Woodfire F12 contemporary boiler stove Hot

Agree with the other comments. The glass gets black very quickly and the controls seem to be on or off its difficult to get a balance! Saying that it heats the water for our thermal store very well. We only use it in winter and have UFH in the large open plan living area (33ft * 13ft) so we don't really use it to put any heat in to that room


Stove Expert Replied: Insure that you use good quality dry wood and this should help with the glass staying clean, leave airwash open.

I purchased this fire after a lot of investigation and research to supply my thermal store along with an oil boiler and solar thermal panels. It was fitted professionally and a new stainless steel liner (insulated) fitted to the chimney on my bungalow.

It lights easily and with the ash box open it draws like a train! The water is heated really quickly, so quickly that the plumber had to come back and fit a pump, as gravity alone could not take the heat away from the stove fast enough, so no problems there. However, as found by the other reviewer the "airwash" and I use the term lightly, is useless and does not keep the glass clean at all. We have tried various experiments and even with a raging fire the glass starts to soot up immediately. I am seriously considering taking my grinder to the metalwork to see if I can get more flow across the glass.

Now, I would class myself as pretty experienced with wood burners having used a "La Nordica" room heater for the last 7 years in my last house and the only time I had any trouble with the glass was if I tried to turn the airwash down too low. Also I can say that I have burned some rubbish wood on my last stove without any problems. So this fire is causing me some grief trying to figure out what is going wrong, the airwash control has to be left fully on just to keep it going and again as the other reviewer said, the balance is difficult to achieve between roaring and dying down.

In conclusion, and despite my negative comments about the airwash, I am happy with the stove generally, the heat output balance between room and water is very good (I fitted a thermostatic radiator in the same room) And it looks really good fitted too.

We bought the Woodfire F12 because we needed a contemporary style stove which would put most of its heat output into the back boiler rather than the room. It certainly does this effectively, in fact even in summer it can put a useful heat input into our thermal store without heating the room too much. The downside of this is that as a room heater it is a bit feeble, a little like switching on a 2-bar electric fire.

The controls aren't very progressive, it can be difficult to get a balance between the fire roaring too vigorously and dying down. The biggest problem we have is that whatever wood we burn - including wood with moisture content of 12-15% - and whatever air intake settings we use, we can't get the glass to stay clean. It soots up badly within a couple of days and needs a thorough manual clean.

Overall, a mixed feeling about the stove - it does the job, but it feels a little more labour intensive than it should. There may not be any better stoves for this kind of application on the market, but if we were buying again we'd have a good look before buying another of these.

Stove Expert Replied: Burning damp wood will undoubtedly cause the glass to become dirty. Quite often a radiator is put in the room for any extra heat required as the water is the priority for any heat generated.