I have included this Stovax Brunel Multi-Fuel Stove that I recently Swept in a cottage in Hempstead, because it is such an attractive stove. The rich deep red enamel finish gives the stove a very classy, attractive finish. I do see quite a few examples of the Stovax Brunel across the local area, but they are usually in a matt black finish like most other stoves. This said I have come across examples of the Stovax Brunel in white and dark blue enamel finishes. I had thought that Stovax had stopped production of the Brunel model, but looking at the Stovax website, it would appear that they are still in production. They are described in the Stovax advertising blurb as “the heart of the home”. The customer is more than happy with the efficiency of the stove and the fact that it has the multi-fuel option so that wood and smokeless fuel can be burnt in it.

Stovax are a British company established in 1981, based in Exeter, and are the largest manufacturer of stoves and fireplaces in the UK. Stovax also manufacture a number of other stove brands including Yeoman, Dovre, Nordpeis, Lotus and Varde.

https://www.stovax.com/information/about-us/

I was working at a customer’s address just last week, when I had this nice surprise. I returned to the van to collect something only to find that the customers Fox Terrier bitch had taken up residence in the back of the van! She was a very affectionate little dog whose curiosity seemed to be greater than any cat. I thought it was very amusing and wanted to share it with all may customers as it did make me smile on the day!

I just loved this cooking range so much I just had to include it in my weekly blog, and it is something a bit different from writing about wood-stoves! This is a Lincar 135GNV Sole Multi-Fule Cooking Range that I recently Swept in an address in Haverhill. Although it is a multi-fuel stove, the couple who own it only use wood to fire it up. I don’t know how apparent it is from the photograph, but on the top left-hand side of the stove is a glass window, this is actually the firebox, so when the stove is alighted you can actually see the fire in the firebox. A really nice feature, that makes this attractive little range even more attractive. The customers say that it gives off such a warm pleasant glow, that they tend to sit in the kitchen more than they use the sitting room!

Lincar, or Lincar Innovazione Del Calore to give them their full title are an Italian stove company. They make a range of appliances including pellet stoves, gas stoves, wood-burning stoves and range cookers. Their models include the Alice 480A Z, Alice 490 AZ, Alicya 531N,  Alicya 531N Canalizzata, Ariel 730N, Aurora 149A VL, Bea 702A GL, Deneris, Duchessa, Flat 501 Canalizzata,, Flat 502, Gaia 149 AV, Gaia 149AV SX, Idroboiler, Milly 515SC, Monella 184N, Monella 185 N Con Forno, Monella 940SA, Monella 176AN Plus, Morgana 740N SA, Nada, Nikita, Olga 501L Canalizzata Slim, Orione, Ravenna, and the Windy.

Lincar Innovazione Del Calore

Via Enrico Fermi 5 (Z. I. Rame),

42046 Reggiolo (RE)

T: (39)0522 972260

info@corisit.com

https://www.lincarstufe.com/

Here is a stove that I thought that it would be well worth focusing my weekly blog on, a Saey Blenheim 12Kw Multi-Fuel Stove that I recently Swept at an address in Kedington. Up until the day I turned up at the address I had never even heard of Saey stoves, let alone worked on one, so it is a real rarity. As it turned out it was rather straight forward and practically constructed stove to work on, with the internal workings being very straight forward to dismantle and put back together. As can be seen in the photographs it is a rather decorative, ornate stove in a traditional style that is not unpleasing to the eye. The stove is situated in the sitting room of a very old, draughty property, yet the customer stated that even on the coldest of winter days the stove warmed the room very nicely.

Saey still make stoves and have quite an extensive range of wood-burning appliances, including the Duo, Fura, Qurve, the 92, Cucina 92, Evo 94, Gustav, Peak & Peak S, Scope and Scope XL and Qube 6 and 8. Saey are a Belgian company based in the town of Oudenaarde. Saey’s website tells us a little about the company: The company is born in 1907 when Omer Saey becomes co-owner of a metal stove and trade. It’s also the basis of a growing family business, which debuted in 1976 with its first stove design. It will be a true success in the eighties throughout the Benelux. Today, the fourth generation SAEY looks back on a flourishing history of over 100 years. Saey has become a strong player that offers its customers a wide range of user-friendly and durable stoves and fireplaces.

Saey Stoves/Belgofire NV

Industriepark de Bruwaan

9700 Oudenaarde

Belgium

T: 0546865808

info@unifire.be

https://www.saeyheating.com/en/products/category/wood-stoves

I have not had a thatched animal in my blog for sometime now, so I thought I would change that this weekend! I saw this rather large fox on the roof of a property I was working at in Balsham, down a little back lane. He is a rather handsome fellow, I think! Running across the ridge line pursued by an imaginary pack of hounds.

Google tells us that foxes are small to medium-sized, omnivorous mammals belonging to several genera of the family Canidae. Foxes have a flattened skull, upright triangular ears, a pointed, slightly upturned snout, and a long bushy tail (or brush).

Twelve species belong to the monophyletic “true foxes” group of genus Vulpes. Approximately another 25 current or extinct species are always or sometimes called foxes; these foxes are either part of the paraphyletic group of the South American foxes, or of the outlying group, which consists of the bat-eared fox, gray fox, and island fox.^[1] Foxes live on every continent except Antarctica. By far the most common and widespread species of fox is the red fox (Vulpes vulpes) with about 47 recognized subspecies.^[2] The global distribution of foxes, together with their widespread reputation for cunning, has contributed to their prominence in popular culture and folklore in many societies around the world. The hunting of foxes with packs of hounds, long an established pursuit in Europe, especially in the British Isles, was exported by European settlers to various parts of the New World.

To round off this blog, here is a fox poem I have put out there before in a previous blog.

The Thought-Fox

I imagine this midnight moment’s forest:
Something else is alive
Beside the clock’s loneliness
And this blank page where my fingers move.

Through the window I see no star:
Something more near
though deeper within darkness
Is entering the loneliness:

Cold, delicately as the dark snow
A fox’s nose touches twig, leaf;
Two eyes serve a movement, that now
And again now, and now, and now

Sets neat prints into the snow
Between trees, and warily a lame
Shadow lags by stump and in hollow
Of a body that is bold to come

Across clearings, an eye,
A widening deepening greenness,
Brilliantly, concentratedly,
Coming about its own business

Till, with a sudden sharp hot stink of fox,
It enters the dark hole of the head.
The window is starless still; the clock ticks,
The page is printed.

I do sweep a large number of Chesneys stoves across the local area, usually the Beaumont, Salisbury and Shoreditch models, which seem to be their most popular stoves. However, I recently came across this Chesneys Alpine 4Kw Eco Multi-Fuel Stove which I swept and did a safety check on at an address in Manuden. It is an unusual stove design and looks nothing like any of the other Chesneys models, all of which have a much more traditional look. The Alpine has a rather strange retro futuristic look to it, something of a design classic. The customer told me that for a small 4Kw stove it produces a terrific amount of heat when in operation, which is just as well as it has a rather large room to heat.

Chesneys was founded nearly 40 years ago by Paul Chesney. It had a single showroom and small workshop in London and concentrated exclusively on the restoration and sale of antique English fireplaces.

Today Chesneys is still a family-owned run business but during the intervening years it has developed a unique portfolio of luxury heating products and become a globally recognized brand. It now has showrooms in London, New York, Shanghai and Beijing. It also has over 200 authorized Stockists selling its products throughout the UK, Europe, Japan and Australasia. It has its own manufacturing facilities in the UK, China and Portugal and distribution centres in Nottingham and New Jersey.

Chesneys prides itself on its innovation and product design, investing in an on-going programme of research and development. As a result, it now boasts the most diverse portfolio of products of any company in the luxury heating sector. These include fireplaces, wood burning stoves and gas, electric and ethanol fires. Most recently, Chesneys launched a range of hybrid Outdoor products, which, uniquely, combine a heating and cooking functionality that has worldwide patent protection.

The company’s success has been based on an uncompromising dedication to its core values. These have remained unchanged over the years and are simply expressed as a commitment to outstanding craftsmanship, intelligent engineering and innovative design. These have been the cornerstones of our success, accompanied by an aspiration to deliver service levels of the highest standard.

The company is continuing to expand its horizons. Late 2020 saw the opening of a new showroom in London’s Chelsea Design Quarter and highlights of new product development include a focus on environmentally friendly decorative heating solutions that use ethanol and electricity. Work, as ever, also continues in the design and development of new fireplace designs.

https://chesneys.co.uk

0207 6271410

sales@chesneys.co.uk

mailto:sales@chesneys.co.uk

I see a number of Kratki stoves across the local area and are usually of the contemporary cylindrical stove type. Clearly this example a Kratki AB S/DR 8Kw Wood-Burning Stove which I Swept recently in an address at Radwinter End is a contemporary cylindrical model. Kratki are a Polish make of stove and are more at the budget end of the stove market. This said they are a reasonably well put together and efficient stove type. Indeed, my customers who have them are more than content with their performance and have said that although they are reasonably priced, they are robust and do the job that they are designed to do.

https://kratki.com

contact@kratki.com

2080 681288

I usually associate Krog Iversen Scan stoves with large contemporary cylindrical stoves, which are the only type I have come across on my travels around the local area. Indeed, if you were to take a look at the Krog Iversen Scan website the vast majority of stoves you will see are of the contemporary cylindrical type. So, in many ways this example of a Krog Iversen Scan DSA7 Wood-Burning Cassette Stove is something of an anomaly and is the only example I see in the area. As you can see this cassette stove is something of a monster, with a rather huge, capacious fire-box that I should imagine throws out a terrific amount of heat when alight. You can get a sense of this by looking at the fuel it uses, the massive split logs that can be seen underneath the stove in the photo. Needless to say, this stove is not in any ordinary small sitting room, but in a rather large barn conversion.

Scan stoves are a Danish stove company who commenced production in 1978.

Henning Krog Iversen founded the company Krog Iversen (later Scan A/S) in small premises in Odense. At the time it was quite ground-breaking to produce wood-burning stoves in steel sheet instead of cast iron, and there were not many demands concerning combustion technique and environmental protection. The first wood-burning stoves were no more than “oil drums” with doors, but at Krog Iversen we took pride in producing high-end designed pieces of warm furniture with advanced combustion technique right from the start.

All Krog Iversen scan stoves can be bought through licensed dealerships in the UK.

https://www.scan-stoves.co.uk/

I was thinking about what to do for my weekly blog this week and looking back at my recent posts I realized that they largely focus upon wood stoves of various shapes and sizes. So, this week I thought I would break things up a bit and write about something a bit different and that is definitely not a wood stove! Although we do sweep more stoves than anything else, unsurprisingly we do sweep other things, for example, Aga’s, Rayburns, Parkrays, small open fires and of course large inglenook chimneys. This week I thought for a change I would focus upon large inglenook chimneys.

It is possible to divide large inglenook chimneys into two broad categories, large opening inglenook chimneys, where the bottom of the fireplace runs straight into the chimney and large inglenook chimneys which have some form of register plate with inspection hatches. large inglenook chimneys with register plates usually have some form of fire hood attached to the register plate and are used to assist the draw of the chimney. This is because large inglenook chimneys were the first kind of chimney, i.e., built at the start of the development of chimney technology and therefore they are frequently not particularly efficient at what they do. Often, I find that the fire dog/grate is raised in some way, usually on bricks, to bring it closer to the hood or chimney opening, again this is done to assist the draw of the chimney and stop the combustion gasses lapping back into the room. I sweep them using a number of different Inglenook brushes, from stiff to soft. It is a time-consuming process as each side of these large chimneys have to be swept individually from top to bottom and if there is a register plate it has to be cleaned off. All part of the busy sweeps work.

I do see a lot of Vermont stoves whilst sweeping across the local area. This example is a Vermont Intrepid II Multi-Fuel Stove in rather attractive Red Enamel which I recently swept at an address in Rickling Green. Although Vermont stoves can be classed as Retro stoves, they are rather dated technology now, but attractive all the same and I do see many of them still all around the area; Intrepid’s, Encore’s, Defiant’ s, Dauntless, Resolute’s and Vigilant’s. Vermont claim that the Intrepid II has a 10 hour burn interval per each load of wood. This seems an incredibly long period of time, but the stove does have a capacious firebox, albeit long and narrow. Vermont also say that the top surface can be utilized as a cooking hob.

Vermont Stoves uses a quote from Frank Lloyd Wright in their marketing: “The fireplace? The heart of the home itself”. I think that this is a rather nice sentiment. The are based in the USA and their website tells us that; Hearth & Home Technologies is a subsidiary of HNI Corporation (NYSE: HNI). HNI is the second-largest office furniture manufacturer in the world, and the leading manufacturer and marketer of gas and biomass-fueled appliances and hearth products. The company has been recognized by Forbes and Fortune magazine as a top company to work for in the U.S.A.

https://www.vermontcastings.com/products/aspen-c3-wood-burning-stove

T: 001 877 863 4350