FHT Stoves is a trading name of Redford-Tech Limited, a company owned by Simon Redford, an Engineer with 35+ years’ experience of energy related product development, testing and energy efficiency programmes. See Simon’s CV for more details. The FHT Stoves name is used for all development of the ‘Fan Heat Transfer’ Stove technology.

The FHT Stove was developed originally in response to the considerable costs and inherent dangers of connecting wood burning stoves to central heating systems; the high thermal mass of combusting fuel may result in dangerous boiling of simple water jacket systems in the event of restricted water flow around the jacket. The resulting design exceeded the original remit with significant advantages for customer comfort and low-cost integration with many different configurations of heating systems.

FHT Stove prototype under test

The FHT Stove technology has been developed and extensively tested on several different commercially available convector stoves, proving the unique ‘switchable heat transfer’ ability of the design, its fail-safe qualities and its ability to integrate with many different heating systems and configurations. It is particularly suitable for integration with low-temperature systems such as Air Source Heat Pumps (ASHP), providing valuable renewable heat support when heat pump performance is most limited by low outdoor temperatures and peak electricity prices.

The FHT Stove technology has particular relevance for EcoDesign legislation for stoves which was introduced in January 2022, and requires wood burning stoves to achieve high efficiency and low emissions. Traditional ‘back boiler’ stoves cannot achieve low emissions as the water ‘jacket’ around the fire instead of firebricks, cools the combustion zone leading to poor combustion and greater emissions.

The FHT Stove may be one of the only stoves which can be connected to central heating circuits under the EcoDesign legislation. This comes at a time of unprecedented gas and oil costs when integrating wood burning stoves into household heating systems has aquired a new emphasis.