Valiant FIR361 Premium 4 Heat Powered Stove Fan, Satin Black

Back Story: I bought my house this winter and it is equipped with an old woodburning fireplace insert with a blower...except the blower is AWFUL. First, it appears that it was originally equipped with two blower motors, and one was simply taken out when it stopped working. The other was a nightmare - it still runs, but is horribly loud and needs constant adjustment to keep the cage from grinding. While sleuthing out replacement parts, I found that the company that built the stove closed long ago, and there were no compatible parts available for my particular model.So I was pricing out new fireplace inserts here on Amazon when this little guy that I'm reviewing popped up as a suggested item. It was pricier than some of its competitors, but was the one with the best reviews, so I figured I'd give it a shot - $105 shipped Prime is a bargain if it helps me put off buying a new stove indefinitely.Which it may have. This fan is a GREAT solution to my problem. It's super quiet (the stove's blower is a low roar at it's best times - made having a fire and watching TV mutually exclusive) and it seems to disperse the heat better than the existing blower. It's made a big enough difference that I'm tempted to buy another to really get things toasty. Even better, when I do eventually get a modern replacement for my stove, this fan will still be useful and still be 100% free to operate compared to the stove's built-in blower.One thing that some purchasers may find odd is that you don't really feel a breeze coming from the fan. It's definitely working, though, judging by how much less my furnace is kicking on since I got this fan.

I'm hoping I'll be able to change this review after I get in contact with the company for a new one.***Summary:Maybe this is rare. Maybe just my unit even. My fan worked perfectly for a couple months into the winter. I really got used to it moving the air around the house without electricity and managing to stay almost silent. Unfortunately the quiet factor went out the window when I needed to move it to a new spot. In the process of rotating it a few times, gently setting it down, picking it back up and putting it in its old spot the blades loosened along the neck. It now sounds like someone banging pots together extremely fast if it is not at full speed and wakes me up :(***I liked this fan...heck, I LOVED it at first. I even got one for my neighbors as a present! Theirs even works on a very old soapstone stove. But it does work best with metal contact. Not necessarily making modern stoves better for the fan - the higher the temp, the more noticeable the noiseEverything was going good with my fan. I read complaints that it didn't work at all - but eventually realized once I had the fan myself that these people either had a soapstone stove or something too insulated to transfer heat to the fan. I highly doubt more than 1 in 10000 of these is so defective it won't start. It does start quickly in my stove, even over the draft intake part of it, starting up at barely 150 degrees as read by a stick onthermometer.Here's when everything went to heck. My steam pot that I also bought here on amazon arrived and I needed to make room for it and hopefully get the fan to move the steam into our dry living room.I picked up the fan (it was not moving from heat, mind you) and set it over on its side. When I moved it to its new spot I noticed something subtle - the blade mechanism was able to move just a smidgen along the neck connecting it to the thermal mechanism. I didn't think anything of it at all. That is until I got a fire going. The normally near silent fan was now getting up to speed with an audible CLANK ... CLANK ... CLANK increasing in speed as it got hotter. When it reached peak speed, it wasn't as noticeable, but still above my tolerance level for what I had first unboxed.Now I get woken up if I'm using the fan on the stove and it cools below a certain speed, which is unbearable. At the same time, some nights I'd still rather "try" to use it because it keeps the hot air from stagnating around the stove where I sleep. But in summary, I'm completely heartbroken that something I thought was sturdy and that I loved so much quit on me. It can't be that fragile, right?I'm hoping for answers. I did not knock it over, have it drop, etc - it's completely intact and looks no different from fresh out of the box. I simply set it down on its back and it was rendered virtually unusable.

Update: nearly 2 years later it's going strong, occasionally over-heated stove and all. I'm looking at buying a second, bigger fan this winter.I've only had it a few days but it's working about as I expected. it's really too small for my shop, but I knew that going in. It's better than nothing which is what I have overnight because I don't like leaving an electric (plug-in) fan running unattended all night. One of my fears was that I would overheat this device. I started my evening fire last night and I was a little late getting back to the shop to dial down the fire and the temp on the stove top was well over 700 degrees (F). The fan was spinning away. I removed it until I got the stove cooled down. I'm not sure how long the temp was up over the recommended 600+ degrees but it had to have been a good 30 minutes or more so the thermoelectric device is obviously fairly resilient. If I could afford Valiant's biggest fan I would buy it in a heartbeat.We lose power fairly often so when that happens I can bring this down to the house and use it on top of our gas stove in the family room. it will definitely push enough air for that room.Note: I gave this product a rare 5-star rating. I reserve 5 stars for products that exceed my expectations.

I picked this heat powered fan because it had the highest air movement rating. I believe it was rated at 350 cf/m (or maybe 3 cfm). I don't know how they measured it but if you put a burning match in front of it, it won't blow the march out but will wiggle the flame. I'm not disappointed because I didn't expect much. If you want air movement get a real electric fan. Other wise it makes an interesting thing to talk about.

I have only used it once or twice so far, but was really surprised how well it worked. It started running shortly after the fire was hot enough to start it. It didn't need any help to get started either. It is completely quiet and like others say, you don't necessarily feel the breeze, but does get the heat moving. It is a lot smaller than I thought and not that noticeable, which is nice too. Wish I would have bought it 3 years ago.

A well packaged and well made fan. After a lot of research, it is clear that you have two options, i) cheap and cheerful ii) pay a bit more in the hope that the quality is there. Added concerns for me were that some fans give cfm data that suggests they are somehow capable of achieving that. Even though higher-end fans publish data that doesn't come close. Next there is the question of what size fan. As one reviewer suggested during my research, get the biggest one that will physically fit - not bad advise as it happens, especially if the fire is in an inglenook or fireplace opening, rather than freestanding in the room.Why mention all of this? Well this fan has plenty of good reviews. Suggesting it is both popular and more importantly, works well. But, the factors that determine if a fan is going to work, depend largely on 1) location of fire, 2) rating of fire, 3) physical room to put a fan, 4) how much air it can shift 5) how hot you run your fire. My Woodwarm 5Kw Firegem indicates that I limit the body temperature to 230C, so crazy 300+C temperatures are out of the question without causing potential damage to the fire. Not to mention that if the fire is sized correctly, running for long periods at high temperatures will cause the room to be so hot as to be uncomfortable. All I needed was a fan to push enough hot air forwards off the fire, to prevent the fire surround getting too hot to touch and thus, circulate the heat further into the room before it travels upwards.Prior to using the fan I was running the fire at about 200-220C and not seeing a favourable increase in room temperature after a couple of hours, maybe just a few degrees. Given that I needed to limit the body to 230C, increasing the output was not an option and I had also noticed a massive rise in temperature of the fire opening. All the natural heat convection appeared to be into the chimney breast instead of the room.After fitting the fan, the room felt markedly warmer in just an hour at 175C stove temperature. After 2 hours, I was throttling the fire back to tick over at 125C to achieve nice comfort levels without breaking into a sweat. After all the initial frustrations of having a woodburner that heated the fireplace, I now had a fire that did what it said on the tin and in a manner that wasn't costing an arm and leg to achieve in terms of fuel costs. Yes experience is key when operating a woodburner.SO this fan - is it any good? Well yes actually, it starts up slowly at 45C and increases speed as the body temperature rises. It is pretty quiet in mechanical noise (moving air is always noisy if the velocity gets too great - hence get the biggest fan you can fit.) That said it is barely audible even at higher speeds and certainly can't be heard unless you get very close. I would say that it pushes air about 400-500mm very well and if you were to put lighted match 100mm from it the flame would nearly be blown out. Beyond the distances stated, the air movement is imperceptible as you sit and stare at the fire. But what impressed me most is how the thermals in the room are vastly improved, resulting in lower fire-opening temperatures, lower stove temperatures and a much quicker room heat-up time.It has a two year warranty and a nice little note in the box from Bob Sizeland, Valiants director, which explains that they are a small business, proud of their product. I can empathise with that!! With a market drenched in cheap fans I was glad to pay more for this product. My only concern is this (and maybe Bob will respond), after a few years of operation, there may come a time when the fan motor gets noisy or packs up. Are spare motors available? If they are then you have my loyal support, because after spending my hard-earned on this product, I would like to be content in the knowledge that I can run it for many years to come. I wrote this lengthy review in the hope that it helps others to a more informed choice.

I bought this on the basis of reviews and seeing them on top of friends stoves - looking and sounding effective. I was delighted when mine slowly started to crank up to a seemingly high speed, no motors or batteries. What could you not like about a machine that runs for free? Except it doesn't actually achieve anything. It's utterly useless, other that the satisfaction that you are producing free energy to make something do something. Eventually curiosity got he better of me. The satisfaction I'd initially felt in the belief that I was distributing heat around my cottage living room rather than letting it waft up the chimney started to wane, until the eventual realisation that, like the Emperors clothes, these gadgets are a lie, that some people chooses to believe. You can drop a feather in front of this model and it floats onto the stove top unhindered. So, am I missing something? This 'premium' model was satisfactually in the higher cost bracket, so I had confidence it would work effectively and live up to my expectations and the rave reviews from my friends and online. After a year or so, it stopped working anyway. Maybe the baring dried up, but it became a dust gathering, utterly useless ornament. I gave it away in the end, very gladly, and chuckled inside as my friend took it out in a carrier bag to gather dust on her stove. If you get comfort in believing in unproven concepts and it make you feel good, then these gadgets are you you. Otherwise accept that your cottage living room will have cold spots, and buy a wooly hat. They don't work.

I really really wanted to like this, sooo much, I really did.It is beautifully made, good strong materials nicely finished. And it works a treat, it really does push the air around our large 15 x 18 ft room. and starts up almost immediately.But it had to be returned, because once it got going it was SO noisy - we had to turn up the TV just to be able to listen to a programme once this thing was whirring. We looked at adjusting the blades as suggested, but they were clearly all lined up ok.Bought a much cheaper 2 blade by a different manufacturer (as an experiment) which was nowhere as well made or attractive to look at, but was quiet. Maybe will try the 2 blade on this make, though don't think it will do our large room based on the guidelines.Very disappointed to give it 2 stars, and had the noise been quieter, we would have kept it and given it 5 stars.

This fan was not suitable for our Chesney woodburner which has an 'airwash system'. In order to get the fan to work at all we had to stoke up the fire excessively so that the living room was stifling hot and we were using far more wood than usual. As soon as we allowed the fire to die down even a little bit - the fan stopped and would not start again. Sort of defeated the object of having a fan to make the wood burner more economic! Spoke to customer services at Valiant, who said that the Airwash system was probably cooling the top surface of the woodburner so that the fan never really got going properly under normal usage. Decided, therefore, to return the fan as it really wasn't working for us.

This does show better fan speed tripping in at a lower temperature than the previous model, which we have retained so we now use two fans.Obviously it’s a pretty crude way to improve heat distribution within the room that contains the stove as there is no guarantee of circularity, but it does help to relieve the heat island effect immediately around the stove. I have noticed that we now have relatively similar temperatures within the main room and better communication of heat into the hall, which is new. So on that basis it’s been a good investment.