CastFirePlaces - The joys of a woodburning stove

Living in an old house means that while its gorgeously cool in summer it also happens to be not so gorgeously cool come winter too. A friend of ours swears by her wood burning stove. They pop theirs on in the evening and barely leave its side – kettle is boiled on top with a jug of milk allows tea to be dealt out continuously and I won’t even start on the gorgeous little drop scone pancakes she also uses it to cook. Personally, Id struggle to leave its side too! 

Now they don’t tend to heat your whole house – we live it a bungalow and heat does not travel sideways and even my friends will kindly point out they do a mad dash down a freezing cold corridor to bed when the time comes. However,…….

I wouldn’t be without one now! CastFirePlaces offered me one 2 months ago in exchange for a review. We however have a small fireplace and I was more than a little dubious that it would work without major building work. CastFirePlaces sent us the Forgemaster Billy Multi Fuel Store - £399.00 RRP and its a pocket rocket! It’s a 5kw and will pump out a tremendous amount of heat. It snuggly fits in front of original fire place at the moment with the pipe going up the chimney at the back, a quick note you do need to get your chimney flue signed off if the stove is 5kw or more and have a gas detector in the room. 

The heat it pumps out cannot be compared at all to the old fire place which I’m fairly certain now sent 90% of the heat it produced up the chimney! What a waste! A kettle for the top of the stove is high up my Christmas list this year and I might perhaps have already been use the camping kettle to save heading to the kitchen! I’m still perfecting my scone recipe but so far, the results have been promising with a small griddle. The hearth below won’t exceed 60C so in our case its perfect for small dogs and cats to warm their tummy’s by!

Castfireplaces were superb in their help and delivery. The stove has a 5 year warranty and the highlight for us is that being multifuel you can burn wood, coal, peat and other smokeless fuels! It’s easy to clean and has a great cooled chrome handle at the front in case you forget to use the gloves provided. We try and be off the grid as much as possible and heavily rely on our sun panels during the day. This has allowed us to save when the sun goes down on heating and invariably draws the family together. Who can resist the lure of a wood burner after all?

          

All in all I would hugely recommend using castfireplaces, they are a superb company and are great at answering questions and giving advice. It’s worth investigation installation too, you can install yourself, but it has to be signed off if 5kw or over -we live in a bungalow so we managed to do most of this ourselves. If we added up the cost of having it signed off and safely installed through the chimney and the cost of fire we think it more than pays for itself. Especially when each is a one off cost.