Review of Charnwood Country 4 stove
Great little stove
We moved in to an old victorian house that had a blocked up fireplace in the dining room.
We opened it up and put a Country 4 in the new hole and it looks great. I did do quite a bit of research before choosing this fire and what swung my decision was the efficiency (over 80%), the price (very reasonable) and the fact that it is made in the UK (Isle of wight). Tick, tick and tick! Ours is the black finish which does show dust a little bit, but easily wipes clean with a damp cloth. The door is large, with a big glass giving a great view of the flame and becoming an eye drawing focal point of the room. The wooden handle does get warm, but not too hot to touch with bare hands. I have friends who have metal handles on their stoves and they need to use gloves or a metal opener when tending their stoves. I've found that ours burns really well with the circular air control open three quarters of a turn and the airwash knob a finger width from the stove side. This keeps the flue pipe thermometer, which is 30cm from the top of the stove, just into the silver "optimum burn" area and provides an amazing amount of heat from what is normally 2 or 3 logs. It also keeps the glass clean and I only have to give it a light wipe once every 6 weeks or so. We also have an EcoFan on top of the stove to help push the warmth around. They're not cheap, but seem well made and effective. We burn a seasoned hardwood mix, no coal or other fuels and this makes the stove hot enough to boil a kettle on the top for tea or filling hot water bottles. I may look at the flue pipe boiler for this stove when we change our hot water tank, so that I can recover some flue heat. There is no ash pan in this stove, so when cleaning out it is easy to get ash on the hearth, but that is a very small drawback on an otherwise excellent product. I'd say I have to chuck a log or two on every hour to 90 minutes, so I'm not sure if it would survive the 8 or so hours overnight. Perhaps with the vents closed up and a good load stacked inside it might. But as others have mentioned, it really is a breeze to light, newspaper, kindling and off you go. We use this stove quite a bit and get the chimney swept twice a year (Oct and Feb) and the sweepings are never significant, leading me to belive that it burns quite cleanly. I would buy one of these again with no hesitation and can highly recommend it as an efficient British made stove. To sum up. Well made, well priced, British stove that looks good, is available in an array of colours and kicks out an impressive heat for such an unassuming device.