After hanging out and learning so much on this forum, I bought an Enviro m-55 fireplace insert and had it installed this past november.
I'm not the handiest gent to grace the planet, but was able to figure out how to keep it running; my children affectionately called our stove "pellie" and came down in front of it to get warmed each morning. my wife and I loved how it gave our living room & home a heart visually--it's a good looking unit with a nice flame for a pellet stove...We used to keep our home at 70 to 72 degrees in the living areas and cooler in the bedrooms during the winter; given some improvement in our environmental impact, we’ve let ourselves heat our living and bedroom areas a couple of degrees warmer than we used to.
In the effort to give something back to the forum, I'll add my thoughts and/or thanks on a few issues that interest newcomer, thinking some newbie looking into m-55s, OAKs, etc. may find this here.
OAK / OUTDOOR AIR WITH A CHIMNEY. We installed one up the chimney. We ran both a liner for exhaust and the outdoor air liner up the chimney. [i think a picture I include here shows two liners going through a block off plate.] I asked installers and posted on this board to get ideas about how to handle the challenge of pulling in air too close to where we also exhaust air, since the point of accessing outdoor air is to get oxygen-filled air, not oxygen-depleted exhaust. Scott from Pellet Stove Services makes a custom cap that could keep air from mixing, but we already had a piece of very heavy slate acting as a rainguard on top of our chimney; we liked the look, and getting this stove off the chimney sounded expensive.
After talking with a few installers, i was happiest both with what i could learn about Alan Stomsky [formerly of Cedar Mountain Stove] and with his proposed solution to this challenge; he installed an extra vertical wall sticking up from the chimney to the bottom of the slate; this piece of black painted metal separates the air drawn from the oak input and the exhaust vent. I believe that code requires a 6" separation--and it may read as actually requiring OAK air to be drawn 6" below the level of exhaust, since the heated exhaust would rise. It is very difficult for me to imagine that any significant amount of exhaust could get around this wall and travel the more than 6" required--with a turn--to get around this wall.
M-55 HEATING CAPACITY. We heat the upper two levels of a split level house with this unit. This space comprises 1700 square feet , includes a large living/dining area with a cathedral ceiling , and has good insulation but little caulking…next project will be to make more air tight….
From December through March of this cold winter, the stove often maintained temperature cruising along set at 2 out of 5, and we bumped it up to 3 on cold nights and the coldest days. It was nice to have higher settings to bring the heat up more quickly at times, and I understand that you do not want a stove that has to stay on 5 all the time, as folks on this board think that is bad for the stove. I would definitely buy the same unit again, but we probably could have gotten by with a smaller stove like the Enviro Princess. The princess has much of the m-55’s good looks, but not the agitator rod, I believe; the agitator reduces the amount of scraping of hardened carbon clinkers we do each week, a big help….good quality pellets also help.
INSULATING A LINER. We had one installer, who primarily installs wood stoves but has certification for pellet stoves, absolutely insist that insulating a liner would make a pellet stove more efficient and would lead more soot to be exhausted up the vent. it seemed to me that almost everyone else on this forum, including Scott Williamson, weighed on on the side of saying this was unnecessary in the case of a pellet stove, which has mechanical fans to do what the limited heat within a pellet stove may not do, i.e., create natural draft. I have no comparative data with which to say our decision was correct, but I have the impression that I am cleaning glass and vacuuming ash about as much as I would expect, and can't report any problem caused by doing what most do [install an insulated liner.]
CLEANING. We clean ash and clean the window once a week, and thus far have prevent any staining on the glass that we can't remove w/ a damp paper towel, a little elbow grease, and some fly ash from the stove itself as a mild abrasive. Easy to clean.
INSTALLING TWO BLOCK OFF PLATES. I asked my installer to install two block-off plates, and to insulate both. Thus, he attached high temp. insulation to the block off plate at the top of the chimney. he added a second block-off plate close to where the damper used to be in the chimney to reduce/prevent air flowing up the chimney and heating some attic space. I am not sure if the heat loss prevented by adding the second/lower block-off plate justified the cost, which was not much.
DEALER AND INSTALLER. I have read the advice on this forum that there are advantages of purchasing a stove from a dealer who will also install, as you can't be left in a situation where dealer and installer point fingers at each other if a unit initially has some problems. I can see the merit in that advice. I was so happy with my dealer and an independent installer that I ignored this advice after failing to find a single company in my area that could fully satisfy my question about how to install on OAK given my chimney's slate rainguard. Harold at Preston Trading Post was knowledgable, confident, but gentle rather than pushy, and what i could learn on-line about preston made me comfortable purchasing from them. Alan Stomsky has a perfectionist streak which made him a great match for me; he has been doing this work for many years, and was a pleasure to work with.
FINANCIAL AND LABOR COSTS. With pellet prices rising and the price of oil down--and unlikely to head back up in the immediate future--I can understand why some of us in the northeast are using their pellet stoves less or not at all this winter. I don't mind the work involved with clearning and rather like the feeling of hauling pellet bags--seeing and feeling the fuel that heats my home--my main motivation for installing a pellet stove was environmental, with aesthetics and atmosphere a strong second and finances a third consideration. It appears to me that we just abour broke even on fuel costs this year, even including the fact that we kept our house two to four degrees warmer, if I am correct in estimating that fuel oil costs were down 25% compared to last year. Yearly maintenance for an extra appliance will make using pellets more expensive this year, and that is not considering the actual cost of purchasing and installing the pellet stove… so purchasing the pellet stove let us keep the house two degrees warmer, gave us all pleasure, and constituted some net positive for the environment, but had no financial benefit compared to keeping our oil furnace going this year.
FINAL VERDICT. I love my pellet stove, and my family does too. I enjoy being part of a virtual community that is generous and kind to each other. I'm grateful to be reducing my oil use by using a pellet stove. I appreciate replacing oil use with something more renewable, though I understand that burning wood logs locally harvested would be even an more clear-cut good if you were properly seasoning your wood to reduce particulate emissions….there would be no doubts about whether the wood source really is fully renewable or is having any negative environmental imapct, and no plastic bagging or distant delivery of product…
I'd certainly recommend my particular stove and my dealer/installers based upon our experience so far.
My wife and I planned to see how the first year went before deciding whether to add one more pellet stove or a mini-split to the one level of our house not heated by the pellet stove. I’m lucky that she is putting up with my campaign to use a big chunk of our disposable income on my campaign to reduce our carbon footprint… we're adding a mini-split rather than one more pellet stove. The ambiance of an Enviro Mini would have been lovely in our lower level family room, but the amount of work we're doing now to maintain our fireplace insert is just right, and a mini-split will do some dehumidifying, can power down to do a inexpensive heating well in the shoulder season, and can do some cooling in the summer.
[photos: people on this site want to see pix. I am having trouble getting a picture uploaded of my stove in action…until i can do that, i do have one of it just after installation, and one more showing the top of my chimney now w/ oil furnace vent at left, pellet vent, divider, fresh air intake crown pointing away from the venting area]
I'm not the handiest gent to grace the planet, but was able to figure out how to keep it running; my children affectionately called our stove "pellie" and came down in front of it to get warmed each morning. my wife and I loved how it gave our living room & home a heart visually--it's a good looking unit with a nice flame for a pellet stove...We used to keep our home at 70 to 72 degrees in the living areas and cooler in the bedrooms during the winter; given some improvement in our environmental impact, we’ve let ourselves heat our living and bedroom areas a couple of degrees warmer than we used to.
In the effort to give something back to the forum, I'll add my thoughts and/or thanks on a few issues that interest newcomer, thinking some newbie looking into m-55s, OAKs, etc. may find this here.
OAK / OUTDOOR AIR WITH A CHIMNEY. We installed one up the chimney. We ran both a liner for exhaust and the outdoor air liner up the chimney. [i think a picture I include here shows two liners going through a block off plate.] I asked installers and posted on this board to get ideas about how to handle the challenge of pulling in air too close to where we also exhaust air, since the point of accessing outdoor air is to get oxygen-filled air, not oxygen-depleted exhaust. Scott from Pellet Stove Services makes a custom cap that could keep air from mixing, but we already had a piece of very heavy slate acting as a rainguard on top of our chimney; we liked the look, and getting this stove off the chimney sounded expensive.
After talking with a few installers, i was happiest both with what i could learn about Alan Stomsky [formerly of Cedar Mountain Stove] and with his proposed solution to this challenge; he installed an extra vertical wall sticking up from the chimney to the bottom of the slate; this piece of black painted metal separates the air drawn from the oak input and the exhaust vent. I believe that code requires a 6" separation--and it may read as actually requiring OAK air to be drawn 6" below the level of exhaust, since the heated exhaust would rise. It is very difficult for me to imagine that any significant amount of exhaust could get around this wall and travel the more than 6" required--with a turn--to get around this wall.
M-55 HEATING CAPACITY. We heat the upper two levels of a split level house with this unit. This space comprises 1700 square feet , includes a large living/dining area with a cathedral ceiling , and has good insulation but little caulking…next project will be to make more air tight….
From December through March of this cold winter, the stove often maintained temperature cruising along set at 2 out of 5, and we bumped it up to 3 on cold nights and the coldest days. It was nice to have higher settings to bring the heat up more quickly at times, and I understand that you do not want a stove that has to stay on 5 all the time, as folks on this board think that is bad for the stove. I would definitely buy the same unit again, but we probably could have gotten by with a smaller stove like the Enviro Princess. The princess has much of the m-55’s good looks, but not the agitator rod, I believe; the agitator reduces the amount of scraping of hardened carbon clinkers we do each week, a big help….good quality pellets also help.
INSULATING A LINER. We had one installer, who primarily installs wood stoves but has certification for pellet stoves, absolutely insist that insulating a liner would make a pellet stove more efficient and would lead more soot to be exhausted up the vent. it seemed to me that almost everyone else on this forum, including Scott Williamson, weighed on on the side of saying this was unnecessary in the case of a pellet stove, which has mechanical fans to do what the limited heat within a pellet stove may not do, i.e., create natural draft. I have no comparative data with which to say our decision was correct, but I have the impression that I am cleaning glass and vacuuming ash about as much as I would expect, and can't report any problem caused by doing what most do [install an insulated liner.]
CLEANING. We clean ash and clean the window once a week, and thus far have prevent any staining on the glass that we can't remove w/ a damp paper towel, a little elbow grease, and some fly ash from the stove itself as a mild abrasive. Easy to clean.
INSTALLING TWO BLOCK OFF PLATES. I asked my installer to install two block-off plates, and to insulate both. Thus, he attached high temp. insulation to the block off plate at the top of the chimney. he added a second block-off plate close to where the damper used to be in the chimney to reduce/prevent air flowing up the chimney and heating some attic space. I am not sure if the heat loss prevented by adding the second/lower block-off plate justified the cost, which was not much.
DEALER AND INSTALLER. I have read the advice on this forum that there are advantages of purchasing a stove from a dealer who will also install, as you can't be left in a situation where dealer and installer point fingers at each other if a unit initially has some problems. I can see the merit in that advice. I was so happy with my dealer and an independent installer that I ignored this advice after failing to find a single company in my area that could fully satisfy my question about how to install on OAK given my chimney's slate rainguard. Harold at Preston Trading Post was knowledgable, confident, but gentle rather than pushy, and what i could learn on-line about preston made me comfortable purchasing from them. Alan Stomsky has a perfectionist streak which made him a great match for me; he has been doing this work for many years, and was a pleasure to work with.
FINANCIAL AND LABOR COSTS. With pellet prices rising and the price of oil down--and unlikely to head back up in the immediate future--I can understand why some of us in the northeast are using their pellet stoves less or not at all this winter. I don't mind the work involved with clearning and rather like the feeling of hauling pellet bags--seeing and feeling the fuel that heats my home--my main motivation for installing a pellet stove was environmental, with aesthetics and atmosphere a strong second and finances a third consideration. It appears to me that we just abour broke even on fuel costs this year, even including the fact that we kept our house two to four degrees warmer, if I am correct in estimating that fuel oil costs were down 25% compared to last year. Yearly maintenance for an extra appliance will make using pellets more expensive this year, and that is not considering the actual cost of purchasing and installing the pellet stove… so purchasing the pellet stove let us keep the house two degrees warmer, gave us all pleasure, and constituted some net positive for the environment, but had no financial benefit compared to keeping our oil furnace going this year.
FINAL VERDICT. I love my pellet stove, and my family does too. I enjoy being part of a virtual community that is generous and kind to each other. I'm grateful to be reducing my oil use by using a pellet stove. I appreciate replacing oil use with something more renewable, though I understand that burning wood logs locally harvested would be even an more clear-cut good if you were properly seasoning your wood to reduce particulate emissions….there would be no doubts about whether the wood source really is fully renewable or is having any negative environmental imapct, and no plastic bagging or distant delivery of product…
I'd certainly recommend my particular stove and my dealer/installers based upon our experience so far.
My wife and I planned to see how the first year went before deciding whether to add one more pellet stove or a mini-split to the one level of our house not heated by the pellet stove. I’m lucky that she is putting up with my campaign to use a big chunk of our disposable income on my campaign to reduce our carbon footprint… we're adding a mini-split rather than one more pellet stove. The ambiance of an Enviro Mini would have been lovely in our lower level family room, but the amount of work we're doing now to maintain our fireplace insert is just right, and a mini-split will do some dehumidifying, can power down to do a inexpensive heating well in the shoulder season, and can do some cooling in the summer.
[photos: people on this site want to see pix. I am having trouble getting a picture uploaded of my stove in action…until i can do that, i do have one of it just after installation, and one more showing the top of my chimney now w/ oil furnace vent at left, pellet vent, divider, fresh air intake crown pointing away from the venting area]
