When I first saw items like this I thought it looked a good idea so I bought one. Yeah, it "works", i.e. it goes round and round once it's heated. Unlike other's who claim it actually distributes heat around the room, my skepticism got the best of me so I ran a little experiment to see if it actually did something. I took a 3 foot long piece of sewing thread and dangled it in front of the blades to see if it was actually pushing any air. The result was the string tended to float upwards due to the heat from my stove rising due to convection. My conclusion is that any redistribution of the heat due to the fan is negligible. I searched online to see if anyone was able to backup their claims of better heat distribution and found not data to back up their claims. Testimonials are worthless in determining if these fans actually do any good.

Also, the quality of the blades leaves a lot to be desired. They are very flimsy and unbalanced which affects the speed the motor runs at. The hub of the blades isn't sized properly to match the diameter of the motor shaft. This also is a problem because it too affect the balance and this the speed of the blades.

As a conversation piece, it's a clever way to show off the Seebeck Effect and how two dissimilar metals can produce electricity. As to how effective it is, don't expect much. I ended up returning mine because other than a conversation piece, I felt it was worthless. Buyer beware!

This little guy makes a big difference in helping to heat the room. You would not think so but it really helps.
Starts up at about 130 F Has a cool over heat protection feature built in, when it gets too hot it lifts the base up a little to help keep it form over heating via a bi-metal strip.

We have to award this fan as the best investment this cold winter! We were skeptical but decided to give it a try and it turned out to be really efficient in dispersing the heat around the room, without any additional electricity. Just sit the fan on top of fireplace and it automatically operates off the heat conducted from the fireplace. It's just amazing and environmentally friendly.

The fan starts working as the stove stats to Heat up. The Hotter the stove gets the faster the fan turns. I had looked at several others and their design and selected this one based on the four blades and the reviews of others.. I rated this one a 3 because it does work, meaning it turns but as far as the ability to feel any air movement it won't even blow a feather away from it. I don't feel like it will do much for pushing air like some of the other reviews has stated. I see it more for decoration for me and I actually use it as a guide for when my stove is cooling down the fan will slow down or when its getting up to high temp then the fan will turn faster. I think it would push air if you could get it to spin faster as i spun it manually and held in front of face and could feel it then. I actually bent the blades a little more to maybe help it push the air and it seemed to help some. I may buy a different style/brand and compare just for my curiosity. I like the fan just because it lets me see how hot my stove is based on how fast the fan is turning. That's about it. For the price id buy another just to compare.

I got this for the wood burning stove in my shop. I have a small electric fan pointed at it to help move the air but wanted to try one of these get powered ones. So far I have been impressed. It does not move air as fast as the electric fan but does move air. It is very quiet, and runs till the stove is cold. Way better than forgetting to shut off the electric one and having it run all night.

I still run the electric fan if I need to move a lot of air quickly but this has been a very nice addition.