I ran a Tirolia Casanova model for about 8 years from 94 to 02 and it was a wonderful beast - bought it of a mate who had it in store for years for £150 and it saved a fortune. Could never understand why they were not more popular, or why they stopped producing them. Kicked out 55,000 btu - enough to run central heating for a three bedroom house easily, full width cooking top and temperature controlled oven. Fire box had a wind-up / down grate to allow it increase / decrease capacity for winter / summer use.
The oven thermostat control was a simple copper thermostatic vial sitting in a recess in the side of the oven chamber, with a pressure pipe leading to a flap on the firebox air vent via the temperature control dial. Principle was simple - when the oven reached the required temperature the flap closed damping down the firebox. However, it was never very accurate and there was understandably a lag in the fire (and subsequent temperature change) reaction. We quickly learnt to leave the temperature control fully open and instead controlled the oven temperature by varying the pull-knob on the right hand side which diverts hot air either direct to the chimney over the top of the oven, or down and round the oven box. If you take the hot plates off the top you can see the very simple layout and control system. Big plus of this was that when the thermostat vial pipe eventually broke (which is almost inevitable with these stoves due to the exposed position of the pipe near the firebox door) it made no difference to us.
Like an Aga, you have to learn to cook at lower temperatures and for longer periods, but thats no hardship. Even back in 98 when our thermostat went I was unable to source a replacement
Some other points and tips.
Full width cooking surface is great for capacity (we could get 4 saucepans and a big griddle on the top) BUT it loses heat quickly if both covers are open - you have to compensate for this by stoking the fire well at start. Hot plates vary in temperature - immediately over the firebox (right hand side on ours) is hottest, with far left near side corner coolest.
Oven capacity is reasonable but not huge. The door is easily detached for cleaning and access
Clean the interior of soot FREQUENTLY - its amazing how the soot builds up and affects the cooking temperature. I did ours every 6 weeks in the winter when it was getting daily heavy use. Great thing about the stove is that cleaning is easy - just lift off the hot plates for full access to the top, and unscrew the two knobs and take off the bottom cleaning hatch - shove the long rigid pipe of a vacuum cleaner into every corner and 5 minutes later all done !
Burns both wood and coal - fire box is not huge so needs regular checking if you are cooking in the autumn winter and have it on summer firebox setting.
I burnt only wood and used to be able to load the firebox last thing at night, leave the vent juct slightly open and the fire would stay in all night ticking over (with good quality wood) - come down in the morning, toss two dry logs on, open the vent and away it would go.
I plumbed it in to the house myself - ran the water heating pipes vertically straight from the back of the stove up to bedroom above and then to immersion tank in second bedroom, with the central heating system pump at ground level diverting off . Advantage of this was that the immersion was alway hot as it acts as the main heat-sink (it was an open sytem with big header tank so plenty of expansion capacity - you need this as the stove can get hot enough to boil the water in the pipes if the pump is not running) PLUS by good fortune the upstairs radiator circuit would run at a low level purely by convection. This meant that we hardly ever had to run the pump as the kitchen and all the upstairs radiators would self circulate.
If the one you are looking at is a Casanova model you can get a copy of the installation and operation manual on-line now at
http://www.oilstoves.co.uk/webdocs/...tion_&_user_instructions_Tirolia_Casanova.pdf
Any other queeries then I'd be happy to help out if I can.
Maninthewild