Review of Stovax Stockton 7 Inset Convector stove
About five years on.
To get the best out of this stove, buy a cheap Apollo oven thermometer and sit it on top of the stove. You should be aiming to get a reading approaching 200f. The metal temperature will actually be near 200c but it is something to aim for. Open the airwash fully and put a pencil marks vertically on the stove above the right hand edge of the lever. This marks half open if you line the left edge of the lever with the pencil line. Get the fire going well and then move the level to half open and leave it there. Watch the temperature rising and start to level off, you won''t get 200f every time but the watch for the temperature starting to fall. Anytime after that you can refuel but you can keep the temperature high, even if the fire appears to be dying. Refuel as normal, turn airwash to full and again, when the flame is going again, turn it down to half.
Having the airwash fully open must let all the heat go up the chimney and having much lower than half will give a dirty glass. I also have a cheap extract fan blowing into the bottom of the stove to give better heat capture. It also increases the heat as seen at the oven thermometer. The trouble with it is, left unattended, the temperature of the metal will only be 70c instead of 200c. You think it''s running at its best but it''s 130deg below what it could be and it will be using the same amount of wood! Sorry to mix centigrade and Fahrenheit but I''ve measured the metal temperature on top of the stove with a infrared thermometer gun but to get a continuous reading, I have to use the oven thermometer and it''s easier to say 200c on the digital and 200f on the analogue because the analogue is measuring the air temperature. You could experiment some more but these instructions are as simple as I can make them. I do get some useful heat out of the stove now. Just remember that a roaring flame is possibly the last thing you want to see and that a fully open airwash is letting the heat escape!Stove expert replied: A stove thermometer is the best solution to insure that you are using the stove efficiently, it has the markings to guide you for the correct operating temperatures. This is a problem though when an inset stove is being used, seems the customer has found his own alternative.