[Riley]

I like the idea of not being strictly dependent on a product that I have to buy, I’m hoping to put in a woodstove. I have trees on the property, and there’s a lot of useable deadfall.

More than willing to listen to the case for pellet stoves, though.

[Rio]

I’m a wood-stove user. The one problem I see is that you have to be there to feed it. Modern pellet stoves can light themselves.
No frozen pipes if you go away for the weekend.

[Doc91678]

Like your post. Unless you use pellets you’re SOL. A good fireplace with a large hearth mass does the trick. Once the hearth whether brick or rock warms it keeps the house at an even temp.

[Doc91678]

P.S. use hard wood only, Pine burns fast and the tars coat the chimney. Only use it in a pinch.

[Little Bill]

I have a wood stove back up, wood is dirty and expensive and you need a 1/3 more to achieve the same results.

I use 5.5 tons of pellets a year at 80% +/- effency , it gets cold in NH. To achieve the same result I would need about 8 cords of dry hard wood, in short supply up here at $240 a cord.

If you have a wood lot go for it.

[Rodamala]

I lived with a guy that in theory wanted to save the planet, but in practice would leave all the lights, TVs and Tube Amp radio on in the house all night long. He would open the doors of the house to the sunporch with jalousy windows in the summer and turn on the central air... to cool down basucally a greenhouse. ANYWAY... he bought a pellet stove and put it in the basement. I rigged the central air's air handler to move the hot air from above the stove to the first floor of the house as the upstairs did not have central AC (old stove farmhouse). The "goal" was to minimize the oil consumption for the baseboard heat...

The unseen cost was the 2 hour complete teardown and cleaning every 3 weeks. I wasn't working at the time and so I did that sorta stuff in place of rent. At the peak of winter, we would be burning 120 lbs of pellets/day (3 bags), offsetting about 80,000 BTU/hr of the oilburner's 135,000 BTU/hr rating.