Stove Advice Tiger+ or Dunsley 5

suki1964

SpongeyC wrote: »

Very valid advice and one of the resons we dont want to go higher than 7 kw as we are concerned that the 8 Firefox will be too much for the room.

The calculators on the net which assume a well insulated to average insulated house give us a 5KW target but our house is not well insulated, we are working on it just ripped down 2 upstairs cielings last week and PIR lined them + the house is fairly exposed.

I think we will probably go with the Tiger + as have had a lot of very good reviews and that extra bit of heat will be needed intitally at least.

Well as a tigar+ owner Im very happy

I chose for the cost and looks. I will be the first to admit Im new to stoves and fires but reading other peoples posts about their more expensive stove, I dont see much difference - but then Ive not used a very expensive stove so cant really compare - iykwim

The one thing I would like would be a deeper ash pan - otherwise Im happy - esp with the handle - no burning meself

A._Badger

SpongeyC wrote: »

Very valid advice and one of the resons we dont want to go higher than 7 kw as we are concerned that the 8 Firefox will be too much for the room.

The calculators on the net which assume a well insulated to average insulated house give us a 5KW target but our house is not well insulated, we are working on it just ripped down 2 upstairs cielings last week and PIR lined them + the house is fairly exposed.

I think we will probably go with the Tiger + as have had a lot of very good reviews and that extra bit of heat will be needed intitally at least.

FWIW, I have often read the common advice to go with a smaller stove and while I understand the principle that it is better to drive a small stove hard, experience in my last two (old) properties suggests that your hunch about calculators is right - they tend to make invalid assumptions about older buildings.

In my last place, I bought a Little Wenlock and was assured 'it'll roast you out of there'. It did nothing of the sort.

In my current house a (nominally) 14kw Hunter needs driving hard with smokeless fuel if the temperature really drops. This is partly due to the stove being installed in a large inglenook, partly due to a leaky old house (a listed building, so not much I can do about that). Once again, it was predicted the stove would be too powerful.

My advice would be to take calculators with a pinch of salt.

highrisklowreturn

Yes, I would recommend you use a 7kw. The calculators gave me a total kw requirement of 3.4kw for my room. I bought a 6kw Waterford Stanley which is however adequate and better. If I'd got a 4kw, I don't expect I would get much heat from it at all. My house for the record is not well insulated, but is a Victorian terrace, without neighbours on either side.

That said, I have no register plate, so I accept a lot of my heat escapes via the brickwork up the chimney. I will also be keen to see how it holds out for the Winter as we are having an unusually benign late Autumn this year and I haven't yet had the chance to test the stove at minus temperatures.

The other thing to consider is that where nominally a stove will give off a certain kw of heat, it can easily exceed its rating by using solid fuels. My stove is nominally 6kw; yet its manual gives a heat rating of 3.4kw for burning turf; 5kw for wood; and 8.4kw for coal. I expect all stoves are theoretically capable of exceeding their nominal kw when run to the max with solid fuel.

woodlice

Another thing to consider is the length of single wall stove pipe you have before the chimney mine is on the max at 1.3 metre as I have no chimney breast obviously this puts out a fare bit of heat, I'm careful to not let stove temp drop to much because of this.

SpongeyC

Thanks everyone for your advice we paid the extra in the end and got a Dunsley Highlander 7.

The build quality on them is excellent and we really liked the design the 5 was just too small and we would rather be slightly over than under. Looking forward to it! put two scuttles of coal on the fire tonight and the temp went from 14 to 16 degrees.

The nominal output of the stove is quoted by the manufacturer as 1.3kw to 6kw with a max burn of 7kw. We thought if we were going bigger we should also get something as efficent as possible and as controlable as possible + we had some really good reports from people who use Highlanders as their primary heat source.

We will report back in 4 weeks when it is fitted :j

Thanks Everyone
Dave