I got this stove for my upstairs main bedroom, (Franco Belge Montfort mk2 downstairs), and it is fantastic! We did not have much choice with what stove we could have though, as it is a small
standard opening upstairs, and we wanted a free standing stove, so not much choice given the room available. I could not be happier though, it stays in all night, heats all upstairs if the doors are left open, and it has a good riddling grate system. A very good, small bedroom stove for certain!
We have this stove in a small cottage on the coast in Suffolk. It is in a room 20ft x 13ft and provides plenty of heat even on the coldest of days for that room.
Can't remember how much we
paid for it, but fitting took a couple of hours (by professionals), including an insulated flue.
It burns small logs (or coal) only, and needs to be going at near maximum rate to burn efficiently and keep the glass clean.
Best advice we were given when installing the stove was to choose the stove to fit the room and the heating conditions needed, not just one that looks pretty in the space (but you probably all knew that anyway).
Basically it's perfect for us, it's has even been our only source of heating for several months (over winter) before we got the main gas boiler fixed (to be fair it is a holiday cottage).
No probs with build quality after 3yrs.
I suppose I am quite strange with multifuel stoves in that I have experienced several... I purchased a Stockton 3 about 10 years ago and had it installed with a single length of stove pipe
through a register plate in a 3 bed house with no gas - I had "Economy 7" storage heaters and used this for 2 winters running 24/7 to heat up the whole house keeping it in on smokeless fuel for up to 7 days at a time. On moving house, I re-installed it in the new place using the same method and ran it for 3-4 years before getting a full liner installed.Once "properly" fitted it burned very well, so well that I frequently had to leave a door open to keep the room temperature comfortable. As to maintenance, I found correctly fitted, sweeping the chimney on an annual basis, generated less than a dust pan full of soot despite running the stove mainly on coal. For day to day running, the stove belts out the heat an hour or so after lighting, and is quite easy to keep in 24/7 if running on coal/smokeless fuel, due to the size of the firebox, you can only manage about 8 hours with wood as you cannot get that much timber in. For a small room, I would recommend getting one, and for a larger room, I am now considering a larger Stovax despite the in-laws recommending a Clearview - yes, I have had one of those too! Is it as good as a Clearview, no, but if you need a small stove, I doubt you could get better value for money.As an additional point, I left the stove in the house and have it let out to tenants, who also like the stove and find it helps keep the costs of the central heating oil down as it is amazing how much cheap wood you can "scrounge"
After getting a bit more practice with this stove we would have to say that it just gets better and better. We now realise that using good quality smokeless such as roomheat or other ovoids
and loading the stove better, overnight burns are now proving a doddle! This of course changes everything, we have literally had this little stove lit for the last week and a half. Even with the vents shut down the build up of heat in the house has mean't that we have barely needed the central heating at all!! We even had to open windows a couple of times as we have been too warm! We are getting through about 40kg of smokeless a week plus a bit of wood on an evening.We are amazed by how burning continuously provides a steady build up of heat that spreads through the hole of our 2 bed cottage.We felt we had to add this amendment to our review as we had done the Stockton 3 an injustice. Overnight burns are actually pretty easy providing we use the right fuel, stack it in the box, shut the vents down and make sure it has been well riddled and ash emptied before going to bed.Brilliant.
Stove expert replied:
Do make sure that you give the stove a really good maximum draw up twice a day for 15 mins, this will clear any residues produced when the stove is slumbering for long periods. Very important to do to keep the chimney clear and the stop crazing of the glass.
We deliberated for a good while before buying this stove and to be blunt we had originally set our hearts on a a larger stove and specifically a Morso. However, we soon realised that due to
the size of our fireplace / hearth that a larger stove (if we wanted to comply with regs anyway!) was not going to be a straightforward install. In fact finding an engineer to fit a stove at all proved to be hard work.I guess the truth is that if, like us, you have a small 'British standard' fireplace opening there are very few stoves to choose from that will slot straight in and even less if you are in a smoke control area and want one that is DEFRA approved.We looked at all the 3 to 4 kw stoves that we could, but the clinching factor in the end was a local HETAS engineer who had an ex display stockton 3 at a knockdown price (£400 inc' smoke kit) and he agreed to fit it with minimal alterations to our fireplace (lifted a wooded mantle so that it was an acceptable distance from the stove top).We realised that a stove of this size was not likely to heat the whole of our 2 bedroom cottage, but our intention was to use it to compliment our gas central heating and hopefully reduce our gas bills. We would have to say though that as our central heating boiler decided to die on us two weeks after having this stove installed we have 'tested' it a bit more thoroughly than we had anticipated! On that score we have been pleasantly surprised. Although you could not describe upstairs rooms as toasty warm it is clear that with downstairs landing stairway door closed it is more than capable of raising the downstairs temp' to a very acceptably, comfortable level. Once the downstairs area is reasonably warm we can open the stairway door and enough heat rises to 'take off the chill' upstairs. The stove is fitted in a room that is about 15ft x 17ft with high ceilings, with room doors closed it can heat up that room alone to unbearably warm in about 3/4's of an hour! We are confident that once our central heating is fixed this stove will provide very useful additional heat and will definitely mean that our use of the central heating will be vastly reduced in all but the coldest of weather.If you are looking for a stove to heat the whole house, unless your house is fairly small, this is probably not the stove for you. We now know that a good quality 5kw stove would probably have done that for us but as already mentioned this would have mean't some fairly seriouse building work.The build quality of this stove seems good and although early days, we have no complaints so far. A small niggle for me and I guess something that probably will not concern most people, but I would have preferred a square viewing window which I feel would have given a better view and a slightly more modern look. The only real gripe that I have is that the ash pan is not big enough to capture ash falling from the 'grated' area above and had the opening been enlarged a bigger ash pan could have been provided.Most of the other complaints are largely to do with this stoves size and not really a fault. Because this stove is small regular 'feeding' of fuel seems pretty essential and also regular emptying of the ash pan. We have not managed an overnight burn, again this is probably down to the stoves size. I think it is probably difficult to load with enough fuel to keep an overnight burn. We have however come downstairs to a still warm stove and the odd glowing embers.We have tried purcite type ovoid smokeless fuels, anthracite and a mix of soft and hardwoods. This stove, providing you riddle regularly, seems to extract every bit of heat from ovoids and anthracite. With seasoned hardwoods we have measured flue temps of up to 360c. having experimented a little with a standard electric fan we have taken the plunge and ordered an 'eco fan' and we do think that this should make a fair difference to spreading heat around the room.On the whole we have been very happy with this purchase and considering the issues with our central heating have been pretty grateful that we had it installed. If you are after a small stove we feel this stove seems to be a fair choice.Finally, we do not normally submit reviews like this, but we did use this site a fair bit while we were doing our research and found it extremely useful so it seems only fair that we add our twopennyworth! A big thank you to What Stove and everyone that submitted reviews and we hope our comments help.
Stove expert replied:
The ash pan should be emptied regulary especially if burning smokeless fuel, do not let it build up and touch the underside of the grates as this can lead to premature failure. Otherwise it's great addition to this property and with the failure of the boiler it would appear to have been invaluable. Good review.
Our Stockton 3 has now seen the tail end of last year's (mild) winter and the beginning of this year's (looking colder) winter.It's small size is more than adequate at heating our two bedroom
house but more crucially the size allowed it to be placed in our small fireplace opening whilst maintaining adequate air gaps.The small size does introduce some downsides, particularly when burning wood, however. Officially the maximum log length is 8" (though it's possible to get away with 9") and this is something to consider when sourcing firewood. Be prepared to spend some time cutting wood down to size. Furthermore, the small firebox does mean fairly regular refuelling. And forget about burning overnight when burning even the densest of hardwood - the diminutive dimensions simply can't hold sufficient fuel.All this changes when burning less environmentally friendly smokeless solid fuels however. The efficiency this little stove seems to eek out of every cob is impressive. Bank up no more than a dozen cobs overnight, close down the vents and the next morning be greeted with a hot stove containing a faintly glowing bed of embers - open everything up, riddle the grate, add more fuel and it's up and running again.The airwash works reasonably well when burning wood. It's possible to strike a decent compromise between burn rate and glass cleanliness. The top vent spending most of the time half open necessitates a glass wipe every week or so. Burning wood fast and hot will keep the glass cleaner, though naturally detrimental to log stores.Burning messier smokeless solid fuels, which prefer their air from the bottom vent, will understandably soot up the glass much quicker.I can't fault build quality at all, it's a very solid (and heavy) piece of kit that is clearly built to last. Price wise, they're not exactly cheap but then not outrageously expensive either. A couple of hundred pounds more than no-name cheap import/ebay stoves of similar dimensions, but in the context of a lifespan measured in many decades and as part of a total bill including proper HETAS qualified commisioning it represents reasonable value.It's size is both it's attraction and it's downside. Faced with a fireplace opening small enough to demand such dimensions then I suspect it is hard to find a better stove for the job. If you know that you will only ever burn wood then a pure wood burner (without bottom vent, riddling grate etc) may allow for a larger firebox within the same overall dimensions but the added flexibility afforded by being able to burn smokeless fuels on occasion is certainly valuable to us.It's good at burning wood, it's very good at burning smokeless fuel, it fits in small fireplace openings and it's more than capable of heating the small homes in which such small fireplace openings are found. If you can fit a slightly larger stove then perhaps do so, but if you can't I suspect the Stockton 3 won't disappoint.
Stove expert replied:
Good to hear about both fuel types and their performace, nice honest feedback.
