Escea DF Series
Verified13 reviews
Poor build quality for the price. Solenoids with plastic coverings that perish with heat and flimsy thin pipes. Show details
Love the DF700 - looks great and heats well. Love the fantastic Kiwi technical service after four years from Escea even more - went above and beyond to help us out. Show reply
Do not buy an Escea product – Do not buy an Escea product. We got the DF960 with logs. First year installed after a week of using it, it had a defect and they told me not to use it. I waited 4 months for the new part so we didn't get to use it all winter. We are constantly contacting our installer as every year we get an error 3 message. Sometimes it can work for 5 days… Read more
straight, other days we get the E3 message and it won't start and we go days without it working during winter. Escea direct has been terrible. They won't cover the service to repair this cause 1 year I didn't contact them. I'm sick of always ringing the installer every year. No one can tell me why this is happening. I will never buy an Escea product.
Poor fireplace heat, and slow service for a fault – The unit lit easily twice from the remote really easily so I was impressed with that and after that I got error messages. The installing plumber from Classic attended, pulled the whole unit apart and phoned Escea with fake logs, stone a bits around him, just to be told that they’ve worked out that the fireplace needs a software upgrade! So I was… Read more
told they’d be in touch in a couple days but it took another few weeks for Escea phone, after a nudge, to make an appointment in another 3 weeks = 6 weeks to attend. Seriously, do yourself a favour and get an Illusion. Heat Output will be superior for the same price and the one I’ve had in a luxury rental has been hassle free. Talk about buyers regret. I’ll update this after the service.
Great heat output – We are over the moon with our Escea fireplace. We live in an old house and it's doing a great job of keeping our open plan living/ dining/ kitchen cozy. We had an issue initially and the service and resolution to this has been outstanding, I highly recommend Escea for a company that provides excellent after care and a quality product. Show details
Not Happy! – We have not had a good experience with our Escea DF 700 since we bought it. When we got it home we discovered a scratch on the side of the unit, which the retailer wouldn't do anything about because we had transported it home in our car (even though we had packed it very carefully, with the retailer's help, so none of the parts touched). Within a… Read more
couple of weeks after having it installed by a qualified gas fireplace installer the metal on the top of the unit started bubbling as if it was rusting under the paintwork. Our installer rang Escea in New Zealand while he was here sorting out a couple of other issues with the fireplace & told them about the bubbling paintwork. They said it should be replaced & they would get back to him but he, nor we, ever heard back from them. Each year when we've tried to light the fireplace at the start of winter we've experienced trouble getting it to light and more than once we've had to get the serviceman to come out because an error message (E2) has appeared on the remote control. Now our serviceman no longer does this sort of work so we have no one in our district who knows anything about these fireplaces - we think the nearest service person is about 200kms away. We have tried to light the fireplace this week without success and the same error message (E2) has appeared on the remote. So we have no heater. We found a serviceman who has never heard of Escea but he has been out & tried his best. He has contacted Escea and my wife has also phoned Escea, explained the situation and Escea said they will call back by today but neither the serviceman, nor my wife, have heard back from them. So, understandably, we are not happy and would either like the whole unit replaced or our purchase price refunded.
Great heat and amazing customer service – I had issues with the fire making a vibration noise from the time it was installed. Escea’s customer service was outstanding, the best customer service I have ever received from a company. It took 2 years to solve the issue, throughout the whole process they kept me up to date. They were incredibly supportive in dealing with sub standard tradies,… Read more
who alleged they had rectified the issue. In the end the fault was that the heater was incorrectly installed by a tradesman for Afonso Building Solutions. Afonso’s customer service was appalling. Yet Escea remained professional and easy to deal with, they even spoke to the builder on my behalf to resolve the issue. Would definitely buy future products from them.
Lovely fire when is working – Fire worked well for two winters. Then remote would not turn fire on and required a new electrical board. Fire $7,000 new board $500 plus servicing. Would not warranty as not serviced. Make sure you service fire every year or Escea will not honour the warranty. We were not informed of this condition when purchasing the fire or having it installed. Very disappointing
Hello Penny, That is a shame to see you have had a less… Read more
Love the log fire look and it performs well – We had the DF960 with logs installed in our new home. We love the appearance, it looks like real logs, they glow red when heated and we see good flames. Having had a real log fire in our old house, we thought the gas version might be a bit disappointing, but it is actually very convincing. We have a large open living,dining, kitchen area which… Read more · 1
is open to the rest of the house, including the upstairs TV room. The fire is efficient at covering it all, we rarely us the central heating. We have also been impressed by Escea's customer and service support. Very happy with our fire.
Great heat but no effect – It has great heat but the flame can’t be seen. The flame effect is the main reason we purchased it which is disappointing. When the effect only mode is on you literally can’t see anything other than the fuel bed glowing. When it’s on its highest setting you see the occasional flicker at night but next to nothing as per the attached photo. Escea… Read more
say the flame just looks this way on natural gas. I would think most people would have natural gas and not an LPG cylinder. I raised concerns over the possibility of a bad flame to a rep at a dealership in Sydney due to another one I had seen and he said it would be an installation issue on that fireplace and didn’t mention anything about an invisible flame when used on natural gas.
As I mentioned, the customer service has been great and they have sent a tech around fairly quickly. It seemed as if it improved a bit where there was one flame that was able to be seen but now it’s gone back to invisible like the other flames.
Very disappointed as it’s supposed to be a real feature of our house.
Nice fireplace. Unbelievably bad control App – I bought the freestanding DFS730 version of this heater. It's a very pretty unit which is one of the primary reasons we got it, and it also has App based control which is the other reason. I have a fully connected, automated home and everything can be controlled through my iPhone. I emailed Escea directly with several questions before I made the… Read more · 1
purchase but they never responded. I also emailed them twice more with some other queries and didn't hear a whisper back, so I'm pretty scared about the prospect of something going wrong with this unit. Which brings me to their App...
The idea of being able to control your gas log fire with your iPhone (either in the house, or from anywhere in the world) is a really good one. I always have my iPhone with me, I don't want to add another physical remote to the house, and everything else I have at home is digitally controlled. However the Escea App has been developed very poorly. Every morning I launch the App (from my bedroom) and try to turn the downstairs heater on, and it takes between 5 to 20 times of trying and re-trying for the App to find the heater (it just hangs, "refreshing"). I usually have to force quit the App 3-4 times and keep trying this over and over and over. It's unbearably annoying and sometimes I just give up. This is not an occasional happening, it's consistent every day. When using the App remotely (outside the house) it works much better, but I only do that occasionally. When inside the house over a local connection, it's a disaster. This App needs to be developed further to make the local connection reliable. At present I would rate that feature 1 star out of 5.
On top of this, the App is standalone and heater control hasn't been integrated into any of the platforms (Apple HomeKit, Google Home, Amazon Alexa) that specialise in enabling this functionality and enhancing the connected home. To say this was an oversight during the development process would be a remarkable understatement.
In terms of performance the fireplace does a fairly nice job, heating a large room adequately and not costing a fortune. It's no-where near as powerful as an old Archer unit I have but it's much more modern looking and gets the job done while looking stylish. There are two burner settings and two fan levels (at least - I was led to believe there were more but I haven't been able to see the evidence of that) which regulate the room's temperature. The single burner setting produces a pretty small flame that doesn't look very impressive but I guess that's a necessary compromise for gas saving. I've never been able to work out what the "effect only" feature does (one would assume it produces a flame but with no fanned heat) however it seems to do identical things to when the heater on its lowest setting.
I would recommend this unit but if you're buying a heater for the 21st century to control digitally or to integrate with any kind of smart home or home automation, this doesn't currently offer that.
Amazing product – Heats 700 squares very well Great being connected to wifi turn the fire on before you get home from your phone I wasn’t pay for this I am so happy The company deserved credit Made in New Zealand we had a fire place all ready changed to gas Show details · 1
This product could be a health risk – This product contains fibre glass rope to seal joints - most gas fires do. However, unlike other comparable fires from other manufacturers, this fire has to be partially dismantled to install and the glass panel has to be removed to install and service. This is a concern as the glass panel is seated in a channel lined with fibre glass. Each… Read more
time the glass panel is removed or re-seated this may result in tiny particles of fibre glass snapping off and these can potentially then be blown into the room environment when the fire is in use. Fibre glass is known to cause several health issues - even in small quantities. I purchased this model to replace a Heat & Glo fire which had performed admirably until a fibre glass seal was damaged by a Service Technician during a service. This then caused fibre glass particles to be blown into my living area and caused extreme skin irritation. The manufacturer advised that this could only be repaired if returned to the factory. As this is a US company this was not an option.
When purchasing the Escea DF960 as a replacement I therefore sought, and was given, an assurance from the supplier that this fire contained only a very small amount of fibre glass and there was no risk from dust escaping the fire. Unfortunately this proved not to be the case. The glass in my fire is covered in tiny shimmering shards of fibreglass. I referred this to both the manufacturer and the supplier. The response I got from both was a total denial of liability. Statements by them included that the fire was 'fit for purpose' and that 'all gas fires emit fibre glass'. So, I have no option to rip out a fire that poses a health risk and write off the substantial investment.
Needless to say, I will not be purchasing another fire but will invest in improving the thermal rating of my property.
Hello MCA, It is unfortunate that you have had this… Read more (+1 reply)
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Hello Julija, We are sorry to hear you have had this issue… Read more