thank you very much,

mark

If you want backup heat during a power outage, I would go with a wood-burning insert. I will be getting a Regency I2400 for my fireplace sometime this year. The fireplace is in a downstairs family room. For now I am getting a pellet stove to heat an unheated sunroom and the main living area of my house. I am getting a Harman Advance stove. I ruled out a gas stove, as I want to lower my energy costs, not increase them. And the gas stove was going to cost almost as much as the pellet stove, after running a gas line and installation costs.

Hope this helps some. Do look through past posts for relevant information as well.

Rhonda

Pellet: They can be nice if you just want a heat source. But the fire is just to "busy" for me. I can never relax in front of one.

Wood: You can have a very nice heat source and when you want you can shut down the air and have a nice "lazy" fire to relax in front of. I have been in homes with all three types of stoves. NOTHING is as nice as a real wood fire.

But only you can decide what you want. Do you like the idea of just pressing a remote and you have a fire? Do you want to carry bags of pellets that must be kept in a dry storage place? Do you like carrying wood? The latter doesn't bother me at all. Wood heats many times. When you cut it, when you split it, when you stack it, and when you burn it. Now I'm in my late 50s and I live in an area that has many woodstoves. So the smell of woodsmoke in the air is a comforting one. It means our neighbors are all safe in their homes for the night. The idea of a gas stove with a remote control is too "Yuppie" for us. I look out at my cordwood and I know that my family will be safe, warm and dry for the entire winter even if the power goes out during a blizzard.

I suggest you check them all out first hand. Look at the fire patterns of each. And then get what you like best. My gut feeling is that if you live in a suburban subdivision you'll get gas. Your neighbors won't like the sight of stacked cordwood. It'll mean you have an independent streak and we just can't have that.

Coal.

You're in Cleveland, so you should have access to relatively inexpensive supplies of hard coal.

We purchased a Quadra-Fire pellet stove (the santa fe model, which is one of the smaller ones) and put it in our 2-story great room. What an INCREDIBLE difference it has made this year. Our electric bills are less than HALF of what they used to be. We use about a bag of pellets per day ($3 per bag at Walmart, about $3.75 per bag anywhere else). That's only about $100 per month or so in pellets - not bad at all.

There is daily maintenance - cleaning out the clinkers from the firepot, adding pellets, and cleaning the glass - but on average, it takes me less than 5 minutes per day. About once every 2-3 weeks, I give the stove a very thorough cleaning (taking apart a couple metal plates, cleaning behind them, etc). That cleaning takes about 20 minutes.

Overall, we are very happy we got a pellet stove. I can't believe how much money we have saved this year in electricity.

As far as pellet brands: There is a huge difference in my opinion. One of the best we found is Bio-Plus pellets from Walmart at $3.00 per bag. They burn very cleanly. Another good brand was "Hardwood Heat" sold by Southern States. Those were very small, tiny pellets and they seem to feed and burn much better than longer pellets. Most places sell the pellets cheaper if you buy 50 bags (1 ton quantity).

Good luck.

We also have a gas fireplace (vent free propane) in our basement family room. It's nice, remote-control, and completely maintenance free - but my gosh, Propane is EXPENSIVE. I wouldn't recommend it either if you plan on heating your house with it. But since we only use it for our basement, and only have it turned on when we're down there; the cost isn't too bad.

Also forgot to mention that our Quadra-Fire pellet stove is also thermostat controlled. It comes with a thermostat; but I threw away that one and installed a nice programmable digital t-stat from Lowes (it only cost about $20 bucks!). Having the stove turn itself on and off is VERY NICE. We keep it on 68 degrees in the great room; which actually keeps the 2nd story bedrooms at about 70 degrees since the heat rises.

Being able to precisely control the heat, without having to turn it on & off manually is great.

In response to the poster above who thought a wood stove would be good in a power outage - ours isn't. Any stove that has electric blowers will most likely need to be shut down if the power goes out. Once we had a neighbor come over to let us know that our chimney was "glowing red" during a power outage. It just gets too hot without the blowers working. Now we shut it down completely.

And the fire is so much better with wood...Just my opinion

I had an Avalon that had the blower fan to move the air in the home. And when the power went out we just didn't use the fan. But it had nothing to do with the operation of the stove itself. I purchased our Regency without the blower and it heats the new house just fine. With or without power.

And as far as burning scrap wood in a stove... Only do this with a NON CAT stove. The scrap wood is kiln dried and has very little moisture. This can overheat the cat converter and ruin it.

Two other drawbacks... is storing corn...it will attract rodents I'm sure, and no heat during power outage.