Review of Woodfire Evo 30
Boiler Stove, Woodfire EVO 30 from Stovesonline.
I have been using this stove for a year on chilly evenings. I seldom use it during the day unless it is very cold outside. It was a little pricey but I could not find anything else that fulfilled my requirements. I wanted an inset wood burning stove to fill a large fire place. I choose a boiler stove because without the water taking away most of the heat, the room would get far too hot. With this boiler stove, about 5kW radiates to the room, and about 25kW heats the water. The stoves hot water supplements my gas boiler using a heat ex-changer connected to the primary flow of the house central heating. The stove can be used with or without the gas boiler being active.
I am impressed with the quality of the stove. It uses heavy gauge steel and is very well designed with manual flue and air intake dampers which I seldom use because the air intake is controlled automatically using a controller (not included). The plumbing connections are sensibly located and the air intake is well designed. It has an emergency thermal water dump in case the stove nears boiling point, which I triggered twice until I got the wiring right on the controller. The water in the boiler is always kept full by a dedicated header tank. The controller and the heat ex-changer are in the garage with the gas boiler, so the wiring and plumbing to the wood boiler runs along an outside wall for about 5 meters. The pipes outside are well insulated and the water has Antifreeze protection product for Central Heating added. The stove weighs 260kgs and required 8 men to ease the stove into position using scaffolding poles which can be passed through holes at the base of the stove. Avoid burning soft wood such as pine. Soft wood flares up and doesn't last long, and can smoke up the glass front. Use hard wood and don't fill the fire box much more than half way up. With pine I would burn 3 baskets in an evening, with hard wood hardly one basket, and the glass would stay clear. I have an electric chimney fan used when I had an open fire. This fan is very useful when starting the fire. It also sucks up the dust when emptying the ash box which is done every 7 days or so. Once the fire is established the fan is switched off. The stove door is 30 inches wide, and if the hearth depth is less, then hot cinders on the door inner lip can fall onto the carpet when fully opened. You need to carefully think how you are going to use the hot water. I used a controller, which can run 3 circulation pumps and has 3 temperature inputs. I use just two pumps and all three temperature inputs. The LED display is excellent and tells you exactly what is going on. The controller will modulate the electric air intake damper when the boiler reaches the set temperature. This works well so long as the fire box is not overfilled with wood. I used a plate heat ex-changer connected to my gas boiler primary system, for which there are no instructions. It is important the pump for the stove and the pump for the primary system start in the right sequence according to the temperature of the wood boiler and the heat ex-changer. Overall, I am delighted with the whole system and stove.Stove expert replied: Great review and a detailed installation set up, very informative.