wood stove placement

rancar · Feb 23, 2002

Pellet stoves are worthless. /w3tcompact/icons/frown.gif Brother-in-law has one in his family room. Tries to use it to heat whole house on a warm winter day. /w3tcompact/icons/crazy.gif Result = it was luke warm sitting 6' away from it. Even worse in other parts of the house. Maybe, this explains why his family were always sick.

Knight9 · Feb 24, 2002

Rancar,

<font color=blue>Pellet stoves are worthless</font color=blue> Seems to be a rather general statement. It could have been the setup, the model, etc. I have a friend here who both sells them and has one in his home. It really pumps out the heat and burns clean. He has a fan on it and when it is really going I CAN'T sit 6' away from it! It's too hot! Someone else commented on them being useless in a power outage. Most quality pellet stoves have an option for automatic battery backup for the feeder system. Now I'm certainly a "wood stove" kind of guy, but there is a reason pellet stoves are growing in popularity.

Kevin

Bayrat · Feb 24, 2002

If I were doing it over again, I would use the type that sits outside. They last a week once you stoke them and you pipe hot water into the house for heat. Been to too many house fires with wood stoves. I have one but use it strictly as emergency heat when I lose power. You can see them in action at many state and county fairs.

rancar · Feb 24, 2002

Okay Kevin, I concede. I retract my previous statement about pellet stoves being worthless. I'll admit they could have some value under certain circumstances. I posted my other remark though because I had just read Franz's post in the thread "You Can Help Out". I was all worked up and plain angry. Sorry if I offended anyone out there who has and likes their pellet stoves.

Chuck52 · Feb 24, 2002

I have a situation where it might make sense to install an insert for backup heat. My house has a large see through fireplace on the main floor. Of course using this thing is usually a heat loss, and we only have a fire in it when we'd like to watch the flames....usually not on really cold days. However, there's also a fireplace in the basement. The house was built in the 50's, and I assume the idea was to eventually finish the basement space, but the original owners never got around to it. We might eventually do something down there, but we have plenty of living space on the main floor, so it's not a priority. However, after reading this thread, it seems to me that putting in a good insert in the basement fireplace might be a reasonable way to provide some backup heating for the house. The fireplace downstairs is all brick, and the basement is concrete. It's a walkout basement, so getting to the wood supply would be easy enough. However, the fireplace is right in the middle of the basement and it would be difficult to supply outside air to it. Would this still be a reasonable way to get some heat? Looks like the least expensive inserts are in the $1500 range, without chimney or installation.

Chuck

valley · Nov 21, 2011

We have a friend that has a fireplace, she leaves the mountain during winter because her house is too cold. I don't think in most places you can heat with a fireplace. [We plan to help her get an insert]
We heat with a wood stove I bought new in the 70's it works great, our house is two story, 2000 sqft. The only modification I've made is adding a cast iron plate to the door with a glass front and air inlets that can be opened or closed, this causes a secondary burn of gas. This is a large stove made by Centennial $250 no longer in business.

magicheater · Nov 21, 2011

Bayrat said:
If I were doing it over again, I would use the type that sits outside. They last a week once you stoke them and you pipe hot water into the house for heat. Been to too many house fires with wood stoves. I have one but use it strictly as emergency heat when I lose power. You can see them in action at many state and county fairs.

Please show us the type that you stoke once a week. I would be interested in seeing that.