With the costs of oil and natural gas going up and up, people are listening and looking for ways to save money on their winter heating bills. I keep on hearing about pellet stoves as a good alternative.
Pellet stoves are similar to wood-burning stoves. Instead of logs, they burn pellets made from compacted sawdust, wood chips, bark and other organic materials. A standalone stove or an insert placed into a fireplace can provide heat for an open space as large as 1,500 to 1,800 square feet. Unlike a typical gas or oil heating system, which has pipes or ductwork throughout a house, a pellet stove typically heats only one room, unless a fan is used to force warm air into adjacent rooms, according to the U.S. Department of Energy.
Sounds good.... but what about downsides
Pellet Stoves Worth it? In this ask the builder question, it really talks about doing a cost analysis vs what is in vogue. Pellet stoves cost about $2000 so you are not going to make up the difference in one year.
Heating with pellets is quite economical compared with oil and natural gas. On the Sam's Club web site, pellets sell for about $187 a ton. The Department of Energy says a homeowner can expect to go through up to three tons of pellets a season, or $560 worth. In contrast, heating oil will likely cost owners of bigger homes in the Northeast several thousand dollars this winter.
The yuck factor aka a big hassle
Cleaning and filling up the pellet stove can be another job.
Before you get caught up in the hoopla of thinking that you are saving alot of money-be the informed consumer and do your research.
3 comments:
Hi,
I was thinking about a pellet stove with the price of heating oil and electricity going up, but I heard on the news just yesterday that now they're expecting a big jump in the price of the wood pellets! I'm not sure why that is. I know they make the pellet out of wood waste, after the main part of the tree has been used for lumber or whatever. Maybe it has to do with the cost of trucking (putting fuel in the trucks) or maybe because a lot of sawmills burn some of their woodwaste for supplementary energy and with the rising energy costs it makes more sense for them to burn it than to make pellets... but that's just a couple of guesses. The big point is, pellet stoves used to be really economical but it looks like we can't count on them staying that way forever!
Pellet Stoves are pointless when power goes out. Gas burning fireplaces are pointless when power goes out. We have had gas fireplace and friends of ours have had the pellet stoves. We now have a standard wood burning fireplace. It heats the whole house, and I'm not kidding, this place actually gets hot. We get the wood free from various places and we keep our thermostat at 68 degrees. Even now, in the middle of November, here in the northwest, in 2007 with a storm on it's way. We have the fireplace, gas hot water heater and gas cooking. We are ready for whatever this storm brings this year. Last year was a nightmare. It appears we moved just in time....
Forgot to mention, pellet stoves require electricity.
Gas burning fireplaces are for appearances only. Little to no heat and also require electricity for the blower(if they have one).
Wood burning...no problem, no electricity. Just some personal work to chop the wood.
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