Hey there. Anyone else have an MF Fire Nova stove? I see lots of discussion about Jotul, Blaze King, etc on here. We got the Nova mid Fall, moved it up to our lake house, and have been pleased thus far. Anyway, several of the tips on here have been very helpful so thanks guys.
MF Fire Nova - anyone else have one?
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Sure thing. I am not as technical about things as some of you guys, but here goes. We got it for the look and the big glass. We bought it on their website, but talked to someone on the phone there before we bought. I remember them telling my wife the glass will stay clean for months and we were skeptical, but it is true. I don't think we have cleaned the glass since December. It always stays clean so you can always see the fire. I see lots of people talking about dirty glass on their stoves, but we really never have that problem. We have plenty of coals in the morning so we don't need to rebuild the fire every day like we did in our old stove. This stove is super easy to use. We heat about 1,200 sq ft. with it and it works great for that.
We are super happy with it and was checking around to see if anyone else on here had one.
Picture from the day of install
We are super happy with it and was checking around to see if anyone else on here had one.
Picture from the day of install
Attachments
Yeah, we do. Usually load it full, wait for coals, then add more wood then. They said this is the best way to do it. The stove doesn't have air control knobs like other stoves do (just the bypass handle). We control how hot it gets by how often we reload it and how full we reload it. I forgot to mention it but I was a little nervous about that fact before buying. But we decided to go for it. We have not found we miss having an air control knob like our last stove did. Just add more wood if you want more heat quickly, basically.
Great, no issues with runaway fires then when fully loaded? That has been a problem with some other stoves without an air control.
No not at all. We load it full regularly and it burns great. It comes with a simple thermometer to help us keep track of how it is burning as well.
BKVP
Minister of Fire
EPA defines wood heaters without the ability to control burn rate (knobs) Single Burn Rate Heaters. I like to room setting. A wood stove in a room made of wood!
ManitobaSky
Member
ManitobaSky
Member
Sorry, thought I had inserted the link. Please see above for the video, will be interesting if they do expand the nova line.
ManitobaSky
Member
Found this gem of misinformation on the MF Fire site, old wives tales die hard it seems.
mffire.com
Wood Stove 101: The Best (and Worst) Firewood Types
Getting wood to reload your wood stove isn't as simple as picking any old log off the ground. Choosing firewood for the optimal burn requires knowledge of different wood species and wood moisture content. Learn how to pick the best logs for your wood burning stove!
mffire.com
Wow. Unrelenting misinformation. And coming directly from the CEO. Apparently they have zero intention of selling/marketing any units west of the east slope. A potentially huge marketing blunder.
Huh? I don't understand what you're saying? Yes ours is single burn rate, but works awesome
BKVP
Minister of Fire
It was a clarification of Begreen's "stoves without air controls". The 2015 NSPS refers to them as "Single Burn Rate" heaters. The other part of my post was complimenting the nice room of all wood.
Old thread revival but I'm reading up on MF Fire and I read this article and it's the first thing I've seen them say/do that turns me off....in addition the comments on that post at the bottom are obviously shill comments as they come from 2 sites and are exactly the same comment.
I mean, come on, explain to me with actual science why "resinous" soft woods, when fully dry, are bad for wood stoves and catalytics combusters. If there's solid science, i'll listen. I'm not aware of any.
BKVP
Minister of Fire
I was clarifying the terminology for a wood stove that does not have the ability to control the amount of air into the firebox. These are called single burn rate heaters. There more on the market today from manufacturers as single burn rate solid fuel heaters are subject to less emissions testing but just as rigorous safety tests.
They are not all single-rate by design, even though there is no or limited user control. The Aspen C3 and Dauntless have an innovative thermostatic damper system. Quadrafire/VC are using an updated ACC to regulate the fire.
I have one - made an account just to respond to this year old thread.
I've had the stove for 2 full seasons now and have some thoughts.
First, pros - it's a nice looking unit, generates a ton of heat and with the electric blower heats the first floor of my 5000sf house.
Next the cons - if the wood is not bone dry the glass will soot up pretty quickly and you will need a razor blade to get it cleaned off. You cannot damp it down overnight - it has two modes bypass enabled, bypass disabled. That's it. So i have to load it up before bed and about 50% of the time start it up 8 hours later. Now for the biggest con - the bypass lever is held in place with two microscopic set screws that constantly have to be tightened. Like. Every. Day. This is just terrible design. Additionally, i had issues with the unit when i bought it - i contacted mffire several times because the catalytic unit was displaced and i could not get the screws loose to get it in right. I must have called them 4 or 5 times - no useful feedback. i finally snapped the nuts off because they were cross threaded from the factory. the catalytic unit was missing the retaining clip - they never sent a replacement. As for the installer - they wanted to pull it out and let me pick another unit. As for the blower - it rattles like an old jalopy. i don't know if it was improperly installed but it's loud. Also, the on/off/speed knob it on the back of the unit so you have to reach around a stove that is hot enough to take your skin off to adjust the blower speed or turn it on/off.
Once I got it working, i've not had issues - thing is, do you want to go through what i went through to get a working stove and do you want to tighten those screws every day?
I've had the stove for 2 full seasons now and have some thoughts.
First, pros - it's a nice looking unit, generates a ton of heat and with the electric blower heats the first floor of my 5000sf house.
Next the cons - if the wood is not bone dry the glass will soot up pretty quickly and you will need a razor blade to get it cleaned off. You cannot damp it down overnight - it has two modes bypass enabled, bypass disabled. That's it. So i have to load it up before bed and about 50% of the time start it up 8 hours later. Now for the biggest con - the bypass lever is held in place with two microscopic set screws that constantly have to be tightened. Like. Every. Day. This is just terrible design. Additionally, i had issues with the unit when i bought it - i contacted mffire several times because the catalytic unit was displaced and i could not get the screws loose to get it in right. I must have called them 4 or 5 times - no useful feedback. i finally snapped the nuts off because they were cross threaded from the factory. the catalytic unit was missing the retaining clip - they never sent a replacement. As for the installer - they wanted to pull it out and let me pick another unit. As for the blower - it rattles like an old jalopy. i don't know if it was improperly installed but it's loud. Also, the on/off/speed knob it on the back of the unit so you have to reach around a stove that is hot enough to take your skin off to adjust the blower speed or turn it on/off.
Once I got it working, i've not had issues - thing is, do you want to go through what i went through to get a working stove and do you want to tighten those screws every day?
Do you have an insert or a freestanding stove placed in a fireplace?
Have you tried some Loctite blue on the bypass allen screw threads?
Have you tried some Loctite blue on the bypass allen screw threads?
I'll also comment here... we have had the Nova 1 for a bit less than a year now, and have probably burned about a cord and a half in it.
This has been our first winter burning, and I'm very happy with the stove so far. Fuel is a mix of about a cord of ash from a tree felled May 2021, and two cords "seasoned hardwood" (read: cut/split 6 months prior but sitting in a pile in the rain all summer, and we had two feet of rain here last summer) that I got and stacked in early September. Obviously this is far from ideally seasoned wood, but we have some good garage storage space that accelerated the drying, a fast draft on the chimney, AND (for us; clearly not for nova 2 owner!) this stove seems to burn marginal wood like a champ. Got a mid-season sweeping in late December and we were in great shape, with very little buildup (I was rather concerned given that we'd gone through about a cord of wood).
Biggest downside is that our fast draft + lack of air control + relatively small firebox on the Nova 1 mean that I'm reloading a lot. Full loads get the stove very hot (not overfired, but I don't want to chance it...). I can get coals to relight on in the morning if I load up full overnight but this wastes a lot of heat and it's still not much of a coal bed to start on, and we are wood-limited this winter so I don't want to waste heat when we're not in the room. (I'm also reloading pretty hot since wood this winter is not as dry as I'd like, so that's a contributor to this con that's not about the stove)
So anyhow, TL;DR:
Pros: Great stove overall: gorgeous simple design, nice big glass viewing door (for us it stays really clean), **clean burning on suboptimal wood**, very simple operation.
Cons: More reloading than I'd like, runs a shade hot on full loads, no air control to prolong burns.
(Note: We're heating a ~2200 square foot house, and this stove is rated for considerably less than that, so some of these cons may be more about stove sizing than about the stove itself. This was a compromise... because of the location of the stove and floor plan of the house, it wasn't feasible to get a much bigger stove to heat the whole house; it would bake us out of our living room!)
This has been our first winter burning, and I'm very happy with the stove so far. Fuel is a mix of about a cord of ash from a tree felled May 2021, and two cords "seasoned hardwood" (read: cut/split 6 months prior but sitting in a pile in the rain all summer, and we had two feet of rain here last summer) that I got and stacked in early September. Obviously this is far from ideally seasoned wood, but we have some good garage storage space that accelerated the drying, a fast draft on the chimney, AND (for us; clearly not for nova 2 owner!) this stove seems to burn marginal wood like a champ. Got a mid-season sweeping in late December and we were in great shape, with very little buildup (I was rather concerned given that we'd gone through about a cord of wood).
Biggest downside is that our fast draft + lack of air control + relatively small firebox on the Nova 1 mean that I'm reloading a lot. Full loads get the stove very hot (not overfired, but I don't want to chance it...). I can get coals to relight on in the morning if I load up full overnight but this wastes a lot of heat and it's still not much of a coal bed to start on, and we are wood-limited this winter so I don't want to waste heat when we're not in the room. (I'm also reloading pretty hot since wood this winter is not as dry as I'd like, so that's a contributor to this con that's not about the stove)
So anyhow, TL;DR:
Pros: Great stove overall: gorgeous simple design, nice big glass viewing door (for us it stays really clean), **clean burning on suboptimal wood**, very simple operation.
Cons: More reloading than I'd like, runs a shade hot on full loads, no air control to prolong burns.
(Note: We're heating a ~2200 square foot house, and this stove is rated for considerably less than that, so some of these cons may be more about stove sizing than about the stove itself. This was a compromise... because of the location of the stove and floor plan of the house, it wasn't feasible to get a much bigger stove to heat the whole house; it would bake us out of our living room!)
Hi nova2 owner,
We would love to work with you to address each of these concerns. Please email our support team at support@mffire.com as we take our customer service very seriously. We would love to make sure any issues you have encountered can be resolved.
MF Fire Support Team
