Is a woodstove worth the money?

[George E. Cawthon]

I moved into an all electric house 1976 in a low cost electric area and had one year's heating costs before I installed a wood stove. Figured that it would take at least 5 years to recover all the capital costs. It turned out that I recovered all capital costs--stove cost, installation costs, chainsaw, etc. in 3.5 years. I didn't dig them out but as I remember capital costs were around $900 and a cord of free firewood cost me an average of about $25 for gathering it. After the first 3.5 years my costs were about $75 per year (3 cords) for heat. Took the stove out about 5 years ago because of my wife's asthma and changed to gas. My December heating bill is now above previous all year heating cost.

I wouldn't plan on recovery of capital costs in

3.5 years now, recovery in a 5-7 year period is easily possible if one does all the installation and buys modestly priced equipment and gets free wood.

[mm]

Wouldn't it be easier for us if they would just grind up the wood into atomic sized particles and pump it through a pipe? .....

Long ago, my father was 53 when he bought his first house, with a coal furnace. He filled it in the morning, but my 37 y.o. mother had to fill it the rest of the day.

So he bought an automatic stoker, so he only had to fill it in the morning and once at night..

A year or two after that, he bought a gas furnace.

Remove NOPSAM to email me. Please let me know if you have posted also.

[Jonathan Grobe]

A woodstove is going to require a great deal of labor adding the wood to the stove. So unless you are getting free wood I suggest a wood pellet stove or corn stove as a much better alternative (you only have to fill them once a day or so). Corn stoves are appealing in the rural midwest, but are less appealing in big cities where is may be more difficult to get corn cheaply.

[needin4mation]

Yeah, but say I get trapped with no electricity and all my pellets run out. Then I can't use wood. I can't get to the store to get the pellets. I'm doomed. I know that silly and I am exagerrating, but I don't know that I want to have to keep buying pellets from the store. I don't know what that sounds so bad to me compared to good old fashioned wood.

Do the pellets get the stove hot enough so I could cook on top of it (with a pan)?

[Don Phillipson]

So buy either a pellet stove that does not need electric feed (and buy enough pellets to last the whole season) or buy a pellet stove that can safely burn wood (and cut some wood two years before you plan to burn it.)

Any stove that gets too hot to touch is OK for cooking -- not necesarily in an open frying pan, but you can slow cook stews, soups etc. (as we did for 8 days during the

1999 ice storm in eastern Canada.)

[George E. Cawthon]

Don't worry, if you have no electricity, your pellets won't run out in most pellet stoves requires electricity for the blower and the pellet mover.

So buy a regular wood stove! No electricity involved. And they don't cost anywhere near $2000 unless you are a Yuppie. But they do require some work.