Wood vs Pellet heat ???

[rgr33]

I have had a pellet stove for 10 years or so. The wife wanted it, as she thought the firewood was too messy Haven’t used it at all the past three years.
Dislikes- it’s useless when you lose power, it’s very noisy when running, its way too hot, due to the fan blowing hot air constantly.

Switching to propane at some point, scrapping the pellet stove.

 

[buckeyefarmer]

Love my harman pellet stove. I use as supplement heat in FR. Sitting beside it now. Lot cleaner and easier than a wood stove. Mine only needs cleaned monthly. Pellets easier to deal with than wood. I burned wood in my last house, lot more work.

 

[bunyip]

Positives, they are clean and maintain a heat level and start themselves, the amount of dust we get from our wood stove is incredible.
Negatives, initial cost and pellets are two to three times the price of average to good firewood.
I doubt we would get one as we have a reasonable supply of fallen timber and reverse cycle aircon.
The units I have seen here are European which means they are very expensive, over twice the price of a locally made good wood heater.

 

[Sawyer Rob]

A friend of mine switched from firewood to pellets this fall, and he has tree's to make firewood...

He's happy with the switch because there's no mess with pellets and a heck of a lot less work.

HE SAYS he's still coming out a lot less than buying propane.

SR

 

[Dftodd]

I have a wood burning fireplace insert. It's about as noisy as a pellet stove. The reason being is it has a 3 stage blower. If the blower isn't blowing, it doesn't give out any heat. In case of a power outage, we just hook it to the generator. And use it as supplemental heat and help cut down on our electric bill.

I get wood for free, and it will only handle 14" long chunks, so a cord of wood lasts quite awhile. And on a really cold winter, I might burn 1.5 cord of wood. I only use it when the temps get below 40 during the day and colder at night though. If it's warmer then that, it will drive you out of the house

 

[grsthegreat]

i replaced my old (19 yr old) kuma wood stove this summer with a new Lopi endeavor wood stove. i looked into pellet stoves, but cant stomach buying wood pellets when i have 20 acres of trees. mind you i get tired of putting up firewood, but it had to go somewhere. might as well go into heat.

i have a propane furnace in my shop, but im thinking of putting a pellet stove in there for winter work. the fact i could put a pellet stove on a thermostat makes that a nice option. that wont occur until i fully retire, as for now my propane furnace will heat up my shop in a few minutes. its just kinda expensive to leave on.

 

[buckeyefarmer]

My 93 yo dad started his wood furnace the other day, he has free gas from his well.... But just in case...

 

[Thomas]

Thanks for advice gentlemen...keep it coming. :thumbsup:

 

[coolreinfarm]

I’ve had a pellet stove for 18 years and has served me well, connected a wall thermostat and keeps the temperature +-2deg. Don’t have many power outages but it runs the same on generator. Much safer than the wood stove that i used for 30 years, no temperature spikes and no creosote. I direct vented out the wall so no chimney to maintain. I don’t know much about the pellet furnace, a friend of mine has a corn furnace and has had a lot of trouble with it. I have a wood furnace in the garage that does a very good job of heating.

 

[CS2210]

I'm on my 4th winter with my enerzone bio45 pellet stove and love it. We heated with electric baseboards here for the first 8 years and it was expensive, and never felt warm no matter how high we cranked the heat.

We live in New Brunswick so our heat is on constantly from about the middle of November until about April. With the cost of pellets (about $900 per year cad) were saving money and it's a constant heat with the stove hooked to a thermostat.

The first year we burned a brand of locally made pellets and I had to clean the stove every 2 days and had a lot of clinkers. Since then we switched brand of pellets and they burn a lot cleaner needing to be cleaned only about every 2 weeks. I would suggest if you do go with pellets to try a few bags of different brands to see what your stove likes.