WhatStove?

Review of Burley Wakerley stove

Burley Wakerley 12Kw

Guy Kerry 9 years ago

We recently bought this stove to heat a large cold room - 45feet by 12 by 10 high -which it does well enough. We also run a clearview pioneer, Cove 1 and a Jotul - woodburners - in other parts of our house. So we do know woodburning well enough.

It is a pity one cannot try before one buys a stove. I would not have bought the Wakerley. We find it is very smokey and smutty when one refills it. It has the outside air kit fitted and in a well sealed room the convection from the fire added to the geometry of the very wide shallow but relatively tall firebox ensures that lots of smoke and smuts come into the room and not up the flue when the door is opened -no matter how careful one is. I imagine it needs a fair amount of air from the room to keep the smoke within the stove. We don't have that and the 80mm pipe from outside isn't sufficient to overcome the convection from the stove which forces smoke into the room. Other stoves of these dimensions have alternative, smaller, side loading doors to overcome this smoke-on-loading problem.

The stove also suffers from gathering quite a bloom of fly ash on the windows which obscures the fire even after just a few hours. This is not smoke blackening but a fine ash frosting. Easily removed when the fire is cold but a pain if you like to watch your fire through clear glass. Our other stoves don't suffer this.

The company's recommendation not use a thermometer is odd. I have always used one to ensure I don't over fire a stove. They suggest using one ensures over firing. That is not within our experience, The company wasn't very helpful in suggesting how to do this without a thermometer - their answer is to just have flames flickering but not smouldering - not quite what their advertising suggests which is a stove full of swirling flame! They suggest this might be an over fire situation. I use oak which produces little flame but they had no good answers so found them unhelpful.

I do like the idea of the convection tubes and it does make for a lot of heat.

The stainless steel sheet in the roof of the stove fell into the fire the second time we used it. It is a pain to get back in place and to ensure all the other firebricks get put back into place at the same time. The welds on the lower inside of the stove hold the firebricks away from the sides ensuring the lower air holes are partially blocked. Not a good design feature.

The paint even when fully cured is very delicate and the supplied trivet marks it very easily.

Having heard and read stories about the difficulty of starting these stoves I use the top down method with good dry kindling and have no problems at all - it heats up faster than the manual suggests it might.

Overall rating:

3 flames

Build Quality 3 flames (avg 4)
Quality of finish 2 flames (avg 4.2)
Value for money 2 flames (avg 3.8)
Ease of use 3 flames (avg 4)
Ease of lighting 4 flames (avg 4.2)
Firebox size 5 flames (avg 4.6)
How well does the airwash work 3 flames (avg 4.3)
Controllability 4 flames (avg 4.5)
Handle operation 3 flames (avg 4.3)
How likely are you to buy it again? 1 flames (avg 3.9)
What is your overall satisfaction? 3 flames (avg 3.9)