I am an Esse dealer, currently the Esse wood burning cookers with boilers have 2 sizes of boiler, the WD has a 7000BTU (2kw roughly) boiler so domestic hot water only and the W35 has a 33,000 BTU boiler (9.7kw) so DHW + 3 decent double rads. The new 3 oven 990 model has a DHW size boiler only.
The products are principally cookers that also heat water, they will not qualify for lower rate VAT and will not as far as I am aware qualify for RHI incentive payments. These are only available for bits of kit whose principal job is to heat water, ie boilers.
I would though love to be proved wrong on the RHI issue.
I have sold several with no complaints at all, some have been linked into bulk energy stores. Fuel wise, I used an Esse live at a 2 day outdoor show last summer, lit at 6,30am, charged with 2 bits of dry ash about 350mm long x 100mm dia and 3 heat logs at 6.45am, heat running around the ovens full time, temperature gauge soon off the scale. I was opening the firebox door every 5 minutes to show customers, at 2pm I had nothing in the firebox but ash, I put another 2 bits of Ash on just to show some flames. At 10pm the oven temp reading was still on Med Hot.
The Esse wood fired cooker is a very very fuel efficient device, very well insulated the heat output to the kitchin is about 5kw, same as a decent size double rad. You just need to feed it with dry ( min 20% MC) wood or heat logs or smokeless solid fuel.
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