Pellet Stoves?

[Irishgrrrl]

Does anyone own a pellet stove? If so, is that all you use to heat your house, or do you have a backup heating method? What kind of pellet stove do you have, and do you like it?

DH and I have an oil furnace. Yes, oil . . . as in that really expensive stuff that everybody is freaking out about right now. Fortunately, our furnace is very new and is therefore much more efficient than an older oil furnace would have been. But, we still spent over $2,000 on heating oil last winter. We just filled our oil tank (which was almost completely empty) and it cost over $900! So you can probably imagine what we''d wind up paying to heat our house this winter!!!

Needless to say, we''re looking into our options, and a pellet stove is starting to look like the way to go! If anyone has any advice for us, it would be greatly appreciated. Thanks!

 

[AGBF]

Hi, Irishgrrrl, no...I don''t have one, but I just read a big article on pellet and wood stoves this past weekend and I am trying to remember if it was in, "The New York Times" or the local paper! I discussed it with a former client who has a wood stove, telling him that he was ahead of the times! If I can find it I will post a link to it. It was quite interesting and informative. Apparently one usually has to use fans to circulate the heat if one wants to heat more than a small area.


Deborah

 

[AGBF]

Below are excerpts from an article in, "The New York Times".





September 15, 2008
As Oil and Gas Prices Rise, Wood Stoves Gain Converts
By KEN BELSON



"JEFFERSON VALLEY, N.Y. — Fire Glow Distributors Inc., a store in this hamlet in the Westchester County suburb of Yorktown Heights, has pellet stoves on back order. Tree trimmers for the utility company in Orange and Rockland Counties, used to scavengers in pickup trucks, have spotted Mercedes-Benzes trailing their crews to load logs into their (carefully lined) trunks.

And in Spring Valley, a village in Rockland County, landscapers like John Wickes are being pestered for the scrap branches they had to pay to dump just a few months ago.

'There are wood wars,' said Mr. Wickes, a third-generation co-owner of Ira Wickes, a family arborist business founded in 1929. 'People are desperate to look for ways to heat their homes cheaply.'

After a summer of high oil and gas prices, suburb dwellers around New York, and across the country, are going low-tech in hopes of reducing their energy bills this winter.

Shipments of pellet stoves, which can be inserted into a fireplace, more than tripled in the first half of 2008 compared with the same period in 2007, according to the Hearth, Patio and Barbecue Association; deliveries of wood stoves have jumped 54 percent. In the New York suburbs, the going rate for a cord of wood is $225, up from $175 last year, and the price of pellets, usually made from compressed sawdust, which has been scarce because of a slowdown in homebuilding, is also up (some people also burn shelled corn, peanuts, cotton and even cherry or olive pits).

Homeowners, not just in rural areas but also in the suburbs, are scrounging for wood, getting permits to cut in parks, hitting up tree-cutting crews and striking deals with neighbors.

Wood and wood-burning heating stoves go through spasms of popularity whenever oil and gas prices shoot up, most recently in 2005 after Hurricane Katrina. But this year’s run-up in prices was so rapid and sustained that people started planning for the coming winter not long after last winter’s snow melted.

'Sales never slowed down in May, June and July in the Northeast,' said Alan Trusler, the vice president of sales at Hearth and Home Technologies, which has doubled production of wood and pellet stoves at its factories in Pennsylvania and Washington State. 'It’s really fueled by economics.'

Residential heating oil prices during the coming season, October to March, are projected to average $4.13 per gallon, an increase of about 25 percent over last heating season, according to a forecast published on Tuesday by the federal Energy Information Administration. Residential natural gas prices over the same period are projected to average $14.93 per thousand cubic feet, compared with $12.72 during the last heating season, an increase of about 17 percent.

Angelo and Anna Cioffi of Pleasantville, N.Y., about an hour’s drive north of Manhattan, started looking for a pellet stove in March, when fuel prices were beginning their surge. The Cioffis said their oil company offered to cap their fuel prices at $4.75 a gallon for a $200 up-front fee. If they did not ante up, the Cioffis said they were told, they could pay up to $5.25 — nearly twice the $2.79 a gallon they paid last year.

So the Cioffis went to Fire Glow Distributors, whose Web site declares, 'Act now and be prepared for the next heating season!' and found a Quadra-Fire pellet stove on sale. But they held off buying until June. By then, the store was sold out, so the stove will not be delivered until October at the earliest.

Mr. Cioffi, who runs a handyman business called A C HomePro and plans to install the stove himself, said he expected to recoup its $3,000 cost in five years. This winter, he figures to spend about $600 for two tons of pellets, which come in 40-pound bags for $4 to $6. He will also pay whatever it costs to run the stove’s two electric fans to blow heat from the fireplace into his ranch house.

According to an online calculator at the Web site for the Pellet Fuels Institute, www.pelletheat.org/3/residential/compareFuel.cfm, pellets provide twice as much heat per dollar as oil.

'I hope to reduce my heating costs by half and not live like an Eskimo,' said Mr. Cioffi, who is installing a more efficient water heater, too. 'We just can’t keep sending our money overseas' to oil-producing nations, he said."

Deborah

 

[vetrik]

DH and I are just preparing for our first winter with a pellet stove. We had a oil delivery in May that was so expensive, I panicked about this winter and started exploring our options.

We bought a St. Croix fireplace pellet insert that was installed in June, and we had 3 tons of pellets delivered. We looked at a lot of brands - Harman, Enviro, Lopi, Quadra-Fire. We ended up going with St. Croix because we liked the local dealer, and we got the best deal by far.

I have heard that they are very hard to get right now because so many people are worried about the cost of oil and looking for alternatives. The price for a ton of pellets has also gone up from when we ordered them in June. We are hoping to save significant money even this season though with how much oil our house used!

I recommend the website www.hearth.com. They have a pretty active pellet stove forum, with a lot of helpful information.

Here''s an article that was recently in my local paper: Projo Pellet Stoves Article

I can provide even more information if you need it!

 

[Irishgrrrl]

Deb & Vetrik, thank you! This is some very helpful info.

I really like the St. Croix, Enviro and Hastings stoves because they''re all very detailed and ornate . . . just beautiful! But, they''re all a bit more than we''re looking to spend. We''re planning to spend about $1,500 to $2,000 on the stove, so we''re probably going to have to go with a pretty plain one. We wouldn''t mind investing the money into one of the more ornate ones if we were planning to stay in this house longer, but we''re probably going to move within about three to five years and we would want the stove to convey with the house when we sell it. Maybe we''ll get one of the pretty ones when we build our new house!

 

[radiantquest]

yes, we have a pellet stove. it heats pretty well. keep in mind that we have a small rancher. usually it is warmest in the living room which is where the stove is. it gets to the other end of the house where the bedroom and bathroom is. the bedroom is warm enough, but i use electric heat in the bathroom cause of showering. we also have alot of ceiling fans. i think they help circulate. it has got to be better than oil even if you have to supplement a little bit.

 

[Irishgrrrl]

Thanks, everyone!

RadiantQuest, our house is a two-story, so I think we''ll have more luck circulating the heat than you do in your rancher. We''re planning on putting the stove in our dining room, which is right in the middle of our first floor. Our stairs are also in the dining room, so we''re hoping the heat will just naturally make its way up the steps. Also, we do plan to run the furnace fan to help pull the pellet stove heat throughout the house, so I''m hoping we won''t need to supplement the pellet stove heat at all.

And we just ordered one! We got this one: http://www.northerntool.com/webapp/wcs/stores/servlet/product_6970_200362035_200362035

We had seen that one on several different websites, and Northern Tool had the best price by far. Some of the other websites wanted $2,500 for the thing and we got it for $1,300!!!

It should be here in about five to seven days, so DH is making plans to hopefully install it next weekend. I think we''re going to get some tile or stone or something and make a little pad for it on our dining room floor, to protect the floor and make it look nice!

Thanks again for all the input, and if anyone knows where to get pellets for cheap . . .