An attractive yet pricey way to heat your home (Burley Chilton 128)

Member Name: minimou

Product:	Burley Chilton 128
Date:	09/10/09 (78 review reads)
Rating:

Advantages: Looks great, solid design and construction, reasonably priced

Disadvantages: As with all fan heaters, expensive to heat with, quite large

We bought this 2kw portable, free standing electric stove last year as we have an all-electric flat but we have traditional taste, so we wanted something that blended in with out décor without looking ridiculous.

The first thing to mention is that the fire is bigger than it seems in the pictures. We also have a Broseley cast iron stove with is much smaller and thinner so we use this in our living room fireplace.

The Burley Chilton (ours does not have the wings on shown on the picture above for some reason) is a nice, traditional design. It looks and feels robust, unlike many of the cheaper electric stoves you see out there these days. Although it is composed predominantly from wood, you really wouldn't know unless you examined it close up as it does actually look like cast iron from a small distance, especially as the leaded-style window doors, which do open, are composed of cast iron as are the legs. It also has a circular indentation on the top panel, for those who want to buy a chimney pipe to make it look like an authentic stove.

The only flaw in the design, I would say, is that the flames are restricted to just two narrow areas so if you were to look closely, it doesn't look particularly authentic, but then, none of them do. Our other one was £600 and even that doesn't look authentic. Saying that, the flame effect is made from orange and red plastic being blown by a fan and lit by two 40w light bulbs, so what do you expect?

The fire has three settings, Lights Only, Low and High. We rarely use the lights only option as this is in our bedroom so we do actually use it for heat, unlike our 3kw Broseley which costs 3 times more to run than our heating system, so we often have lights only on this to make it feel cosy.

In terms of heating the room, these fires are not overly effective. As they mainly work by acting as an industrial hairdryer, it's more effective for top up heat or taking the edge off the chill. To heat your home (or even room) with one would be astronomical in terms of cost (we found this out the hard way). The low setting is really not worth having on, to be honest, but the high setting does give a very good blast of heat and ten minutes on makes the bedroom bearable to get into.

So would I recommend this fire then? Well, if you are looking at economical ways to heat your home, whether all electric or not, you are not going to get overall value for money from this as, although electric heating is 100% efficient, in terms of 1kw hour costing he same no matter what medium is using it, there are more effective heaters out there in terms of how they distribute the heat. For example, for heating our home, we have glass panel heaters at 1kw, which are 200w glass panel heating and 800w convector, much more efficient. On the other hand, if you need an electric fire anyway to fill a space in your home, this is attractive, lovely to have on and no more expensive than any other electric fan heater.

Summary: An attractive heater to have around the home providing it's not your sole source of heat