Review of Firebelly FB2 stove
Firebelly FB2 - we love it!
I recently built a strawbale and timber house with wooden flooring, and wanted something as close to an open fire as possible, but with the ease of installation, efficiency and safety of an enclosed wood-burner. The huge glass door on the FB2 was the perfect compromise. It affords an unobstructed view of the fire, while leaving me free of any concerns about spitting.\nOne or two slight caveats as follows:\nYou really do have to use good dry logs. Any dampness in the fuel leads to blackening of the glass (which comes away easily with caustic soda).\nIt may be my poor technique, but I do seem to get a fair bit of smoke into the room when I have the door open for lighting. When it's burning well, of course, there isn't any smoke.\nInitially the blackening was significantly worse, and keeping it going was a bit of an effort. I raised this with Firebelly, and they sent, free of charge, a set of "low-draught" firebricks which they had just developed. They made an enormous difference.\nI've never tried to keep it going through the night. It's so easy to light, and the house retains heat so well that I've never seen the need. It's a big 5-bedroom house with a very large open-plan ground floor, and the FB2 heats it easily. I have a thermometer at the far end of the ground-floor, about 14 metres from the stove, and when it has been far below zero outside (we're in chilly eastern Scotland), the FB2 holds the temperature indoors hovering around 20 degrees.\nThe Selkirk flue installation was a doddle, and was completed easily with no assistance in a day, including stripping and re-slating part of the roof.\nNot the cheapest stove / flue combination around (but by no means the dearest either), but I'd happily recommend it to anyone. \nWe have no TV in the house, and a couple of days after first lighting our new stove, one of our children commented dreamily, gazing into the flames, "This house was so boring before we had the fire". Says it all, really!