There are so many Stoves on the market. Some must be much better than others. So exactly how do you choose the great from the not so great?
Not many years ago before internet trading got started there were relatively few stove brands and many more stove shops. Now there are countless manufactures of stoves and far fewer stove shops. In the rush to sell stoves on the internet, anyone who could weld or cast became a stove manufacture and anyone who could set up a trading website became a stove dealer.
The Chinese got on the bandwagon in a big way and POW, stoves were everywhere. Experts in stoves and installations were ignored and a large number of people became either a seller or installer of stoves. As a result of this, deaths from Carbon Monoxide poisoning from faulty stoves and installations almost immediately overtook those for all gas fire and gas stove installations.
It took a while for the Government to get its act together, but it has now. All stoves have to be CE marked. All major manufactures will have their stove HETAS approved and those for use in smokeless zones must be DEFRA approved for wood burning. Fitters must now be licensed by HETAS and be retrained every 5 years and every installation must be notified to the Local Building Control.
Back to choosing a Stove.
You can only really do this in a showroom. Most of the stoves on the internet, you wouldn’t buy it if you saw them in a showroom. The prices might be great but you really do get what you pay for. Stove showrooms sell reliable products they have confidence in, not here today and gone tomorrow products. They will be able to get spare parts for them and diagnose problems etc.
Showroom staff will be able to tell you why a particular Stove is good for you and they will be able to have it fitted and registered properly. Remember, a stove is a bomb fire in your home. The flue gases in a properly running Stove contain 500 -1000 times more Carbon Monoxide than gas or oil appliances. Stoves kill far more people than gas or oil, yet there are millions of more gas appliances than there are stoves.
So a GOOD STOVE is the correct one for your home, properly installed. This can only be done through a proper stove showroom.