Thats sounds more realistic. Mine is months. I checked our flue 2 years after we fitted the heater then at 7 years and have not been back up there. It is now year 11.
To get it to drive more heat out the front use a bigger piece of hardwood that will burn slower as a full width back log. use smaller pieces of the black wood for the fire itself and use the minimum amount of air to get the heat you want. Obviously the smaller pieces will give more heat and you can reduce the air to get the same amount of heat which will use less wood as well but of course, you will need to feed the fire more often. I guess you stack the wood across ways in the firebox? It burns slower than if you stack it north south like some manufacturers advocate. Clean the glass with a piece of wet newspaper. The wetter you can get the carbon on the glass the better. If that is not effective enough dip it in some ash from the fire, (avoid the crunchy bits they will scratch the glass). It will come straight off. I do mine after most fires especially overnight ones. It takes about 30 seconds if you don't let it build up. Another thing you may not have thought of is to put a heat proof baffle immediately above the heater above the heater itself to discourage heat loss up the chimney. Another improvement and probably the most effective is to this is make up a frame and attach pieces of 2 inch water or steam pipe on an angel from the rear of the heater, (lowest) to the front of the heater (highest) and leave both ends of the pipe open and protruding into the room above the front of heater. You wont believe how effective this is. The open fire ones I made, circulated the air from the room, under the actual fire, ie the fire was set on the pipes, then up the back of the fire place the across the top of the fire and protruded past the brickwork of the front of the chimney/ mantelpiece. I used to make a setup like this and sell them to people who still like using the open fire. They couldn't believe how effective this was. Good luck with it. I think that about covers it.
