Pellet stove vs wood stove

Okay, I'm trying to decide do I really pull out my pellet insert and put a wood stove in its place? The pellet is just not giving out quite enough heat below 40 to keep the oil furnace off. But I'm a little fearfull with wood that if I have to go out for a few hours that my house will be freezing. Any advice from anyone else that has gone through this or even preferences? I need to make a decision soon. Thanks.
Deb :coolsmile:

Oops! I currently have a Harmon Accentra insert it is suppose to get approx. 44,000 BTU's. We are looking at a Regency F3100 which is suppose to max at 80,000 BTU's. My big fear is of massive temperture swings. Any help making up my mind would be great. THanks!
Deb

Well, we still use the oil with the pellet stove running. The problem is it doesn't give off enough heat on its own to heat the area we are lookin to heat. So far this winter we have use 900 gallons of oil. That is maintaing about 65 degrees in the room the after the room with the pellet sotve. I would like to cut my oil use by at least 1/2 of that. We also use oil to heat our hot water.

Actually where we are pellets are way more expensive than the wood. We got the biggest we could get to fit our fireplace opening which is pretty huge. We actually have a metal plate that extends about 10" above the insert. Our thought is that if we put in a woodstove, we will get more heat and heat during a power outage which we seem to have alot of. We will then put the insert into a room we have not opened up to use. The only problem is the fireplace in that room is not deep enough so I 'm wondering if we can build something between the wall and unit so we can use it there. We already use a wood insert in one living room wing so I'm use to the wood and like the heat it gives off better. I also hate the noise the pellet stove makes.

We live in a very, very old Greek Revival with very little insulation, we do have new triple paned windows through out the house. We bought it as a fixer upper, but it seems to mostly a downer! HA!HA! We are slowly improving things. Currently the pellet stove is in the kitchen which is approx 26 x 20 with 9' ceilings. That has three doors at opposite end of fireplace dining room-pantry-hallway. The dining room opens to another room both those rooms have 12 ft ceilings. Off of the front room is a living room that is on its own heat zone (this is the room we use the wood insert in 74 degrees right now and 25 out)That room has the least insulation of all. The pellet stove is set on 80 ish right now and its about 68 in here. There is another living room wing off of the hall which is currently used as storage that is where we thought we could use the pellet stove (we were origannlly going to use wood) instead of rehooking the oil up in there. The upstairs we heat with oil (on its own zone) it stays pretty warm up there and the heat is set really low. I've been asking around here people I know who heat with woodstoves in older homes and they all love theirs. I am home most days so I am here to maintain them. Sorry so long! If you every saw the money pit, that is literally our house!

The width is 54 inches and it is 40 inches tall, as the flue I believe they installed a 4" liner for the pellet stove. We clean several times a month and I 've had the dealer here several times, just last week being one of them. I have it set at room temp, tried already switching it back and forth no difference. The feed setting is between 3-4 if I set it any higher I just get pellets spit out un burnt. I use Lignetics, which were the best pellets you can get out here. The woodstove we are considering the Regency F3100. They warranty your satisfaction for a whole year and the stove itself has a life time warranty. Including service. Oh, I live in upstate NY. Not to many dealers near us.

I really don't know the size of the flue or how high the liner goes, we had a professional install. I don't feel any drafts around the unit. or when we pull it out to clean it.

OOps, the chimney runs inside the house. The room above is not used and has insulation on the floor. The bats take their summer vacation here.

We have the oil set at about 62 so it doesn't kick on when it is warmer out. There really is no other spot to install another chimney we have a ton of windows and doorways. The only other option for us is Vermont castings, Harmon or Morso(?), the Regency happens to be the biggest this shop sells that would sit out on our hearth and pipe up through the chimney. Even with that they will have to trim 3" off the legs so the elbow fits. The other dealer I have worked with also sells the Regency. The closest does the Harmon, but I really don't care for him and from others I talk to they always kind of look at you with a grimmace when you mention his dealership. I don't think there are any dealers of Pacific in our area. We had to travel about 30-40 minutes to get to the one were considering now. We kind of live in hick town. No offense.