Review of Jotul F 100
Rolls Royce of log burners
When we moved into our cottage late summer we bought the Jotul F100 for our sitting room Inglenook along with a Charnwood Country 4 stove for our study/snug. We particularly wanted to compare steel-bodied and cast iron stoves. They each have outstanding qualities.
This stove was selected after a couple of years of avidly reading dozens of brochures and visiting dozens of stoves stockists up and down the country - we knew we'd find a cottage to go with a log-burner one day! We adore the wide viewing window with its classic, traditional cast iron decorative arches and the beautiful design to the sides and trellised top - although we had to insist on having this patterned top as newer models now come with a plain lid. Our final choice was between the Jotul and the Esse 100 and the stunning arabesque of elegance that forms the Jotul handle won the day. What we love about this substantial stove is that once the fire builds to glowing charcoal stage it just goes on and on…and on. This is a superlative long-haul model. We find that we use far fewer logs than with the Charnwood for the same burning period so the Jotul is perfect for those times when you want to relax and not hop back and forth to check, riddle and feed the fire. It is slower to light than our Charnwood and quite slowly builds to a good temperature. There is a good reason for this. We purchased the wood burner-only model not the dual fuel so there is a single air source, no primary or secondary air controls, just the one lever. It is having the secondary starter air input that really revs up the initial burn on our Charnwood so we have taken to latching the door open on the Jotul until the fire is well established, then close the door and close down the air intake a fraction. Bellissimo! Plenty of heat pumping out and very low log consumption. This is just what we wanted in our primary log-burner and we can recommend the Jotul for its brilliantly solid construction, efficiency and very good looks. It comes to bits easily and has few moving parts - we certainly didn't want the bother of periodically replacing firebricks, preferring to have the insulation of a thicker metal body to do the same job instead. The firebox is wide though not deep and will take long and chunky logs. It is incredibly economical as a bed of glowing logs will last for hours. Overall we prefer our Charnwood for the times when we need to get a fire going quickly and for controllability but we prefer the Jotul for its superlative long-haul burning, overall economy, classically beautiful looks and build quality- Be the first to comment
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