We've got a Hunter stove, it can take 15 inch lengths of timber and burn
coal as well. Very dry wood, I.e... Carpenters offcuts makes us go from
the sublime to the blinking hot and we have to open the patio doors to
let the the out as it burns hot and very fast

I got the Hunter catalogue when I was looking at stoves - I really liked the
design of them, but unfortunately I'm in a smokeless zone here, and Hunter
don't make any 'clean burning' models for smokeless zones. The Dove is a
nice looker, though - simple but good-looking. It has an image of a dove on
a branch cast into each side of the stove (it's a nice solid cast iron - I
think the Hunters are the same, aren't they).

There's a place up the road from me selling these split logs at £2/bag, but
I have a mate who's a builder, who quite often ends up with loads of spare
wood at the end of a job. He says that from now on I'm welcome to take it,
instead of his simply skipping it. Tomorrow I'm going down to one of his
jobs where he's taken out a load of big old solid beams from a house - loads
of them. I'll be taking my chain saw and making little oblong logs out of
them.

Getting a bunker made tomorrow too for my back garden/yard, so hopefully by
the end of the day I'll end up with a bunker full of free firewood - a good
start to the winter! Spent £60 on a chain saw though, but I won't need to
spend that again, of course.


Use cola every now and then because coal burns hotter and gets rid of a
lot of tar etc on the glass doors.

The Dove has quite a cunning design, in that the controllable air inlets for
the fire are at the top of the front of the stove, so air is sucked in at
the top and travels down the inside of the glass before feeding the fire
from beneath. This means that there is a constant stream of air 'washing'
the glass and keeping it clean. And all without electrical power!


Could never be without the stove, it's wonderful and soothes the fire
bug in me as you can keep adjusting it or put rubbish on it. It's alive
and a boring regular never changing gas or electric thing would never
suffice!

I'm going to have the stove running my radiators and hot water cylinder, and
a big reason for getting it is to do with my job - I work as an energy
officer for my local council, and I'm currently promoting home renewable
energy systems - which basically means 'biomass' heating (i.e. log stoves
and boilers) for the winter, and rooftop solar thermal collectors to heat
water in the summer - which remove the need to use any kind of boiler for
half the year. But I must confess that I just really like the idea of having
a real fire heating my home - there's nothing quite like it. And if all else
fails, I could even cook on it too. Wood fuel - the original, and still the
best . . . !

I was chatting to the marketing manager of Morso about doing a promotion,
and it turned out he has the same stove as me. He assured me that I would
soon 'develop a relationship' with my stove! I can certainly see it
happening!


Can make the rooms more dirty though, you find more dust on the top of
picture rails and curtain tracks if you ever feel obliged to look .

My house is still recovering from having a new fireplace built. Dust from
that particular job still turns up in all sorts of unexpected places. I
think that the extra few particles will be a small price to pay for a cheap,
green, warm and homely heating system in my front room :-)

Andy
http://greencottage.burysolarclub.net