Englander No Ash Pan? and Hows my Figures?

Here from another post on Englander Stoves I read "No ash pan but there are areas on each side of the burn pot for ash collection". Now I was leaning towards an Englander but not sure about it now. How does the lack of an ash pan affect the stove? Mean more cleanings in a day or overall or something to cause problems? With the ash pan on all the other models it just seems kind of strange.
I was planning on going with the cheaper stove to recover my outlay of money faster but not so sure now. This is how I have it figued, 1 ton of pellets = 125 gallons of oil. Last year I used just about 800 gallons of oil. So that would mean about 7 tons of pellets. Right now oil is $5.00 a gallon so that would be $4,000.00 for oil next year ( this year was $3,500.00). Pellets are $250.00 a ton so $1,750.00 for 7 tons. So $4,000.00 - $1,750.00 = $2,250.00 savings more or less. I think savings will be a bit more with walls I am going to tear apart and insulate. counting the basement house is 2100 sq. feet, 700 sq feet on each of 3 levels.
Do these figures sound right? Maybe I might better be looking at a more expensive stove that might be less problems? Could have my payback in 2 years time.
Comments welcomed and appericated

I find that I have no problems with my englander without an ash pan. Lack of an ash pan doesn't affect the stove at all in my opinion. I burn my stove 24/7 in the winter, and I usually vacuum out the ashes about once a week.

Terry,
Are you assuming in your figures that you will completely replace the oil usage with pellets? I don't know yet myself what the effect of the pellets will be in offsetting my oil usage, but I know I will be using some.

I have found the lack of an ash pan annoying on mine, but it's not that big of a deal... just a little of a PITA.


OTOH, how do you think you're going to heat three floors with a space heater? I hope you're looking at using a couple of stoves or a furnace, otherwise I think you're going to have some real cold areas!

well..an Arab Sheik "might" come along, and give me all the oil I want for free. Its about as likely as $3 oil, from the projections I've seen. ;-)

If I could just "make" some more money, than sure, that'd be the easiest way of dealing w/ the increases, but thats not an option for me. (thinking of people complaining of "fixed incomes"...I *wish* mine were "fixed". then it wouldn't be going backwards, like it is! LOL!) (not kidding!).

So, is it worth x amount of work, to lug y-tons of pellets, to save z$? for me, it certainly looks like it...since I can't make it up any other way. having more time than money is the motivating force in alot of "DIY" endeavors.

Sorry, I am setting on cash at 5.25 %.

I would have to agree more time then money sure is motivating. I don't have a problem lugging on 40 pound bags for an hour. Pellet dealer will deliver a ton or 2 at a time as you need them up to you how much at once. Also if wasn't for lack of money I wouldn't be buying a pellet stove, if money was no option I would just pay whatever the oil bill was.

As far as using any oil I am sure hoping not to have to use any but if I do have to use some then I guess my payback will be over 3 years instead of 2. Won't know I guess till spring. From what I have read the so called experts don't expect oil to really drop much till at least 2012 so will have a few years to get payback on the investment.

You're preaching to choir my friend! I keep thinking, we have to be near the bottom...

Well for heating the 3 floors I am trying to decide on 2 options. Basement Option - One dealer told me to run a 10 inch cold air duct to infront of the stove, let the fan on the furnace run all the time and that would circulate the air enough to keep the house warm. Also could run a couple of new air ducts that have fans in them from infront of the stove to the up stairs.
Option 2 is to put stove on main floor. Basement is only used for storage, furnace, the usuall thing, I could put an electric heater in the basement and if it happened to get down to 40 degrees or so then heater would kick on and keep water pipes from freezing. Was also told that if I spent a couple of thousand and had the old half of the basement spray foamed insulated then would be enough heat come from the ground to keep basement around 40.
On a side note here when I moved into this house 22 years ago all it had was old oil space heaters at each end of the house on the main floor. A 150 watt spot light bulb set about 4 inches from the water pump in the basement to keep it from freezing. Pipes did freeze a couple of times but never took much heat from a torch to thaw them out. Really suprising with what the tempeture gets down to here.

Thanks for all the commets, gives me more information to try to decide what to do.

I agree with Web on the cold air duct idea.

Putting the stove on the main floor will likely work out pretty good, but you'll obviously have a temp differential from the main floor to the upper floor. How much of a differential I don't know, but there will be one. A lot of it depends on the floor-plan and how easily the heat can be dispersed, not only to the second floor, but within the main floor as well. Without knowing anything about your setup, I wouldn't be surprised to see a 10* to 20*F temp differential from the two floors. OTOH, if you have zoned heating on your main furnace/boiler, you can probably use that to make up the difference and still reap some significant savings with the stove. You have to remember, stoves are space heaters, so you'll certainly have warm areas and cold areas...

Regarding the basement, insulating it as much as possible would make a big difference. About 90-95% of mine is insulated and it stays around 55* in that area all winter w/o adding any heat. The remaining area w/o the insulation is partitioned off and it gets WAY colder in that section!