Customer Reviews

Curing The Woodburner Blues Review by John - Permaculture Magazine

Review

My only gripe about woodburning stoves is that if you are near the stove you roast and if you are too far away, you freeze. I saw the answer to this problem on a canal boat, it had a fan on the back of its stove which pushed warm air around the interior of the narrowboat. This was an Ecofan 800 which creates its own electricity from the heat of the stovetop. This is done by a module of semi-conductors and uses the ‘Seebeck effect’ to generate electricity to run the fan unit. No, I don’t understand either but the important thing is it costs nothing to run, doesn’t need batteries and it reacts according to the stove temperature.

Not having a stove of my own at present I lent an Ecofan 800 to Mary and Henry to test, who along with their new baby, Holly, live in a large yurt heated by a central woodburner. This is what they had to say. “We have been trialling the Ecofan in sub-zero temperatures in our 23ft yurt (see above right). Despite a little confusion as to the physics of where to position it in a circular space with a central fire, it has functioned very well and does even out the temperature across the whole yurt. We’ve kept it going through the night and it is virtually silent. It’s also an impressive object, a great talking point, and it seems to be very reliable.”

So if you want to chase the wood-burner blues away, get an Ecofan. They are not cheap but they are well made, free to run and should increase the comfort levels in your room greatly. (Posted on 03/12/2010)