Review of Firefox 8 stove
Woodburner?
This review is of it purely as a logburner, It may perform better with coal, or with the grate left in place, however we bought it as logburner and it was sold as such.
The stove was purchased along with the "Woodburning Kit" which I fitted before installing the stove. It all fitted together well and seems to be reasonably well made. The kit consists of 3 hollow cast iron "Firebicks" to support the existing bricks when you remove the grate & ashpan, and a solid cast iron plate to retain the logs. For the first light I filled the base with a thin layer of ash from our other woodburner to give it a head start and lit it in the usual manner, firelighters, kindling, small logs. What I found was that as soon as the kindling was burned away it would go out, even with both Primary & Secondary air controls fully open. In fact it worked better with the primary air shut and the door cracked open as this allowed air into the seat of the fire. If you opened the primary air with the door closed, the firebox would immediately fill with smoke and extinguish the flames, very odd behaviour. I have had many woodburners over the years and have never seen one behave in this manner before. After a bit of experimenting it became apparent that the problem lies with the plate which comes with the woodburning kit & fits across the front of the firebox to retain the logs. Unlike other stoves I've had, this was a solid cast iron plate, so when you open up the primary air, instead of it going to the base of the fire, the plate diverts the air up over the fire and it goes straight up the flue, the smoke has nowhere to go and smothers the fire. With the plate removed the stove behaves normally, but there is a danger of cinders falling out when you open the door. I therefore drilled several 20mm holes in the plate to see if that would help matters, which it did, but still not as good as it was with the plate removed. As this was clearly going in the right direction I next took an angle grinder to it and removed all the material between the vertical "bars" leaving just one horizontal bar across the top. Success, it now behaves normally. With the modified front plate it works well and throws out a huge amount of heat. The airwash, secondary air system works well keeping the stove going at a nice steady rate, and keeps the door glass very clean. Personally I enjoyed the challenge of modifying it to get it to work, but someone with less experience of woodburners would I think find themselves initially very disappointed by this one.Stove expert replied: Modifying a stove invalidates the warranty so not recommended. Seems the modicfication in this case has improved things though.
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