Does anyone have the Margin Flameview?

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SarahShoe

New Member
Sep 4, 2013
15
Does anyone have the Margin Flameview stove that could give me a real-world review about it?

Or could recommend another cookstove with an oven that could heat approximately 1400 sq ft, as the only heat source?


Thanks
 
Wish I could say that I've read a review of them on here, or know an owner but I have not/do not.

At the end of the day, it's one fantastic looking unit that I wish I had the chance to use one.
 
Sarah, Please go to my You Tube Channel where I take the Flameview apart and put it back together again and even burned the stove and showed you how it works. http://www.youtube.com/user/WoodyChain
I did this because few folks could go to a local dealer and see the stove for themselves let alone get a honest answer online. I am amazed at how many folks will buy something and say how wonderful it is, yet they are basically ignorant and have little to base their expertise on. Some are just unwilling to admit what they bought is really junk and they got taken advantage of. Remember I am a firefighter, I run towards the fire, not from it, which means one of two things, either I don't have both oars in the water and am not playing with a full deck......or I have big Kahunas and am not afraid to tell it like it really is. How you perceive what I say and what I do, is your business. I only ask folks to understand, the best looking stove is not always the best stove, I can and do back everything up I say with facts. I base my opinions on what I have learned over the past 33 yrs and the thousands of cookstoves I have sold, as well as the feedback I get from the most important source, our customers.
Here is a playlist of where I show the Flameview .
If you care to call me I would be happy to provide you with the phone numbers of customers who currently have a Flameview or have had one and traded it in for a different cookstove because they either had issues with the stove smoking or being a fire hazard. Some folks think I have an axe to grind with the Margin Stove Company, I don't, I have a special concern for public safety. I have dedicated part of my life to protecting others, that roles over into my stove business which is why we no longer offer this stove. With a background in engineering, I designed and built all this fire equipment, http://www.youtube.com/user/wildfirefighters/featured
I had hoped to help them make upgrades to the Flameview which would have solved the issues. I do have an axe to grind with the competition, a dealer who will sell you a DVD for $45 that will show you how to put your family and home at risk. The way the dealer installed his Flameview cook stove in their video is in violation of NFPA 211 as it is installed on a wood floor without any protection and uses at least 2 90 degree elbows before entering into a wall thimble and making another 90 before going up the chimney. This means the smoke must do a 270 degree circle before ever going up the chimney. Anyone on this forum will tell you that is crazy and not the way to do things, yet this guy also will sell you chimney pipe? They seem to be an oxymoron as they claim to be "Plain People" (Amish Wannabes) but have a website and sell alternative energy. Having lived amongst the Amish and Mennonites myself, I assure you they have a problem with other folks who try to sell products on their reputation for integrity. They will be the first ones that tell you that they put their pants on one leg at a time just like we do, there are good and bad with them too. Being an ex city slicker turned Montana Mountain Man I have learned allot. Many city slickers and "Preppers" count on us to provide honest answers. We are proud of the reputation we have for being honest and bending over backwards for our customers. We offer the largest selection of cookstoves found anywhere and are scouring the world for more. If we don't offer a product, there is a reason. Few dealers are willing to put their money where there mouth is and stand behind what they sell like we will.
As far as a stove that will heat 1400 sq ft. we'll need a little more info to make a recommendation. Stuff like your budget, where your at and what your heating, a Yurt takes a lot more to heat than a well insulated home. A two story house is easier to heat than a ranch. We offer lots of cookstoves that would do the job. The JA Roby was probably recommended because your asking for a cookstove that has a glass door. Unfortunately they are in the middle of getting a bunch of new fireplaces UL listed and it is taking longer than they hoped, so the Cuisiniere is not going to be UL listed for our US customers for a while yet. That will limit your choices in the US to the ESSE Ironheart and the Bakers Oven. If you talk to anyone who uses a cookstove daily to heat and cook, they will tell you that a glass door so you can view the fire should be low on your list of features. You first concern should be how well it heats, then how well it cooks, then how easy it is to operate and maintain, least of all should be if you can watch the fire. The cookstove that we have great reviews on and have never had anyone want to return is the Kitchen Queen 480 and 380. We have designed glass doors that will be available as soon as the fabricator gets the face-plate stamper bugs worked out. The doors can be added as an option and when you want to view the fire, you would swap out the door. We tested the doors last winter and they worked great, now we just need to make them look pretty. We understand how important it is for some folks to view the fire, for many years when our children were growing up here in our Montana Mountain Homestead, we called the ability to watch the fire in our woodstove, "Yaak TV" as we did not have a TV so we'd spend many hours sitting by the fire, thinking or reading. It was very peaceful and serene.
We personally own 3 cookstoves, the Kitchen Queen 380, the Ironheart and the Vermont Bun Baker. I do still have the demo stove that we used to make the Flameview video and burned last winter, we'll make someone a sweet deal on, if your sure your really want it. My phone number is 800 968 8604 call me if you have questions and you want honest answers, not sales hype to sell you a cookstove.
We wish you success in your quest for a cookstove that will serve your needs well for many years.




Woody Chain
 
Thanks Woody,

We spoke to Annette, and she did originally recommend the Kitchen Queen to us, but honestly, I judged the book by its cover, it just isn't a nice looking stove :) We are in Canada so we were told that the JA Roby would work here, so that is why we were interested in that (as of yesterday), but today we were doing a lot of thinking and I don't know that I am comfortable being a guinea pig for a relatively new stove with no real-world feedback (the Cuisiniere). And there seems to be conflicting information such as, you can buy a firescreen for it, but yet in the manual it is very explicit that you are not supposed to burn with the door open, so what is the point of the firescreen? We are still considering it, if we could get some reliable info on what we could expect for a burn time for that, but as of right now the KQ is the forerunner.

As mentioned above, we are in Canada, in NW Ontario, about 40 miles north of the Minnesota border. It gets cold here, and we would be able to use a stove for at least 7 months full time, and almost every month for a night or two, as even in the summer it has been known to be in the low 40s high 30s at night.

We live in a poorly insulated mobile home (800 sq ft) and are building a much better insulated addition (600 sq ft) which is where the stove will go. Our long term plan is to build a house where this stove will become a second stove in the kitchen/back bedroom area with a different woodstove/masonry stove in the great room/living room area.

Budget isn't really an issue, although I would like to keep it under $5000 if possible, but would be willing to spend a bit more for the right stove.

My biggest concern with the KQ is that it is going to be too much heat to stand in front of and cook comfortably.

Yes being able to see the fire is high on the list for me, as is having a nice looking stove. I love the idea of being able to curl up with a book and a cup of tea in front of the stove. The glass door sounds like a nice compromise, do you know roughly how much it is going to cost?

Sarah
 
I would take a look at the Esse IronHeart... I'm really happy with my stove.. 700 lbs, you get what you pay for... Great heater, easy to run.. Has nicely designed door latches which make it breeze to adjust the door gasket tightness.. A nice feature to have on any stove.. Holds a fire overnight as well,, always has coals... Can hold a good amount of wood as well.. I'm sure you'd be really happy with an Esse...

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Sarah, thanks for the feedback and I totally understand your concerns. I will look into the firescreen but I'm pretty sure it's like the screen on the Ironheart that Charlie told you about. Because when you stand in front of any woodstove with a glass door, the radiant heat coming through the glass makes it too hot to stand in front of. Therefore ESSE has a screen that slides in front of the glass door that defuses the infrared rays coming through the glass and breaks them up so they are not so intense. I don't think that the Cuisiniere is meant to be burned with the door open. http://woodstoves.net/cookstoves/cuisiniere-cookstove.htm What is so unique about the Cuisiniere is that JA Roby actually took one of their largest woodstoves the Tison which I believe has been in production a while now, merged it with a cookstove body, essentially converting a clean burning woodstove which has been tested to CAN/CSA STD B415.1-10 and should pass US EPA Certs. This is an idea that I have been kicking around now for some years as I am considering producing our own line of EPA/UL Certified Cookstoves. A Canadian customer turned me on to this stove who is a bit of a tinkerer like myself. When I first saw it on paper I was pretty stoked! http://woodstoves.net/documents/JA Roby/cuisiniere-tison-manual.pdf thinking to myself, this will save me sometime and effort to provide my Washington Customers with a Cookstove that will meet their standards. My understanding it that the Cuisiniere has been available in Quebec for a couple of years, but finding any reviews in English is like finding Hens Teeth. At 1.349 Grams Particulate Per Hour Emissions, I would finally have a Cookstove that would meet any regulations coming down the pike, anywhere. So I partnered with JA Roby and offered to market the stove for them. When I researched the company, they seem to have a pretty good track record at building excellent Hearth products, furnaces and oil stoves, but they are not very well know outside of Quebec, they don't even speak English, but French. Our plan is to burn the Cuisiniere ourselves this winter and fly out to Quebec next Spring to meet the owners. I am sorry I cant say that I have much experience with the stove other than what I have explained. Judging from the size of the firebox and the efficiency ratings, I am expecting at least a 12 hr burn from the stove, using softwoods found here, longer with Hardwood I would suspect. As I have just returned back to the Yaak from my Missoula Base Camp where I dispatch from for emergency wildfire suppression, I have some cookstoves to sell before Annette will let me bring in anymore. I should have my Cuisiniere soon and it will be getting cold enough to where I can install it and burn it allowing me to have first hand experience with the stove.

Before I take on another project I need to get those doors for the Kitchen Queen done so I can You Tube them so folks can see them. We have lots of folks waiting for them. I am not sure what we'll end up charging as I am waiting for Montana Machine to make the face-plates. My buddy Kevin helped me fabricate the doors and test them last winter, he will be building them for us along with the custom heat shields we also offer. Our main problem is it takes a press to stamp out the face-plates that will be Stainless Steel and fit over the top of the actual steel door. There will be glass doors for both the firebox and the oven, just like on the Cuisiniere. I think it will make the Queen look a little less homely, I hope. She may not be nearly as nice looking as the Flameview, but beauty is only skin deep. Just like best wives don't have to the prettiest on the outside, but what is on the inside is what matters most. She is the heaviest we offer, but man can she cook! The glass doors will lift on and off in a matter of a minute you can swap out the doors.

The Queen comes with an air cooled door on the firebox, so standing in front of her when she is cookin, is not a problem, it will be when you add the glass door so we'll probably have to come up with a sliding screen like on the Ironheart that you can slide over in front of the oven when you load her up, and back over in-front of the firebox when she's cookin, or you can simply lift off one door and swap it with another.
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If you could find a review of it in French that would not be a problem. Both of my kids speak it, as does one of my best friends.
 
If you could find a review of it in French that would not be a problem. Both of my kids speak it, as does one of my best friends.
Sarah,
I love my Esse , but certainly like the looks of the Cuisiniere...I think I would have no problem liking that.. Oh and by the way, once you have a cookstove, you'll have it going all winter.. You'll love it watching your food cook and it also heating your home at the same time. It's a great independent feeling having both of those things going on at the same time. The really nice thing I found out about always having the stove going, you want to warm something up on the top or the oven, you have instant heat... You'll use the stove more then you think..I'd never be without one and everyone loves the stove when they walk into our farmhouse.. It get's lots of likes :) Some pics of the area open to our kitchen that made the perfect location.

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The number one priority for us right now is to find a stove that will heat our house as well as cook our food, as we are determined to NOT spend over $3000 in heating oil this winter. It was brutal! Where we live a wood stove could come on in September, and not go out until May or June, as well as many night during the "summer" so it will be getting a workout.

The Esse sure is beautiful, and that is one of the reasons that I like the Cuisiniere because it has a similar look to it, but potentially could be our only stove. Whereas everything that I have read about the Esse suggests that it is a good room heater, but would struggle to heat the entire house.

The Kitchen Queen, while not very nice to look at, would have the option of hooking up a hot water radiator in our back room where I think it will be difficult for the heat to reach because of the layout, so that is even better.
 
The number one priority for us right now is to find a stove that will heat our house as well as cook our food, as we are determined to NOT spend over $3000 in heating oil this winter. It was brutal! Where we live a wood stove could come on in September, and not go out until May or June, as well as many night during the "summer" so it will be getting a workout.

The Esse sure is beautiful, and that is one of the reasons that I like the Cuisiniere because it has a similar look to it, but potentially could be our only stove. Whereas everything that I have read about the Esse suggests that it is a good room heater, but would struggle to heat the entire house.

The Kitchen Queen, while not very nice to look at, would have the option of hooking up a hot water radiator in our back room where I think it will be difficult for the heat to reach because of the layout, so that is even better.
Esse has a hot water option as well... that Cuisiniere looks really nice and that your building a room for it, I'm sure you could accommodate the offset pipe..
 
Was just looking at the specs on the Cuisiniere, Nice big firebox and I like you can get fan for the stove.. I'm wondering if the air will blow out of the the multiple holes cut out on the back splash of the stove.. That would be sweet! I see you can even get snap discs so the fans will come on and off once the stove is up to temp.. That's a nice feature.. I'd like to see a picture of the griddle area...
 
When looking at a cookstove I think one should focus on functionality and performance first, not so much on the looks. First and foremost, it should be a pleasure to cook on. That means it should heat well and evenly and that the oven temps should be very controllable and predictable. It should be easy to clean (some definitely are not). It should be flexible for direct flame heating on a pot (variable sized lids are nice). It should warm up quickly (well for a wood cook stove at least). It should be durable and parts should be available for years to come. That means a very well designed and constructed firebox. If a longer fire for heating is desired it should have a larger firebox. For these reasons the Esse gets my vote, though a Heartland Oval would also be on my list.
 
When looking at a cookstove I think one should focus on functionality and performance first, not so much on the looks. First and foremost, it should be a pleasure to cook on. That means it should heat well and evenly and that the oven temps should be very controllable and predictable. It should be easy to clean (some definitely are not). It should be flexible for direct flame heating on a pot (variable sized lids are nice). It should warm up quickly (well for a wood cook stove at least). It should be durable and parts should be available for years to come. That means a very well designed and constructed firebox. If a longer fire for heating is desired it should have a larger firebox. For these reasons the Esse gets my vote, though a Heartland Oval would also be on my list.
With the massive cast iron top and dog bone cooking plates on the Esse, it takes at least a good hour or more to get up to temps.. 700 lbs does not heat up quickly.. The nice thing,,, you have nice even cooking temps and heat output.. LOL I wouldn't want to think what that cast iron top would cost to replace if you cracked that from a ragging cold start fire.. I let things heat up slowly when it comes to cast iron,,, even my pans ;) The Esse you can cook on the hot side top over the fire box or slide your pan over to the right were the dog bone channels underneath restrict the heat, so you have a cooler right side to cook on.. Sometimes I even add a trivet... After a full season of cooking, you can see the channels under the dog bone... One heavy sucker.. They make screw in handles that thread into the dog bone so you can lift it off the stove top.. Stayed very clean as the channels can really get caked up big time you you burn green wood or don't run the stove correctly. You can see the whilte fire box side verses the cooler black side..
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Yes, warm up time is relative. 1 hr for a cookstove is not bad at all. Can you remove a cover over the fire to expose the pan bottom directly to the fire? This is handy for a big pasta pot.
 
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Yes, warm up time is relative. 1 hr for a cookstove is not bad at all. Can you remove a cover over the fire to expose the pan bottom directly to the fire? This is handy for a big pasta pot.
No, I have shot that dog bone griddle over the fire box which has shown over 1000 degrees at times.. I'd say that's more then enough heat... If you have a removable top it would now make my stove not air tight, thus disrupt my secondary air supply that comes in over the top of the fire.. Once the stove is going that's all I run, I shut down the primary and just run the secondary.. I think those removable burner plates are on a non EPA stove.. The Esse is a clean burner.. 3 months into burning and I could still see a some what shiny pipe looking up my outside clean out tee. Here we are canning, plenty of heat when you need it!
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Good point, I've only cooked on older cookstoves and hadn't thought about the difference between the two. That makes sense.
 
Good point, I've only cooked on older cookstoves and hadn't thought about the difference between the two. That makes sense.
Yes being airtight , you get a lot more even heat over a longer period of time.... BeGreen, ahh,,, just bite the bullet and get a cook stove.. ;) Truthfully you would really feel that it was money well spent, especially if you get the stove you really want.. There's nothing better then smelling something simmering on top as you walk into a pleasantly warm house from your cook stove.. You would never be without one again... Power goes out who cares, your still cooking like always, room to make big pots of hot water for coffee , tea, warm up some hot cocca, what ever you can imagine..It will certainly grow on you.. Bread it bakes is awesome... I'll have you talked into one before long;lol
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No need to convince me. Once I got the hang of it I liked cooking on the wood cookstove. I actually got to be pretty good at baking in one. Still, my wife is not a fan. It would be a very hard sell. We are set for stoves and heat. The Alderlea does a great job in outages with it's variable temp trivet top and we have a gas cooktop stove too.
 
No need to convince me. Once I got the hang of it I liked cooking on the wood cookstove. I actually got to be pretty good at baking in one. Still, my wife is not a fan. It would be a very hard sell. We are set for stoves and heat. The Alderlea does a great job in outages with it's variable temp trivet top and we have a gas cooktop stove too.
Sounds like your all set ......
 
There are some very nice cookstoves these days. I have only used one of the newer ones, the one we have, which is the Heartland [Aga] shown in the photo to the left. I have owned two others and used two more on a long-term basis in rental homes where I used to live. They were old models and a bear to use. All the cookstoves take a while to heat up, nature of the beast. Well, the ovens take a long time. The top of the stove does heat up fairly quickly, in our case a few minutes for boiling water. The benefit is that, once they reach that oven temperature, managing them is a matter of...not much effort. That is, if the firebox is large enough, as the new models mostly feature. Many of the old models have ridiculously tiny boxes and the cook must constantly monitor the fire and add wood. It can be a full-time job to manage the stove. The old ones look great, especially restored, but as useful cookers, they lack a lot.

In the newer cookstoves, with their larger fireboxes and, in some cases, airtight operation, once they are up to temp., there is very little labor or monitoring involved. If baking or cooking on the top, it is no more trouble than using a gas or electric range. The only difference is that it is difficult, very, to rapidly increase or decrease the oven temp's, which some techniques and recipes call for. To cool the oven a bit, one can crack open the (oven) door, but it is a matter of experience and experimentation to do so successfully.

For heating living area, these cookstoves are great if one wants heat for an extended time. We can let our fire in the Aga burn out after supper and the next morning, the stove will still be warm. Not hot, but at least warm. Nothing like a mass of cast iron to put out heat for hours.

I do all our baking in the Heartland, and we don't buy any baked goods, or only rarely. In the hottest part of summer, I bake in our Weber gas grill, outdoors, but 8 months of the year, it is the cookstove. We do have a propane-fired countertop stove, too [four burners], we use for stove-top cooking when the cookstove is not going.

As for the original question by the OP, our stove will heat our entire home, 1100 sq. ft. It will not knock off the chill very quickly from a cold start, as the stove takes a long time to heat up the internals and begin to radiate enough heat for heating more than the closest couple of rooms. The kitchen warms quickly, however, from the heat coming from the top of the cookstove. In our case, we have a regular, heating wood stove in another part of the house and use the two stoves together if it's that cold outdoors.
 
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I've done some fall away cooking in our Esse cookstove as well, starting out with a roast in the oven at say 375 and not adding anymore wood and just letting the oven cool on it's own .. That works really well.. Seems like you can't ruin anything, browned on the outside and juicy inside... Like sealing in the juices and then getting a low and slow cooking heat.. I can say once we start the Esse we always have it going, even with no wood in the box for a day, there are always some coals left in the deep fire box ashes to get her going again.. So the stove is never stone cold..
 
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My first choice was an Esse as well (though of course my dream stove would have been the Suprema Grande), but after missing out on a floor model deal I went with the Deva as it was about 20% less in price, and is a little bit larger but has the same side clearance footprint of the Esse.

Well, you can only imagine how I'm chomping at the bit now for some cooler weather to arrive after having my stove sit out under the marquee for a year and a half and another three months for the chimney to be put up (and still need to put the snow cricket up before the winter gets here), I've only managed to do a few test fires on a few nights that the temps got down into the 30s or so, which means I really can't give any reviews on it other than being pleased at how long it retains heat after the fire is out, but what little experience I have had on this stove compared to how I've seen a friend struggle with a flameview, I imagine I will be quite happy with this one.
 
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akbear - welcome to the Hearth! I don't think we have any other members here with a Deva - please report back soon. I would love to have a wood cookstove eventually. Yours looks beautiful.
 
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