Wood, Pellet, and Gas Stoves

So how many of you plan to supplement your home heating source this year by using a wood, pellet, or gas stove? I just purchased a wood stove insert for my fireplace, installation is set for early November. Apparently, a lot of people are ordering various stoves as the dealer told me gas stoves and pellet stoves are currently back-ordered until January at this point. He said people started looking at stoves in the early summer where they usually wait until fall. I'm defintely looking forward to a nice fire on a cold night.

 

I've got some friends from home that heated their entire house (2k+ sq ft) with a large wood pellet stove.

A ton of pellets was like 150 bucks- and they would only need 3-4 tons of pellets.

Seems like a really good idea- I'm just going to stick to Florida for now tho...=)

 

When in was in Wisconson we had a large outdoor wood stove. Worked great, always kept us warm. But for now I will stick with Florida as well. Gotta love FREE snow removal!! HAHA

 

I use a wood burning stove. It does a good job heating the livingroom and kitchen which is one large area with the stove to one side. Last winter, I wouldd turn the heat up until the stove got hot with the burning wood. Then I cut back on the heat. Usually took an hour or so.
I don't the the stove as the main source of heat,as suplement it works fine for us.
Wood I gather from our hearby land, cut and split it to size and store it in our wood shed.
Nothing like opening the doors of the stove at night and watch the burning logs.

 

The house we bought had an old pellet stove in it, so we use it! Had to replace the blower assembly last winter. It was 10 years old near as I can tell, so if we get 10 more out of the new motor I'll be happy! Pellets were around $240/ton last winter, but since the price has gone up this year I'm not sure what they run now. We ran through 1 ton every 4-6 weeks last year in our 2700sqft house with oil heating the upstairs and 1 room on the first floor too far from the stove. Of course, this summer we replaced 8 of the windows on the 1st floor with double paned, argo filled, low-E windows so hopefully that'll cut our entire heating bill down! Thing is 2 winters ago we were spending $300/month on oil, and buying 5-10 bags of pellets to help out a bit. Last winter we bought them by the ton (so $240/month) in addition to spending about $2,000 on oil. If you figure that's 4 months of heating (Nov-Feb), we spent $500/mo on oil plus $240/mo on pellets for a total of $740/mo. Give or take. I don't remember the oil exactly... Luckily HEAP paid for most of it since I was out of work for 6 months, we called for deliveries when we ran out, and we've run all summer on the last delivery (turned heat off once it hit 60 during the day, and just used the furnace for hot water). It really looks like using pellets didn't help us at all, but I'm really hoping the new windows keep more heat in the house so the pellet stove is more effective. It can maintain most of the downstairs at 70+ once the furnace helps overcome the overnight drop. I've seriously considered making biodiesel to burn in the furnace, but there's a lot of effort involved.

 

Not me, but many of my friends are relying on alternatives, be it pellet or wood stoves. My house is fortunately is pretty new, has a high efficiency natural gas furnance, and radiant floor heating. This summer I did change up the utility room where the furnance is and installed a screen door with some temp control fans to pushing all that heat into the lower level.

 

I have been using a pellet stove for about 12 years now switching from a wood stove so much easier to store bags of pellets for us it heats the whole house and when power goes out I have a battery pack with a power converter to keep the heat flowing. We use the pellet stove as the primary source of heat and a central gas furnace as second source.

 

Hahaha. It didn't take you long to sniff out this thread PT. You deserve a PhD in home heating.

 

Yeah, I saw the title and figured I'd jump in! As much as I hate winter, and dread the heating bill, the curiosity about how much the windows will help is killing me!

 

No thanks, I'll stick with my $90 a month electric bill instead. New house all electric.

 

You're lucky! Last time I had electric heat (and stove and dryer and water heater.....) was about 7 years ago and we had a $300 monthly bill even back then!

Edit:
Hell, even with my new house and oil heat/hot water my last electric bill was $140. Then again, I may have been using my welder that month.... heh

 

I have a fireplace in my new house (lived there going 3 years) and I have been using it alot. The fireplace is not as efficient as a wood/pellet stove but it def warms up my living room nice.

 

Yeah, PT I remember we talked this last winter with you. Hope the windows help. I was going to have a wood burning fireplace installed this year but my back yard project used up all the money.

 

Ive got a Vermont Castings Dutchwest wood stove. It saves me a lot of money on my heating bills and cutting firewood helps keep me in shape during the summer months.
Not to mention that its fun to go out in the woods with the chainsaw and play lumberjack!