Are new stoves worth the cost?

Well. I guess it depends on what you're comparing the new stove to. In my case, I had a PE Vista Insert installed in an open fireplace. I burn about a 50/50 mix of wood I cut and wood I buy, so for the sake of argument, let's call my cost of wood $125/cord. I spent about $3,500 for the insert and installation (I'm not a DIY kind of person when it comes to heavy objects like stoves).

Before: Burned 1/3 to 1/2 a cord a year in the open fireplace, mostly weekend evenings, warming the living room and sucking heat out of the rest of the house to the point that if I didn't shut off the upstairs zone when we had a fire, the heat would run continuously upstairs, thereby costing us addtional oil consumption when we had a fire.

After: Burned approximately a cord of wood in the insert last winter, so at least doubled my wood consumption, but we had a fire every evening and all day on weekends. When the fire was going, the heat was not going, downstairs or upstairs, unless it was very cold out. I didn't keep precise track of the oil consumption, but my impression is that we used a tank less last year than the year before. So I "guesstimate" I saved about $500 in oil last year. In addition, the living room was at 75F and the kitchen at 72F, instead of the 68F we kept the heat set at the year before. So on paper, my payoff is something like 7 years at current oil prices.

But--hearing a friend of my 12 year old daughter say to her "wow, you get to have a fire EVERY night??"--PRICELESS

What really hurts the pocketbook is when you realize the price of just the stoves has increased at least $1,000 almost across the board in just the last 2 yrs. That $1,000 increase represents a 33% increase in some cases. A person is left to wonder whether that price increase is to determine 'what the market will bear' or simply the cost of manufacturing the stove.

Shari

Shari said:

What really hurts the pocketbook is when you realize the price of just the stoves has increased at least $1,000 almost across the board in just the last 2 yrs. A person is left to wonder whether that price increase is to determine 'what the market will bear' or simply the cost of manufacturing the stove.

Shari

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Every stove line I deal with has gone up 0-$300 in the past 3 years. Not $1000. The other thing that helps with the value, is the 30% tax credit. So, you'll be burning less wood, making less creosote. If you go with a good brand you will have a stove that will also be very easy to use and kinder for the enviroment.

Franks said:

Shari said:

What really hurts the pocketbook is when you realize the price of just the stoves has increased at least $1,000 almost across the board in just the last 2 yrs. A person is left to wonder whether that price increase is to determine 'what the market will bear' or simply the cost of manufacturing the stove.

Shari

Click to expand...

Every stove line I deal with has gone up 0-$300 in the past 3 years. Not $1000. The other thing that helps with the value, is the 30% tax credit. So, you'll be burning less wood, making less creosote. If you go with a good brand you will have a stove that will also be very easy to use and kinder for the enviroment.

Click to expand...

Franks,

My $1,000 statement was based on reviews here on hearth.com and other purchase prices listmembers have posted here.

Shari

At the going price of $240/cord around here, the cost of wood wood equal the cost of NG so there would be no payback. With the wood all scrounged, I'm saving about $1200/year (of course, excluding the costs of saws, splitter, gas, PPE, etc.)

The previous owners of our house put over 400 gallons/mo of propane in the tank to heat to 68. And, when the wind was blowing or it was cold, the forced air furnace ran 24/7 with no chance of keeping up. I removed the furnace and all of the ductwork that first summer and replaced with a used/rebuilt stove. We burned 13 cord both that winter and the next. I then replaced 50 feet of 50 year old single pane floor to ceiling glass with low E casement windows. We have burned between 8 and 10 cord the last two winters, again wood as the sole source of heat. After we are done with the remodel and have the shell nice and tight, I expect that we will get down in the 6-8 cord range heating 3000 sq ft on a windy ridge with a lot of glass in upstate NY. Even with our learning experience with the two stoves we went through in 4 years before the BK, the cost of heating with wood is in the noise compared to propane. It might be worth doing the math if we had access to natural gas. At my current cost of just over 10 bucks a cord for scrounged wood, I don't think I would bother hooking NG up if they ran it down the road.

Telling the propane company what they could do with their bill for tank rental was priceless.

I can only speak on the manufacturers I deal with:
Hearthstone
Regency
Enerzone

And the current market here in Central NY. The manufacturers arent raising the prices much. You may see individual retailers doing so in order to take advantage of of tax credit. Anyone shopping around shouldnt pay much over the suggested retail price. If your local dealer is price gouging, check with the manufacturer and try another dealer. With a small amount of research you will find a stove that works for you where the retail price hasn't gone up much in the past couple of years. In fact, after the glut of sales last year and the resulting fall of fossil fuel prices mixed with the economy tanking, the bulks of my suppliers froze any price increase for 2009.

Didn't mean to step on your $1000 comment Shari, just want to encourage folks to do a little research and not be discouraged from upgrading to something more efficient.

For me there would not be a payback....

I have electric forced air with propane off peak. Last year the house used about $100 worth of propane and the electric is about $80 a month. Granted the house never feels as warm as a fire would make it....

Stove ~$1800
Install parts (doing myself) ~$500

Wood-free but for time and gas money to haul.

I would maybe save around $50-70 a month on heating but the house would be MUCH warmer. I just can't justify the expense for the house.

The garage on the other hand....
$500 a winter in propane to keep it above freezing at all time and spot heating to 70 degrees one to 4 nights a week.

$300 wood furnace
$300 chimney and other install stuff....

Heats the heck out of the garage....like sit with the door open type heat...AND it dries off all the moisture that I drag in with snow on car/truck/blower/snowmobile.

Figure at most...two year payoff for garage. SOLD!

Here, we paid $160 a cord last year. Using 3 1/2 cords=$560 and house temp in high 70-80's. 2 years before, using oil, it cost around $1,000-$1500 and house temp at 68. Mansfield cost $2600. Hopefully, wood will be free, or cheaper, when husband gets new truck.

Nina

SolarAndWood said:

I removed the furnace and all of the ductwork that first summer and replaced with a used/rebuilt stove. We burned 13 cord both that winter and the next.

Click to expand...

What happens when you're not home for a long period of time? If you took your furnace out, what's your backup source of heat? Wood can be a primary souce of heat but it shouldn't be the only souce of heat.

ksting said:

SolarAndWood said:

I removed the furnace and all of the ductwork that first summer and replaced with a used/rebuilt stove. We burned 13 cord both that winter and the next.

Click to expand...

What happens when you're not home for a long period of time? If you took your furnace out, what's your backup source of heat? Wood can be a primary souce of heat but it shouldn't be the only souce of heat.

Click to expand...

The house has a 1960s era Honeywell electric baseboard system. This is still intact in the bedrooms. However, I had to remove the baseboards in the main part of the house to replace the exterior walls required for the new windows and roof trusses with large overhangs. Depending on how the BK works out, I may or may not proceed with the original boiler/radiant floor plan. In the event that we don't do the radiant floors, I will probably just reinstall the baseboards for backup.

i guess it al depends on the cost of other fuels of which none of us here has any control over - last year oil peaked at 4.39 a gallon in new england - even still at 2.39 this year my house would never be as warm as it is when i heat with wood - although the price of CSD is still crazy 250 to 300 here - so i spend my time working to make sure i get it for 80.00 a cord because i process it myself

My cost to change stoves from the VC to the FV came in at around $900 after all things considered I believe - this includes installation costs, getting stove into house and selling off the old stove as well as the 30% rebate etc. So that is what I have to make up for the upgrade, and I still have to "pay back" the initial cost of the first stove from last year... um.. yeah with oil now at around 2.25/gallon and a heating system that only uses around 600 gallons to heat the house each year it will be a while before both the original stove and the upgrade are paid for, even if I had unlimited free wood, which I don't.

However - just looking at upgrade calculations... On the financial side of things I hope to save a little bit of wood. I'm averaging about 120/cord now as I seem to be finding more free or very inexpensive wood (learning the art of scrounging, yippee!) that doesn't include the cost of the truck or time of course... I figure I could save 1/2 to 1 cord per year. So... that would put the payback on upgrade somewhere around 9 to 18 years.. Hmm.. not a good financial investment eh? maybe my estimate is too conservative, ask again in the spring.

However I now have a stove that the wife may actually feed during the day and even if she doesn't do so it will actually put out heat when I'm not there and I won't come home to a cold stove and the backup oil running (at least not as much). There will be an economic gain there in terms of less oil burned. Hard to quantify that but it should bring down the payback time a bit.

I don't expect to be having to kindle a fire 2x a day anymore, getting the fire stable in the morning when I get up won't be a 90 minute active activity that I have to set the alarm early for (how does one set a value on that?).

Perhaps most important to me? I will sleep better knowing that the back of my stove isn't glowing even though I have the air shut down and everything looked stable for an hour before I went to bed. Confidence in the stove: That is priceless to me.

So - to answer the original question? The obvious answer is that it all depends on individual situation. It clearly is not always purely an economic decision. For me it clearly was worth it.

Here's my take on it. If you are sure that you are not losing heat in your home faster than the existing source can provide, a stove will eventually pay for itself, some faster than others due to climate, efficiency etc. I decided to start burning wood after I replaced old single pane windows, drafty front door and blew in another 12-16in of insulation in my attic. Had I not fixed these first I think it would have made for a negative wood burning exp because I would have used twice as much wood. All the heat from the stove would have gone up and out of the house instead of staying in the living space.

Cord wood around me is going for an avg of 170 a cord split. I have a NG forced air furnace that runs when I'm not home for extended periods or late night because my stove is small and stops heating around 3am.

Backwoods Savage said:

ksting said:

SolarAndWood said:

I removed the furnace and all of the ductwork that first summer and replaced with a used/rebuilt stove. We burned 13 cord both that winter and the next.

Click to expand...

What happens when you're not home for a long period of time? If you took your furnace out, what's your backup source of heat? Wood can be a primary souce of heat but it shouldn't be the only souce of heat.[

Click to expand...

And to that statement about it shouldn't be the only source of heat, I ask, why not? And the reason I ask that is because it has been our only source of heat for over 40 years! We have had no problems during this time and have not even had a frozen water line. We stay comfortable in our home and yes, we do keep it much warmer than most homes and that is because of a medical condition. So, with our source of heat being 100% from our little soapstone stove burning 3 cords of wood per year, we are very pleased.

Click to expand...

I believe the argument is that if you were to go on an extended leave from the home during winter you risk a frozen pipe or other damage unless you were to 'winterize' the home - drain pipes, put antifreeze in the toilets etc - before you left. Or I suppose you could have someone stop by every 12 hrs to feed the stove

Secondary argument might be in resale value - I don't know if FHA loans will allow a woodstove only heating etc... (reaching here)

Backwoods Savage said:

ksting said:

SolarAndWood said:

I removed the furnace and all of the ductwork that first summer and replaced with a used/rebuilt stove. We burned 13 cord both that winter and the next.

Click to expand...

What happens when you're not home for a long period of time? If you took your furnace out, what's your backup source of heat? Wood can be a primary souce of heat but it shouldn't be the only souce of heat.[/b]

Click to expand...

And to that statement about it shouldn't be the only source of heat, I ask, why not? And the reason I ask that is because it has been our only source of heat for over 40 years! We have had no problems during this time and have not even had a frozen water line. We stay comfortable in our home and yes, we do keep it much warmer than most homes and that is because of a medical condition. So, with our source of heat being 100% from our little soapstone stove burning 3 cords of wood per year, we are very pleased.

Click to expand...

We are equally pleased Dennis. We haven't had a backup source for 3 years now. Other than coming home to a 50 degree house a few times, it hasn't been a problem. It would probably only take a few hours to reinstall the heaters; it hasn't been necessary.

Slow1 said:

Secondary argument might be in resale value

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I'm not building my house for anyone else

For me making the investment was more than the single threaded payback thought. I also included that value of having a secondary source of heat that I had control over the cost of (for me that made wood vs. pellets as the choice ... although I now admit to being naive on the true cost of wood processing) and the fact that I loved having a fire going but knew I was having a negative impact on actually heating the house with the old open fireplace.
Now, after a year I have a more informed view including:
* wood burning has proved to be a life style change for me - one I like and cant put a dollar value on
* wood processing is a huge part of that life style for me - I scrounge and love the work (many physical and mental benefits ... and some new aches and pains)
* the house is MUCH warmer and my family is spoiled - I am hearing it this fall when the temps in the house drop below 70 I hear the "can we get the fire going" all the time while I am still hanging around in shorts and tee shirt w/o the fire
* wood processing has costs ... saws, splitters, gas, transportation, storage, etc.... all things that I admittedly never considered in my original "payback" calculations. Now these costs are like new "man toys" ... just got a new saw and I'm like a kid at christmas!
* I under estimated the amount of my heat bill I could cover with the FPX 44 - I hoped to get 50% but actually got darn close to 100% (hard to tell as my hot water runs through the oil burner)

I realize these points are off the intended question of cost to upgrade (which assumes you are already in the wood burning world). If I was to consider upgrading I agree with your thought Dennis : cost, BTU output comparison & wood consumption (which you included) ... I might add appearance and status of current wood burning source (is it in need of fix? running safe? etc...)

If saving money on alternative fuels (factoring in all the other associated expenses including the cost of my time vs earning overtime pay at work) was the only consideration (in my situation), then I don't think so.

If I factor in the enjoyment I get from this, then ABSOLUTELY!

My overall capital cost for this system was over $5k (stove, pipe, chimney, hearth pad, chase construction, accessories, etc.) I save about $300-$500 per year in fuel oil cost after figuring in the price for wood (my guess since I did some renovations at the same time I added the stove).

The most significant part of wood burning (for me) is time. If I didn't enjoy it, I would be better off spending more time at work pay for the additional fuel cost (and have money left over). But, that is not the case.

I too just shelled out almost 6k for everything,stove chimney accessory's etc. but when you think about what you save it all depends. 1st I would not spend 250 for a cord of wood I would go with oil or gas 250? jeez are there no woods there? Around here wood is 140 to 160 cut split and delivered. also this year will be tough to save a lot because oil is relatively cheap. now last winter on the other hand when heating oil was 4 something a gallon you bet you would save money. The way the oil market is all over the place I installed a wood stove for piece of mind that when the dude wearing the picnic table cloth on his head decides he needs more money I'm not at his mercy, and of course if power is out we will still have a warm house and hot water.

Is cost savings really the heart of the matter? Or is it just the mental game we must play with our rational part to get it on board with what is really an aesthetic (lifestyle) and conscientious (moral) choice? I have to play that game with myself. In the beginning, things must look like they'll eventually pay for themselves in one way or another. The same was true when I added passive solar; the cost savings over time was a major and necessary attraction. But the enduring value is enjoying the lifestyle that comes with wanting to live in tune with the elements in this way.

Franks said:

I can only speak on the manufacturers I deal with:
Hearthstone
Regency
Enerzone

And the current market here in Central NY. The manufacturers arent raising the prices much. You may see individual retailers doing so in order to take advantage of of tax credit. Anyone shopping around shouldnt pay much over the suggested retail price. If your local dealer is price gouging, check with the manufacturer and try another dealer. With a small amount of research you will find a stove that works for you where the retail price hasn't gone up much in the past couple of years. In fact, after the glut of sales last year and the resulting fall of fossil fuel prices mixed with the economy tanking, the bulks of my suppliers froze any price increase for 2009.

Didn't mean to step on your $1000 comment Shari, just want to encourage folks to do a little research and not be discouraged from upgrading to something more efficient.

Click to expand...

No offense taken, Franks. I've been comparing Oslo pricing 2-3 yrs. ago with MSRP today.

Shari