Don't bother with the last. It's the one we've got. Nice little Sterling engine but noisy and produces no noticeable movement.
143 quids worth of cheapy. Vulcan Sterling cycle stove fan.
It's actually pulling the hot air from behind it, I can't hang it at the back as there is a horizontal stone that will block most of the air. I only have about 16cm between top of woodburner and the bottom of the stone. Will investigate other mounting solutions.
Have just improvised my own using a 15cm computer fan that I have hung in front of the top of the stove and a spare 9V power supply that I had lying around
Mine was from First4Spares before they hiked their delivery prices (probably due to the sudden influx of "expat" orders). It's an "Eco friend nickel fan". I must admit I've just got back from the bus stop and the front room seems ridiculously hot even though both vents on the fire are closed. Don't know what the dogs were doing while I was out. I got mine pre-hike and it was about £55 sterling, so with P&P totalled about 70-odd euros. There are a lot of suppliers who seem to carry almost identical designs. This one I do like though as it is completely silent.
Which one did you get Val?
Glad you got one. Extolling the virtues of something can only say so much - it's only in "the eating" that proves the case! We will be getting another as well once we have progressed a little further with our barn conversion.
If it helps, I bought the Ecofan airmax. It has 2 blades. It's silent and you feel no draught. I'm not an engineer, but I personally don't think it makes a difference, it the fan is turning at speed, it shouldn't matter if you have 2 or 4 blades. I'm willing be criticised (in this instance!).
I guess a lot of people think, because there's no apparent breeze emanating from the fan, it doesn't work. It's not the case. It doesn't make your house warmer per se, but it pushes the warm air into the room as opposed letting the warm air rise and the cool air fall, so you get a more consistent temperature at body height. Ergo less wood is needed to maintain the temperature.
There is a massive price range for something that apparently dos the same thing, but I went top-range and haven't regretted it. Treat yourself this Christmas!
I bought an ecofan last year, cost 150€ incl delivery.
I found the difference amazing, it's eradicated the cold spots in the 42m² room. Highly recommend them.
You don't get a breeze like a summer fan but it works like magic.
GET ONE, it sounds like a shopping review, but I truly found it brilliant.
***** (5 stars) ha ha!
Hi Nick,
There are a number of reasons for moving from where we are in particular and Spain in general.
Where we live is absolutely beautiful, the area around Moraira, Javea and beyond is amazing, particularly the coast line. Our villa is aproximately 2 to 300 metres from the shore line but a few hundred meters above it and so we have beautiful views. So why move?
Almost 5 years ago I got married again and this time to a beautiful young Chinese girl who was living in China. She is consaiderably younger than me and she has a young son who I have adopted as my own. We are very happy together. Before meeting her I was happy to sit it out here for the rest of my days but now having a young family the priorities have changed.
We need a decent sized garden with grass for our son to be able to run and play in, play football, cricket, whatever. We need better education for him than the Spanish system provides and my wife needs a small business or well paid work to sustain her for when I am gone and the State pension stops.
We want to spend some of equity from sale of the villa on buying a house that we can easily heat and keep comfortable in (we have no delusions about the coldness of France). We also want a different style of life where we can integrate more with the local people than is possible here. We also want to spend some of our equity on a small business. In Spain, there is an immediate obstacle in starting a business since even before you earn one penny (sorry Eurocent) you have to pay €300 per month in social security charges with many other restraints.
It truely is beautiful here but winters are cold and at night very cold. We have inadequate heating facilities and need Central Heating put in. Unfortunately, that is beyond our reach at this time.
Spain is a country with a cold climate but a lot of sunshine.
If you have good savings and you don't need to generate an income any more - it is ideal here. We live on a beautiful mountain with views to the Med and other close mountains and will soooooo miss all this when we move but it is a matter of priorities!! I speak French to a decent level although a bit rusty but my Spanish is rubbish. I hope this helps to answer your question.
The Insert will be fitted with a fan and does use electricity to run it, the joy is that the insert will allow you to heat other rooms effectively, although like any fire you need to pay attention to the provision of ventilation adjacent to the fire so that you do not drag in cold air (for combustion) and thus promote drafts and cold spots.
Hi, here's some links for the stove top fans:
http://www.stoveland.co.uk/fjw/ecofan.html
http://housewares.about.com/od/heatingwithwood/gr/ecofan.htm
http://www.gyroscope.com/d.asp?product=VULCANSTOVEFAN&gclid=CJTHuo3Yg6wCFcNJ3godhVVvLw
Also worth mentioning: if you have a particularly tall room in which all the heat goes up to the top (as it does), you can use a nice, quiet computer fan, say 12cm, mounted up high to drive that heat around by sending it down a simple, dangling, polythene tube back to floor level. You could make a feature of it...
Hello Bill,
I'm not a fan of fan's, in fact I am not a fan of wood-burner's, wood, ash, dust, bad backs, visible cobwebs, to the point that I build myself a bio-climatic Passif house that requires no heating other than a double flux ventilation system with heat recovery, drawing air through a 50m long Canadian well 2.2m underground and using 20 watts of electricity per hour. After 24 years of heating an old stone house with wood it is just wonderfully liberating. I know that doesn't help you in your search for information but I wanted to fan the flames of the energy conservation lobby! My EDF standing charges are now more than my electrical consumption costs. Good luck.
We have a łarge woodburner in a 50m2 room, it is the only form of heating in the room, although the kitchen occupies one end. Without an ecofan we had cold spots…we bought an ecofan last year and it is brilliant, it causes enough circulation that the cold spots are gone and helps distribute the heat throughout the room. We wouldn’t be without one now. Bought ours from Ian Parrington, (warmastoast).
Hi Clive, We live in France but are unhappy with the climate where we are (Cantal) and thinking of buying in Spain, perhaps Almeria Province. I'm intrigued by your desire to move to France. May I ask why ? Nick
The standalone stove fan such as Caframo (a Canadian Co.) are the best ones, silent & quality build here...
http://www.caframo.com/hearth/hearth_products_woodstove.php
We've had an Ecofan Airplus for a few years now sitting level on a flat top stove just about level of the stove pipe - when the stove reaches a good temp it starts up & when its at full speed, pulls air out of the Inglenook fireplace and out into the room - works well.
Worth having long term, in our experience it helps pull the warm air which accumulates in the stone Inglenook out into the room, I thought about having two one either side of the pipe.
Nowadays there are cheaper ones on Ebay at around £50, probably do the same job.
I think it depends on the quality of the fan and the design.
We had a new wood burner installed complete with the fan system, the grill sits below the fire and does a great job in increasing the room temperature by several degrees. It also has a thermostat and turns on only when the fire is hot enough to be in a position to circulate hot rather than warm air.
Overall we are happy with it.
Regards
Peter
If you buy and insert woodburner with two outlets which can provide heat to another room do you need to provide electricity to the woodburner area to help distribute the heat with a fan or anything or is it all provided by air movement?
We have 3 blade ecofan. Don't expect it to push lots of air around. It doesn't. They gently move the air around and are effective and silent. However, they aren't cheap. If we need to warm the room through quickly and more effectively we use a standard electric desk fan blowing across the top and around the back of the poele. When it's nice and warm in the room we leave it to the ecofan to do it's bit. They're a good talking point too! The French are very intreagued...
David, I wonder if the noise is simply a loose bolt somewhere that's allowing the fan to vibrate?
That ecofam airmax looks like a good investment. The design is fundamentally the same as mine but 5 fins on each side would be able to 'capture' far more warm air than my 2 fins. Fortunately the woodburner itself does pack a punch when it's fired up and, being the sole log splitter, wood lugger and fire starter in my household, I've of course some knowledge of how it all works. I'm looking forward to when I've finished renovating our family room (whenever the heck that will be - I'm still attacking the ceiling with a crow bar). I'm going to fix a collar/pipes to the woodburner in there to allow some heat upstairs. At least then the bedrooms should rise above zero. Lovely.