Conflicting information offered by the shirt and ties in showrooms across the country is proving problematic within our industry. Salespeople often know very little about the boxes they are selling apart from profit margins, and when you are looking to these people for advice, it’s a lottery. To make an informed choice, you need to be informed. To be informed, they need to know, and be able to explain. Ask about tertiary air, requirements for external combustion air, clean burn technologies, condensate issues, flue gas temperatures, airwash, optimum burn temperatures, siphonage, pressure problems, flue termination points, hearth dimensions, distances from combustibles, airwash, or commissioning, among other things. If you are confused about what is involved, you need answers. If your salesperson is confused when you ask, they are the wrong person to sell you a stove. Don’t accept waffle. It’s YOUR MONEY you’re wasting if THEY get it wrong.
The secret to any supremely efficient stove working well is controllability. This is something you need to look for in the showroom. Take a piece of thin card with you when you go to look at stoves. Open and close the door a few times, moving the card around the rope seals. If you can draw the card out when the door is closed, then the stove will draw air through this weakness and burn fuel away very quickly, even when you try to shut the stove down. Check if the door is adjustable. Some of the better brands have a means of adjusting the door catch, and some even allow for easy hinge adjustment to facilitate that critical airtight gasket. Some of the cheaper products have a problem closing tight even in a showroom when new, so bear in mind easy adjustment will be important after a month or so of use when the seal becomes compressed. It’s very disheartening to watch your stove devour the contents of your log store quicker than a teenager at your fridge.
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Airwash and clean burning are terms that are bounding around within the industry. Airwash, simply speaking, is a facility that allows a flow of air, usually pre heated, to pass across the glass in an effort to prevent tar and soot from darkening the window. Obviously a stove’s ability to keep a window as clear as possible is key to its aesthetics in everyday use. Its ability to do this are very heavily influenced by the quality of fuel, the need to burn the stove at a steady rate, (remember the KW output issue) and also critical points are where the chimney or flue terminates and its ability to breathe.
Your appliance, if rated at over 5KW, will need combustion air in the room, permanently vented from outside. Again, a good stove will be well thought out. It will have a means of introducing the air directly into the appliance rather than having a permanent vent in the wall, bringing with it unwelcome cold draughts. Your stove needs oxygen to allow complete combustion to take place, anything less and the silent killer is looming. Carbon monoxide doesn’t have to render you unconscious or dead to be affecting you. Symptoms can be quite subtle as well and not easily associated with the condition. Short term memory loss, flu like symptoms, attention problems, (how many spouses do you think are beginning to wonder) anxiety, temper, irritability, and dizziness to name just some. The bigger the stove, the more oxygen it needs. The more it burns, the less oxygen you have available to keep the red blood cells supplying your body’s requirements, therefore the more fatigued you become. The stove will, and all too often does win the battle
Clean-burn stoves are ones that are designed in such a way that it is possible to introduce a secondary air supply, usually preheated, to encourage the combustion gasses to circulate within the firebox longer than usual. This clever design feature burns the carbons within the smoke a second time resulting in a cleaner smoke. Some of the better stoves are so good at this; they have had their products passed to burn wood in smoke controlled areas. If you fall into the smoke controlled areas of the country, check out your local council web site to find out which stoves are acceptable to burn, or if you are environmentally conscious, perhaps opting for one of these stoves would help to reduce your carbon footprint even if a smoke controlled area is not forcing your hand.
Hopefully the advice given here will encourage you, the end user, to make an informed choice in what you want a stove to do. Needless to say there is so much more to understand. Putting the installation of the appliance into the hands of PROFESSIONAL AND REGISTERED SOLID FUEL TECHNICIAN is advisable. Use a NACE, NACLE or HETAS engineer in the UK mainland and a NIACS technician in Northern Ireland. You will then have a recognised body to maintain the standards of their members, and offer some form of redress if things go wrong.
