[glorgau]

When you do the math, that works out to about 4 tons of pellets for the whole winter or $800. Our next door neighbor with a house similar to ours spent $700 on natural gas last month.

Yeah, but how much mess is the ash? That's the reason I got a gas log firelace instead of a "real" one. Just flick a switch and instant fire.

[tcostell]

Pellet stoves like ours produce .5 grams of ash per hour when running at full speed. At that rate we need to clean it out about once per week, and even that amounts to little more than 5 minutes with the vacuum cleaner.

A full weeks worth of ash can be fit into a coffee can with room left over.

[wouldntbprudent]

I used my gas fireplace once and just about used up my kids' college fund in the process.

So how about some variation on the kachelofen?

http://www.ceramicstoday.com/articles/kachelofen.htm