The Hunter Herald 5 Inset stove is designed to fit into a modern fireplace that may originally have had a gas stove fitted. There is a choice between having lattice on the doors or plain doors.
Read some of the other reviews. I have had mine for 5 years with no trouble. real heat, stays in over night, easy lighting and controlling the heat and fire burn rate. I can only suggest that
those who cannot get heat out of their fire must have had it fitted incorrectly. Go to a recommended installer.Only down side I have found is that Hunter themselves are poor at answering queries etc.
Have just purchased this inset stove for a small room 13' x 13'.6"x 8' (height). It has been installed for one week now. Absolutely gutted with the results. The output calculator suggests that
2.9KW is sufficient for a room of this size so we expected great heat from the 4.2/5KW model. The chimney was lined with a flexi liner just to make sure everything was in order.
The stove is throwing no heat into the room. It lights well and is very easily controlled. Before lighting the stove the room temperature is 13 degrees, have tried various fuel options ie: all coal, all seasoned ash and a mix of seasoned ash and coal. Keeping the stove well tended from 5pm to midnight results in a very chilly room temperature of 15 degrees in the month of March. No comparison to the heat from our open fire!! Very disapointing, we would never be able to use this stove in winter! Our supplier has visited and agreed that the heat is in no way acceptable.
We are having a Hunter Herald 7 inset installed in the next week or two to see if the result is more favourable. Failing this we will definitely revert back to an open fire. We are very concerned because we have never heard of any one experiencing "no heat" from a stove, in fact we went for the Hunter Herald 5 inset stove expecting to have to leave the room door open to disperse the heat from the living room, unfortunately this is not the case!!
Stove expert replied:
Inset stoves should produce adequate heat providing it has been installed as per the manufacturers instructions. Has insulation been put around the inset box to insure that the heat generated goes to the room and not to the surrounding materials of the fireplace? May be worth checking. Do not use household coal on a stove it should be a smokeless fuel.
This is our third winter of 'trying' to get this stove to work. It must be the only log burner I know that you could use in the middle of summer as it gives out absolutely no heat! After 1.
5 hours of feeding this fire continually with logs I can rest my hand on top of the fire for approx 4 seconds, friends tell me my skin should have sizzled. I don't need a glove to open the door as the handle is never too hot to touch. It is often difficult to even generate enough heat to be able to burn the logs fully. Our supplier doesn't want to know, they couldn't get the fire to work, our installer has taken the fire out and put in exactly the insulation that Hunter recommended and it still will not throw out any heat. Back to Hunter I'm afraid as this fire is not fit for purpose.
Stove expert replied:
Very dissappointing, not sure if no insulation on initial installation but this should certainly help to get the heat into the room.
We had this unit installed in mid October 2011. Room is 15.5 sq mtrs. We already have oil central heating which we are happy with and provides us with enough warmth. We have had an open fire
which was useless for lighting with too much downdraught. We also have acquired a lot of wood over the past few years. We also wanted an alternative heat source that was reliable in case of power cuts. We decided on this unit after online research and visit from local HETAS installer. The outlay has been really worthwhile. We have been lighting it frequently even though the weather was not really cold enough. The ratings we have given are the evidence that we are really pleased with it in all aspects. It does not matter about burning overnight this is not what this unit is for. The ease with which it can be lit is so simple to what we could not achieve with the open fire. One small bit of firelighter, a tiny bit of kindling wood and you can put our well-seasoned logs on, light it, shut the door, walk away and you know it will be OK. Wonderful. We did have a very good HETAS installer.
Stove expert replied:
a good installer is really important. Often you may find bad reviews for stoves when it is actually the chimney which is lacking in some way and this is where the installer really comes into their own.
The previous reviewer is quite correct, this fire produce a good heat that just flows up the chimeney. It seems to me that the baffel does nothing and there is no visable backplate so the heat
disapears. If you use all your fuel and get it to melting temprature, it heats the room a bit - otherwise it is of no use unfortunatly.
I do not agree with some of the other reviews here, this is a great little if installed correctly. I have had the stove for three weeks now. I started with 3 small fires to break in the stove
then let it rip and its great, it heats the room it was meant too and a little heat goes to the rooms above, if you leave the lounge door open once its up to temp it can take the chill of the other rooms but it is not meant to heat a whole house as it is only a small stove, it is possible to burn overnight if you set it up properly (coal only) The body of my stove gets really hot you can not leave your hand on it for more than a second. I also think its pretty economical. I start a fire at about 4 and use just over half a bucket of ecoal50 and 2/3 kiln dried logs this stays hot until about ten then I let it die out. I was almost put off buying this stove by some of the other reviews here but when I told the stove engineer/seller he said he had installed 16 so far with only one problem which was when a fitter he removed the chair brick which is not how it should be installed, he also said he is so confident in this product he will be ordering another 16. I am very happy with my little stove, as for whats best to burn on a stove, coal is the hottest and last the longest and wood looks and smells nice so I do both starting with coal and then a couple of logs later in the night.
Stove expert replied:
Wood or smokeless fuels should be used on a closed appliance not house hold coal!
