Which Stoves are best, Steel or Cast Iron?

When selecting a stove the question regarding the material from which the stove has been made from is always quite high on the list as this will affect the day-to-day running of the stove.

A stove made from steel heats up very quickly, this is ideal for working family coming home to a cold house, the down side to this is that it cools down quickly between refueling and will not give the same constant heat as a cast-iron stove. 

A stove made from cast-iron will take longer to heat up in some cases up to 40 minutes, but a cast-iron stove should retain the heat for a longer period of time and not cool down between refueling. Cast-iron stoves are designed for  prolonged use and are ideal if you are requiring heat all day long.

There is also some debate on which has the best build quality and life expectancy between a steel bodied stove and a cast iron stove. If you purchase a quality branded cast-iron stove, then it will most certainly be more resilient to extreme heat than a steel stove and will not buckle if over fired and should out live any steel bodied stove. Unfortunately most cast-iron stoves sold in the UK are Chinese imports and are no more than a poor imitation of a quality stove.

Cheap Cast Iron Stove

Unfortunately the UK has a very relaxed approach to the safety of solid fuel appliances, and we have now become the "dumping ground" for poor quality cast-iron appliances made outside the EU with "for export use only" stamped on the data plate. Cheap cast iron stoves are often made in China and manufactured from South American "Pig iron" forged  illegally on charcoal fires, fed with unmanaged rainforest timber.

I  find this ironic when the end-user purchases the stove for environmental reasons. A cheap cast-iron stoves will have a very low chrome content so once fired will become very brittle and with a higher coefficient of expansion, resulting in the joints leaking, flue pipes becoming loose, the baffle plates bending, grates melting and even cracking the top casting of the stove.

"China exports thousands of products to the US and the world, yet there is no responsible governmental body in China to insure the safety of their manufactured items or foodstuffs. No government oversight coupled with the fact that there are virtually no ethical restraints on attempting to make a profit, no child labor laws, no workers' rights organizations or processes, few environmental rules or regulations and a volatile mix is provided that exposes the purchaser of Chinese made products to unusually high risk"  

This is a real worry when nobody is checking the safety of these appliances at this end either.

There is a very good reason why a cheap cast-iron stove will cost £299 and a quality branded cast iron stove will cost up to £1200 It has less to do with where it is made, but more to do with what it's made from. It's also worth considering whether you will be able to get spare parts for the stove online, or from a DIY shed, if the stove has been manufactured in China and traveled halfway around the world.

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