The Ecco Stove story began in Finland after my co-director and I had been building Finnish polished soapstone appliances manufactured by a company named Nunnaunni.
For America and Canada we have achieved safety standards testing; exemption from EPA requirements; Colorado and Washington States efficiency testing for masonry heaters. We passed both style of tests with, in our opinion, some great success, hitting an 85.3% efficiency rating (EU) and tested as a room heater/wood burning stove and slow heat release/masonry heater and is to the best of our knowledge the only appliance in the world which satisfies both of these standards.
The ideas came thick and fast but the conclusion came in unison very quickly, the Ecco Stove had to be it. How else could we term an appliance that burns so efficiently, so completely, so evenly, so thoroughly and uses so much less fuel to do a similar job to any automatically fed heating system, but will continue to work and heat in a power failure.
We have created an appliance that would absorb heat readily but as we found to our amazement our mineral mix of Silicon Carbide being a very “greedy” material holds that heat for a long period of time (25% of heat stored after 12 hours after the fire has gone out – Model 678) We have produced an appliance that would burn so efficiently the particulate emissions are extremely low. The UK requires 6 grams per hour maximum. On our initial testing, we burned at 2.1 grams per hour. America at the time of testing required 8 grammes /hour with us burning at 2.1g/hour. Success! We have achieved more than we had hoped to achieve.
The appliance had been balanced at test with the air setting fixed so that all the stove operator had to do is flash fire the stove into high combustion to reach a temperature of 150 - 200°C on the outer surface – by opening the ash pit (bearing in mind a metal stove would reach some 500 - 600°C on the outer surface on full burn). Close the ash pit and walk away from the stove – it will then produce heat over the next 12 hours to heat the whole house envelope