Review of Esse W35 range cooker
Ok once you start living with it
The first and most importantly is that this is not a gas or electric stove and therefore you must understand it to get it to work well. Cleaning is important if you want the cooker to work well. We have used our SE now for 10 years. Good wood management is essential and dry hardwood is the best. A good draw on the chimney is essential We have found that the cooker side soots and cokes very quickly and have therefore become experts in cleaning the flus. Living in very rural France where the majority of heating engineers want to fit closed systems; in fact I rejected our first guy as he did not understand the dangers of closing an open system. In the end I had to design our own open system which with some discussions with Esse has worked well. Our system drives nine radiators which get too hot to touch. The system incorporates a 350 L thermal store.
It is important to drive the cooker hard to get the best from it and keep it clean. It does eat wood, however after you learn what wood to use and how to load it, it’s not that much of an issue and of course your getting heating, water and cooking. If I had a grumble it would be the quality of the enamel which doesn’t seem as tough as that on Rayburns.