Review of Jotul F 100
Very attractive little stove
In a previous house we had a Dovre (can''t remember the model) which was Ok as a stove but there was a problem with the round cover that goes where you can attach the flue, as the casting cracked and the piece fell out. Our dealer at the time said it was our fault as we had been using the wrong wood. This was in Spain where it can be relatively difficult to get well dried hardwood and so we were burning a mixture of hard and soft woods, including eucalyptus and wattle (we had many of these trees on our land, and found it a pity not to use the wood). This type of wood cannot be properly seasoned because it attracts woodworm so you need to burn it within max two years of cutting down the tree. It doesn''t generally have as good thermal values as hard wood and can make a lot of soot if you add it to the fire before it gets properly hot.
When we moved house we knew we wanted another stove and I did a thorough evaluation of different models and finally opted for the Jotul F100. The main reason being that it looked beautiful and that price-wise it seemed like a good trade off between price and performance. A friend of mine had an older model of this same stove and raved about it. This was my first time buying a stove as the other one was already there when we bought the house. One thing that dealers maybe don''t tell you is that besides the standard feet, the F100 can optionally be ordered which longer feet, which in my opinion look better. I discovered about this on the Internet and my dealer didn''t know about it and had to make a phone call to Jotul to get this clarified. Apparently the longer feet actually belong to a different model and thus need to be ordered separately, but they are compatible and fitting is no problem. We never had a problem getting the Jotul f100 started. It gets started and heats up very quickly. My wife likes to use starters but I go for the more traditional newspaper and kindling option. We don''t keep the door open for long as the fire rapidly burns well enough to be self sustaining. It can then be controlled with the two sliders. The lower slider is best used only for starting and the upper one for regulating the burn while operational. After an evening of burning the living room is nice and snug and warm but the rest of the house is still cold. So what we do is leave the living room door open when we go upstairs and the hot air rises making it warm upstairs too. Maintenance is easy. Once a year we brush the chimney flue for soot. The glass of the door needs to be cleaned every few weeks. This is very easy to do and it can be cleaned without any detergent. Just a ball of moist newspaper dipped in ash. The only down side, but this is very minor, is that the ash pan does not have a separate door but that you need to lift out the grate to get at the ashpan. I always like to leave a bit of charred wood from the old fire behind on the grate to help the new fire get started, so I always need to find somewhere to put this so I can put it back. We keep the old ash in a metal bin and it to scatter on the garden path when there is snow, or keep it for the Summer when we put it around the vegetable beds to discourage slugs. In terms of wood, we usually start off with hard wood and only add the softer stuff once the fire is really hot and burning well, maybe after an hour or so, so we don''t get problems with sooting up. We''ve had the F100 for about 10 years and never had an issue with anything breaking or needing any servicing that went beyond basic cleaning. We are now moving house again and have decided to purchase another F100. We didn''t even look at other models. This is how much we like this one. The present modern model differs in some minor details. Sadly the pattern on the top has been replaced by a smooth slab. But otherwise this is the same reliable piece of hardware.- Be the first to comment
- 95 You and 29 others