I was looking for a stove for our new extension and wanted something with modern good looks, and great performance. The Morso P51 pellet stove certainly doesn''t disappoint. Not only did I get
it for a good price but it looks great and delivers on every front: fantastic flame (not at all what I was expecting from a pellet stove), huge heat, and great controllability. The view into the firebox through the large window that doesn''t get sooted up is as good as any stove I''ve seen, comparable with my large Dovre and better than my Intrepid.
I''ve had it for about three months now, so can''t speak to its long term reliability, especially as pellet stoves are undeniably much more complicated than normal wood burners, but I am putting my trust in the Morso brand. It seems solidly built, the door latch is very positive, and the heavy cast iron side panels retain a lot of heat after the fire is extinguished.
It is easy to clean, and produces very little ash. At full power it is quite noisy - it is essentially a fan heater powered by flame - but can heat most of our ground floor. The lowest setting is much quieter, yet still heats the large room it is in really quickly.
While I would thoroughly recommend it, here are a few other points to take into consideration:
It has an 80mm rear flue outlet. Building regs require it to be connected to a minimum 125mm flue liner. This would be fine if you are taking the flue more or less straight out through a wall or into a chimney, but our flue was built with a conventional stove in mind so we needed a length of exposed vitreous flue pipe above the P51. Connecting all the bits together was more complicated than I had anticipated, but our installer did a good job and the result looks fine. On the whole, though, if you are going for an installation with some exposed flue pipe, the P50 (which has an additional rear cover, effectively producing a variant with a top mounted flue) could be a better if more expensive choice.
The door handle doesn''t quite project far enough in front of the door, so you need to be careful not to scrape your knuckles when closing the door. On the plus side, it doesn''t get too hot, nor does any other part of the stove.
Programming the unit is easy enough but does involve a lot of steps. The manual covers them all, but it isn''t as clear as it could be, so be prepared for a few false starts. Annoyingly, if the power to the stove is interrupted, it loses the time setting. You might only notice this when the fire then doesn''t come on when you expect it to. Once properly set up, it is very easy to control. You can turn it on (or off) literally at the press of a button.
You are supposed to vacuum out the pellet hopper periodically, but as it is never really empty I''m not sure how practical this is. Also, there is a grill about two thirds of the way up the hopper that can''t be removed without some disassembly of the stove, and it prevents getting a cleaner hose into the hopper anyway, so I''m going to have to figure out a workable solution to this!
But as I said, I am really pleased with this stove and would recommend it without hesitation. Indeed, assuming there aren''t any reliability issues, it (or the P50) would be my first choice for any new installation. Morso don''t make a pellet stove with a boiler, so if you wanted one you''d have to look at another (probably Italian) manufacturer. Oh, and pellets are reasonably cheap, easy to store (keep them dry!!) and easy to use. Based on this, my first experience of pellet stove technology, I would certainly encourage everyone to give pellet stoves in general, and this stove in particular, serious consideration.
