We absolutely love our Westfire. I'd strongly recommend using the external air attachment. We ran a length of flexible pipe under the floor, with its entry near an external air brick, so we
now have a sealed unit and the warm air stays in the house.The only drawback with the Westfire 21 is that the design relies on the stove door being open when raising the fire or adding a log to a small fire, so it can get smoky indoors. (Its not a stove that likes running a small fire either, but who buys a stove for that?! )Our central heating is now only needed in December & January. The rest of the time, the stove keeps the whole house warm and the chimney breast & stack seems to work like a storage heater, releasing heat through to the following morning.
There is a definite skill to lighting the stove. It is easy once you know and burns beautifully when the chimney is hot. This is the secret:-
1. Make sure all windows upstairs are closed if
in a 2 or more story house.
2. If you have a fire place elsewhere in the house and the chimney is higher than the stove chimney then block it with a bag (we found a tesco bag full of newspaper works very well).
3. You must allow the stove to get plenty of air, therefore an air brick close to the stove is essential. Ours is about 2" diameter about 200mm from fire.
4. Our flue is only 2 and a bit meters high, because we did not want it much higher then the roof of the conservatory. The only problem with this is getting the flue hot enough quickly. i.e. plenty of kindling so it starts off blazing.
5.I use two fire lighters, then stack kindling in a criss cross pattern on top. Place one log on top of this, it is essential that this is a dry log, then light it and sit back.
6. The door of the stove has to be slightly open during the ignition phase (do you like that) but once you hear the flue roaring, which ours does you can put another log on and close the door.
7. Before we fitted the stove we used to use a 2Kw heater to keep the conservatory warm in the winter. This had to be on all the time. With the stove it is so warm even the dogs move out to the hallway.
8. If we light up at about 5 pm and retire at about 10 pm we use about 4 to 5 logs, even during the snow in feb. I sat watching the telly in shirt sleeves.
9.The only addition I am going to do is a whirly thing on top of the flue as We live on top of a hill in wide open country side. It can really blow some days and on rare occasions we get a puff of smoke down the chimney.
10. Remember this is a wood burning stove and part of the pleasure is the smell of a wood fire. Plus you do get a bit of dust but all fires do this.
11. We love our stove and now I can light it easily and quickly.
12. Remember it is ESSENTIAL that you use properly DRY logs.
We have had this stove for about four years now and it has been pretty good. We did have a problem with lighting it occasionally when it was connected to an insulated metal flue but only in
really cold weather. Since we refitted it to a proper chimney, no such problem has recurred. It's a joy to have a stove with a single air control (simples!). The door stays fairly clean. There is a design defect in that the glass is held in with metal clamps that are fixed with bolts. These are impossible to undo now and so you cannot fit new rope. Our door now leaks like a sieve! One other more minor problem is that the door only opens 90 degrees so access isn't great.
We love the contemporary design, and bought the semi-circular glass plinth to go with it that looks fab against a solid oak floor. Excellent build quality.
A little tricky to light at first
but fairly simple after a couple of times. It does tend to have a bit of a down draft despite a very simple chimney design with the twin lined stainless steel flue. It's not particularly windy where we live but perhaps we need an anti-down draft top to the chimney to improve this problem.
Once it's going it's like a mini chernobyl and heats quite a large lounge (and the downstairs of our house). It's perhaps not as easy to burn low as I'd hoped.
Overall, it looks the part and, once lit, more than lives up to expectations.
Insufficient information in manual for the beginner! No reference diagram in manual. Lack of air controls unless you consider "door open" as a control. Seems to be ultra sensitive to downdraughts
resulting in smoke appearing out of every opening there is. Have seen cheaper stoves, definitely not so good looking, but ultra controllable and much easier to get going.
Stove expert replied:
sounds like a chimney problem as opposed to a stove problem. An efficient stove like a Westfire has fairly heavy baffling compared to the older box type stoves - which send a lot more of the heat straight up the chimney! This means that these stoves need to be placed on a chimney that draws well and consistently. The chimney draw is also needed to suck the preheated air into the firebox. So the thing to take away from this is that if you are going to install a modern stove make sure your chimney draws well. One way to help ensure this is to line and insulate your chimney and to have a pressure test performed by the installer. Making sure that the chimney has sufficient height and the addition of an antidowndraught cowl can help to reduce the incidence of downdraught.
The installation was very easy, the performnce in a larger than average room seems good, despite the fact there is no firebox to catch the ash and that the machine was not designed to be used
overnight I would happily recommend the 21 to anyone! its simple clean lines will not date I feel. this stove is beautifully made. When I compare it to a certain other Danish stove (Hwam), of comparable performance, I am still astonished to realise that I can buy 2.3 of these Westfire 21's for the same price!! That coupled to the fact theres not thin piece of pressed sheet steel in sight. This must be an absolute bargain
Happy heating!
