Had this stove for nearly 15 years now. It works great, and as my house is now super insulated I don't put the central heating on until December and then only for 1 1/2 hours hours a day. The
door to the living room is left ajar and the heat moves through the kitchen diner and up the stairs. It can be difficult to regulate to keep in over night but then it's not built to stay in 24hours. I generally close it down at about 9, add a big log on at 10 pm and 9 times out of 10 it is still warm in the morning, a bit of sawdust and dry sticks gets it going again easy enough. I have an old morso squirrel in the dining room that I rarely need to light. Would recommend, only needed to buy one firebrick so far. Takes the uninitiated a while to get used to it.
This is a really good value fire,the only problem for me is that I should have bought the bigger model but had no room to fit it! ,the efficiency and heat output is magnificent,we often need
no other heat source on the ground floor of our 4-bed detached house.After a year we needed to replace the glass seal as we used the fire 24hrs a day and this was really easy to replace. The service from Dunsley was second to none and we highly recommend the company..
Lovely frugal stove. My wife can make a basket of logs last all night and it is still 24C. Massively important to get someone who really knows how to fit these correctly as next door have had
no end of problems with their home fitted one. I dread winter as I work outside but look forward to coming home as it will be roasty toasty!
It's coming up to 2 years since we had this fire fitted and I thought I would add that we are still very happy with this stove. It's been swept twice and the sweep passed comment on how good
this stove is. Make sure your register plate is made of metal and not fire proof plaster as these disintegrate over time. The build quality and finish is very good and solid. I wouldn't want to risk having a raging hot fire in a stove I felt wasn't up to the task and they do get very, very hot. So, just to re cap - this stove is a top quality multi fuel burner, which I recommend.
Stove expert replied:
Great comment and register plate advice really worth noting. You shouldn't can't cut corners!
We've only had this stove fitted and working for just over a week now. Dead easy to light. Started off just burning wood and got a temp of 19.7°C in our lounge (10' x 8' x 15'). Father in
law brought some coal round and have now managed 22.7°C! In fact the highest we have had this so far is 23.1°C which I can tell you is plenty!Easy to clean as the ash pan area is quite large.We paid £740 for this which came from a highly recommended retailer. He went on to say that he rated Dunsley as one of the best and especially for after sales service as they are only based in Holmfirth.I shall write more after I had used this stove for the winter. So far thought, burning wood and coal it has been great all the times we have used it (which is every night as I have now switched off the Central Heating!)Regards.
Having had multi fuels before we are used to handling these type of fires, however, despite good reviews online we are very disappointed in this fire.We are light users having central heating
installed and normal coal fires in all our main living rooms yet the firebricks cracked within a couple of times of using. The throat plate has also melted and rusted through (despite only using recommended fuels and being careful not to let the stove overheat)as has the riddle part at the bottom. Two years later during the summer months the glass on the front of the stove developed a huge crack through it.Lighting this fire isn't easy and in my opinion we needed a much stronger fire despite being told by the shop that this fire would easily heat our room and we'd probably end up leaving the door open to allow the heat to circulate around the house! Perhaps we've been sold a 'friday afternoon' fire and the workmanship isn't as shoddy in most of these stoves but all I can say is never again :-(Next time I will go for a Jotul which my parents had and was absolutely brilliant or maybe go and buy a Hunter which we've had in the past and were pleased with.Needless to say all the repairs came after the 12 months guarantee were up (having bought it in early summer and it only being used a handful of times that first winter). The people at the shop blamed us for the damage even though we'd taken care of this fire using only recommended fuel and being careful not to overheat. Proving this is another thing!
I bought this in Jan'09. Overall it is ok and does the job, far better than our fire which was hopeless. It is in a room 17' by 19' with a 9ft ceiling and it gets up to 20 degrees of an evening
( my parents stove reaches 26/27 degrees)but slightly less when the wind blows. This is with the door of the room shut, I had hoped to leave it open and (slightly)heat the house but the difference is not noticeable. I should have bought a woodburner not a multifuel as I could do with the firebox being bigger. I clean the glass every 2 weeks or so but the airwash does work to be fair. I like the single door and the big piece of glass. One of the firebricks is cracked already but that should not be too much of a problem. It can be hard to light and I don't like the fact you cannot shut it down completely, the secondary airwash is designed to stay slightly open and I still get flames when it is shut - I don't want flames. It was sold to me as a 7kw, with wood it is only 5kw, a difference of almost 30%. I do feel slightly duped, there should be more explanation of maximum and nominal outputs. It take a while to heat up but it does hold its heat. We go to bed about 10.30pm and I fill it up at 8pm and don't touch it again. I did lots of research and still ended up with possibly the wrong stove, not a mistake but could have done better. Buying another one soon, I fancy the Stovax 11, a beast!
