Hi, Im from the Massachusetts area and am concidering buying a pellet stove. I figured who better to provide thoughts than people in the Rocky Mountain area....... If you can provide any thoughts, please PM me. I would appreciate your advice. - Ron Frohock
I grew up in Grand Lake, Colorado.. My family used to burn 2-3 cords a winter in our wood stove and 2-3 coords a winter in our fire place as well. We had 5200 Square feet to heat and the wood stove was by far more efficient than a fireplace. On warmer days, days in the 20's and 30's, the wood stove alone would heat the entire house.. On Colder nights, coldest I can remember was 52 below without windchill, both the wood stove and fire place would be going... Now for Woodstoves... Two kinds, pellet and real wood stoves.... Pellet stoves are nice as you can set a temp on them and they manage themselves as long as there are pellets in the storage area on the stove. There are bottom feeders and top feeders, top feeders seem to have fewer problems. They both produce great heat and are very efficient... http://www.hometips.com/cs-protected/guides/pellet.html Regular wood stoves must be managed more frequently but provide the same amount of efficiency and the wood is cheaper than buying it in 50 pound bags of pellets if you cut it yourself. We burn pine and have many acres of land so we skipped the pellet stove. Either way both are great sources of heat and whichever you buy get one that is the least complex and has a great ventilation system in it to blow the hot air out from around the stove into your room. Running the blower fan costs about the same as leaving a 60 watt light bulb on all the time, which is nothing compared to what you save in natural gas. In our Denver home we also burn about 2 cords a winter, have a regular woodstove with a second stage burning chamber to make it EPA okay and able to burn even on bad pollution days. I buy my wood for our Denver home, from a guy I grew up with who owns Jonsey's wood yard in Watkins Colorado and for about $400.00 a year in wood I end up saving $600.00 in natural gas costs plus I have a warm fire in my house and the smell of burning pine which is something I love.
We have a large, and old, estate home on PA/NY Boarder and several years ago traded out the wood burning fireplaces for pellet stoves... it was a the best thing we did. Go For it
