some of you might remember last year´s thread about "Exotic Beauties" and all my ramblings about overly tight German environmental legislation...
One year has passed, I found another shop close to the Black Forest (approx 3 hrs. drive) named OHA http://www.antik-oha.de/de/oefen/. They specialized in restoring stoves of all kinds PLUS they organize for all the needed technical testing to be done before you buy (best of all: that´s already included in their relatively moderate pricing). So you´re basically on the safe side and have the written guarantee that you´ll get your money back in case the stove should fail to get the certificate ... no risk of obtaining a very expensive decorative item! Just to clarify: a stove must run at least 73% (thermal) efficient and may only create a certain amount of pollutants in order to get permission to operate it. So the stoves have to undergo individual tests at the Technical Control Board and these alone will cost something like €800.
To cut the somewhat lenghty story short: went there, had a very long, informative and detailled tour of all the stoves they have in stock, "fell in love" with a green enamelled stove with moderate nickle trimming and decorative art nouveau ornaments, called the Better Half and bought it straight away (pics as soon as it´s delivered). The stove still had to undergo restoration (new firebricks & new nickle on the doors & draft controls) and was supposed to be delivered late Oct/ early Nov. Got a phone call yesterday: the re-nickeling went faster than expected - delivery next Thursday. Needless to say: feels like the week before Christmas when I still was a child
Big benefit: it cost €2.500, that´s about as much as a new cast iron stove of good quality (Morsoe or Jotul) would cost! Same price, perfect design plus a product that has already withstood 98 years of use without significant defects - what else could I ask for?!
My Better Half was easily convinced as we had some money left from refurbishing the kitchen and a little investment payed off well... plus all the insecurity we´re going through with our monetary system and the wide-spread fear of inflation... so we thought we´d better spend the money we have on useful items instead of hording it in the bank and sit watching as inflation consumes it
And a stove (plus several tons of coal in the basement) might prove to be very useful if we should really run into hyperinflation, collapse of the € or whatever. And if the total crisis can be avoided: even better! The pyromaniac in me will have a stove to mess around with, we´ll be able to cut on heating expenses PLUS I kept my job & savings - a win-win situation! 
The stove itself is a FELIX 221 multifuel direct draft stove, cast in 1914. Produced by Ludwigshütte foundry in Marburg, Germany. They were in business from the 1860´s to the 1930´s, when they were gobbled up by Buderus.
The stove stands approx 4ft 8 tall, has a footprint of 16X13 inches, it is rated 8KW (27.3K btu) and weighs about 260-280lbs. The firebox is approx 12inches deep and 8.5x7 wide. The setup is pretty much like a Yotul 507 with its 3 doors. The stove has a extended smoke box on top of the area where the fuel is burned, so the exhaust travels to the back under the first hotplate, then up around the warming box that is built around the hotplate. It is then directed to the front of the stove by a baffle plate, travels under a second hotplate and exits in the back of the stove. The second hot plate can be covered with a decorative cast iron dome to lessen the heat output. The grates will most likely not convince you - simple shaking mechanism like a Petit Godin, no prismatic grates like in a Glenwood.
Pics will follow next week, attached is the advertisement for the significantly smaller 1920´s version without the extended smoke box. But the art nouveau decoration is about the same... Very thrilled about the level of efficiency the Technical Control Board measured! The document will be shiped with the stove, all I know is that it must obviously have passed the required minimum of 73%....
Mark
Enamel on cast iron is so neat and very easy to clean the dust out.
Nous attendons la suite pour votre poele avec impatience.