Contura i5 review

 

 

The Contra i5 is an interesting stove because it can be several stoves in 1. The same stove can have little legs on it as seen in the video and be used as a normal stove, or you can remove the legs, fit a frame and it becomes a cassette/inset stove. Finally you can buy much taller legs and fit it as a free standing contemporary stove. The concern with this is are you getting something that doesn't really no what it is and therefore does a fairly mediocre job at everything. Thankfully in this case the actual stove engine is a pretty good one, and as long as the look works for you, it's all working.

It is made predominantly from steel with a cast iron door, by a top Scandinavian brand and is entirely focused on wood burning. It's also "officially" 5KW, but does seem capable of more than this if you'd ever require it. It has a large window fitted with curved glass and complete interior lining made from vermiculite board which increases efficiency and heat output. It also has a 5" outlet that can connect either straight up or at an angle to suit your fireplace. They also make a 2 door version and in a grey colour which you can get as a no cost option, and it has all the usual DEFRA and Eco-Design approvals.

 

Lighting the stove: 6/10

Lighting the stove is fairly standard, it does have a latch to encourage a rush of draw during the initial lighting, but every basically worked in a pretty normal way.

 

Cleanness: 6/10 depending on your views on cleanness

Its efficiency rating is fairly basic for this type of high end Scandinavian appliance so the model is starting to show its age. However running it clean on the glass was not challenging and even when run on a lower setting for a long time , it could run clean.

 

Controls & Controllability: 7/10

 

During re-loading, despite its fairly basic efficiency it still would spill smoke into the room slightly. There are techniques you can employ to avoid this, so it't not necessarily a problem, the controls on the stove also get hot. However it does come with a glove and when you do want to shut the stove down, to be fair it worked pretty well.

 

Fuel economy & Burn time: 8/10

The stove has good fuel economy. Its wood focus gives it an obvious edge and running it overnight was easy and achieving double figures in burn hours on 1 net of logs was also possible all while keeping the stove at operating temperature. The lower efficiency in this particular part of the test probably actually assisted the stove somewhat, but given that it was running clean was probably largely effected by the fact that I test all stoves on kiln dried logs.

 

What I thought:

 

Contura are far from cheap stoves, this model can spill smoke, the handles get hot. The look is a little "old school tv" and finally the efficiency is only just respectable. However