil (which is now 75/litre!!) so the stove has already paid for itself!

Once you start to understand how heat...or in my case draughts, move around the house its easy to open doors once each room is up to temperature to spread the heat. If my house was properly insulated I think the stove could heat most of the rooms.

I haven't really tried an overnight burn as i'm worried about over-firing as the manual states you have to keep ridling when using coal...how do you do that when you are in bed?!?! Overnight with wood isn't possible unless you use the wood only insert previously mentioned by others. I'm sure i'll get the hang of it eventually!

Glass stays pretty clean. Finish hasn't changed a bit in the five months it's been used. Yes there may be 'better' stoves out there and as this is my first i may not be aware of how much 'better' Clearviews and the like are... but at this price, who cares!

Loads of heat, easy to light and clean, heats up quickly, cheap to buy, has saved us a fortune. I am now cutting and stacking my own hardwood for next year. Hope to install the 5kw firefox in the livingroom in a year or so.Oh and it drys wet washing hung up on a frame in a few hours, and the dogs always infront of it!

Superb! Buy one!

Stove Expert Replied: Household coal is not recommended on closed appliances as it can block the airwash system, it also burns with a taller flame that can distort the internal components. Might be worth sticking to smokeless to ensure longevity of this product. Good review of performance. DIY installtions need to be undertaken with the utmost care and needs to be signed off by Building Control. Don't forget to install a CO2 alarm.

After much research I settled on a FireFox 8 and boy was I pleased,the build quality & finish are very good for a stove of this price.I have a wood-burning kit in my stove as i only burn wood and with the kit in it gives you a very good sized firebox for logs,as with any wood-burner the type of wood and how well it has been seasoned is all important and with good well seasoned wood this stove can really belt out a lot of heat,something you really appreciate when you live in a 250 year old stone farm house in the north east of Scotland.I can keep the stove in overnight with the right wood placed in at the right time,this takes practice but is possible but it is such a easy stove to light it's not a problem if it's out in the morning.I would say if you were burning coal an overnight burn would be no problem at all.This stove is well made easy to use and very good value for money so much so that I am buying another for the other end of the house (it's a big house),if you're considering getting a stove I would recommend the FireFox you will not be disappointed

Stove Expert Replied: Great review, good stove at a reasonable price. Good sound advice regarding quality of wood to be used and as a result good heat generated.

What a superb stove for the money. I have just removed a Firefox 5 to fit this which is also a superb stove for the money but was not quite big enough to heat all of our downstairs rooms. The 8 is easy to light needing just one fire lighter and doesn't even need kindling as long as the wood is nice and dry.
The controls are easy to use and work very well and you can really slow the burn right down. A full fire box and a couple of handfuls of anthracite and it burns happily overnight (7 to 8 hours). The finish is very good and the stove was easy to assemble but a couple of the screws did need tightening a bit. The airwash works well as long as the logs are not touching the glass which does blacken it up but its easily cleaned. All in all I would highly recommend this stove and at this price (I paid £330) is an absolute bargain. I know there are probably better stoves out there for twice the price but personally I can't see how they would do anything that the Firefox 8 can,t. It is being used daily and only time will tell how it stands up to regular use but if you are looking to fit a stove ready for the winter these are well worth a try. I hope this review will be of use as I spent a lot of time reading up on stoves before deciding which one to go for and know just how hard it can be choosing the right one.

We have had this stove installed now for about a month in our large conservatory. It lights really easily and gives of a tremendous heat. We are burning smokeless ovals and the odd log during the day but mostly the ovals so that the stove stays in all night. (Have recently tried stove fuel but it leaves too much clinker and won't re light in the morning)

Only negative points I would say are that the handle for the ash pan is not the best. It falls off easily when you are tipping the ashes into the bin.

Apart from that a great little stove for the money and would recommend over more expensive models. Thinking about putting a smaller one in out living room next year and would consider the firefox 5 for sure.

Since the stove is our first, it is hard to make any direct comparisons as the only others I have seen lit are 2 clearview 400s, which Im led to believe are the best you can buy.

Firstly, our room is fairly small, 4.5m x 4.5m x 2.4, and a stove calculator recommended a 3.6kw as satisfactory for the dimensions. Take this with a pinch of salt, the house is a 200 year old stone end terrace with 800mm thick walls, trust me the house gets freezing in the winter. When purchasing a stove, bear in mind the recommended stove size calculator i assume is for a modern well insulated draught proof house. I'd say the firefox 8 is just about good enough for our room, even when running on full for a few hours it never gets too hot in the room and we havent had really cold weather yet.

So far I have only burnt well seasoned wood, which according to the figures should give out its highest heat output. As for burning overnight, that is the biggest laugh Ive ever seen, the stove goes through the fattest logs piled high in about 2 hours max. The stove isnt perfectly sealed, so even when shutting down air supply it will still burn pretty quickly. The firebox is suprisingly small, u strugge to get more than a decent log on so i tend to split logs which ultimately mean the burn hotter but considerably quicker. The airwash is ok, but if you do turn it right down you inevitably get black smoke across the bottom of the glass which rises over time. Controlability is ok, it takes a while for the flames to die down when shutting off air supply, I've read the clearviews are almost like gas fires in their controlability i.e. the die down almost instantly. As the air flow control is cast iron, you need to glove to adjust it when hot, I find ours to be sticky and hard to subtly adjust, it being very easy to apply pressure and either it not move or move fully open/closed.

In terms of looks, the firefox is nice to look at and has a traditional, subtle design that appeals to most. I've found that it takes an hour for the room to really feel any heat from the fire, it seems that the inglenook has to warm up first before it radiates any heat. I would recommend a flue pipe thermometer as a good albeit expensive investment for what is essentially a coil, it tells the optimum operating temperature for the stove, too low and you risk a tar build up and too high and the stove becomes inefficient and you are likely to deteoriate parts quickly.

Like i said, i cant really compare the stove with anything else and Ive tried to highlight the negatives for the most part but overall I'm really satisfied with a stove half the price of its rivals. At the end of the day it burns like a good 'un and has a nice view of the fire.

I fit stoves for a living, the last three firefox 8s i have put in all had an issue with the back brick cracking and the rope disintergrating on left hand side of door, supplier told me to cut back brick in half from now on and replaced rope under warranty with british equivelent which seems to have cured it. The firefox is made in china, anyone fitting one of these replace rope with new gallery fitting and cut the back brick neatly in half with a diamond blade whizzer, just my 3 pence worth.

Being very new to multifuel I did a lot of online research regarding the type and size of burner that I would need...I did not have a large budget so I was initially looking at some of the Far Eastern imports but the reviews put paid to these. I settled on the Firefox brand as it is distributed by a well known UK fire place manufacturer by the name of Gallery. I chose the middle ground 8kW model for my installation. When I collected it in it's packing crate I thought it to be a small stove then I found the legs inside the firebox that needed bolting in place. The build quality is fab...everything fits beautifully and the finish is not a flat matt or a gloss it is a nice crystaline textured finish in a very nice shade of charcoal dark grey. It comes with an installation manual with comprehensive spares listing and a complementary stove glove to protect your pinkies, so spare parts should not be an issue, fingers excluded!.

Having had the stove in action for about a month I find it very easy to light. I have only burned wood so far but having it burning away all day the ashpan is more than accomodating, in fact you could get away with cleaning out every two to three days. I have been able to keep it burning for around 4 hours between refills using dense woods. The airwash works to a degree but I find that the marks on the glass burn away when the stove is up to temperature anyway. Heat wise ?....I have a very modest 3 bedroomed house in the outskirts of Blackpool comprising upstairs: 3 bedrooms, downstairs: through lounge, bathroom, kitchen extension. With the stove ticking away and not whoomping it warms all of the downstairs no problem. After emptying the ashpan I clean my stove using the hoover to take out all the residual ash and wash down the outside with flash or similar. The finish of the stove is still as new.

As you can probably tell I am pretty chuffed with my stove. It is quite a learning curve. Controlability is not rocket science, you soon find a balance between: feed...air...dryness of fuel...temperature...
Yes it is a balancing act but it does come.
DUST.....This one issue I thought may have affected my living space......Well it doesn't, thank God.....You need to be careful opening the stove door. The firebox has a large negative pressure when alight so opening the door to quickly causes a surge of draught into the stove causing ash to fly and the flame to expand pushing ash and smoke out. The technique is to open the door approx 10mm for a few seconds until the escalating flames have stabilised, then continue to open in a smooth fashion, hey presto no mess.

Finally....Get a flue liner..Less blow back, higher flue temperature, less tar, less hassle. If you want an entry level stove to wet your appetite I would definitely recommend this one. Although I am made up with this one I know it wont be my last one....Ultimately I want one with back boiler and some radiators..Solid fuel...The way to go.
Kind regards and happy burning ..Keith B. (Blackpool).

Great stove, bought it for a good price - less than half price of a similar sized stove from the local stores.

It is everything you would expect and chucks out a lot of heat.

We have a well insulated but bigish house with three floors, single glazing and high ceilings. The stove was bought as a back up to the central heating and has been doing a great job of heating the core of the property.

We burn both wood (when we are in) and those coal egg things (when we are out). It will burn all night with the eggs if you dampen it right down.

Air wash works great. Gets sooted up then clears its self, great.

You can buy a more expensive stove but I don't see why.


Stove expert says: the egg things are smokeless fuel - a type of anthracite coal, quite possibly taybrite or some other brand.

We have recently had a Firefox 8 Stove fitted in our dining room. We paid just under £400 for it and found it excellent value for money.
Ease of use is fab and it gives off a great amount of heat.....and our house is exceptionally cold!
We haven't left it burning overnight yet as it sets off the sensor on the house alarm due to the heat coming from it!
The only downside I have found so far (and this is incredibly petty!) is that the lip just below the door is a nightmare to sweep ash from.
It should come with a warning that it turns you into a recluse as I don;t want to leave the house now when it's on :-)