started working for ESW in june of 1993, just out of the army (was supposed to be a "tide me over til i found a real job" type job) another story , anyway , we bought a house in october that year and moved in , the house had a flue but nothing hooked up , and baseboard heat , we, not knowing what was in store, turned on the baseboard , which seemed to work well at the time , kept the house toasty, got our first electric bill , was a read off the meter bill, due to it being a new account 392 bucks and change, and we hadnt even been in the house a full month. i went to work the next day and bought a 24-ac woodstove , talked one of the guys who did installs on tyhe side into coming over checking the chimney and helping me install it (cost was a 6 pack we split) got the unit up and running that evening with some "borrowed" wood from a new neighbor. stove was lit for about an hour, when i flipped the breakers off on the baseboard heat at the box, they have not been flipped back on since , average electric bills since then have been about 65 to 70 bucks. i bought 2 pickup truck loads of wood that winter, along with a " reconditioned" poulan 16" chainsaw from big lots, started cutting wood for the next season, i burned wood as a sole source of wood in that stove for 13 years, added a pellet stove in 2005 (january) as i travel now having moved up in the company over the years,(wife never got the handle on the woodstove so i needed somthing she could handle) actually removed the wood stove in 2006. am likely going to install another woodstove , but havent gotten around to it yet. during the time i burned the woodstove i figure i saved 200 bucks a month minimum over the winter months burning the woodstove just in the electrical bills alone , though i spent a few bucks here and there on wood , rarely did i buy more than 100 bucks worth of wood in a winter still have the chainsaw although my wife got me a craftsman for christmas (about a month before i put in the pellet stove) its barely been used and mostly it was cutting some wood for dad when we went out getting him wood. so yeah , i figure i saved a ton over the years , the unit more than paid for not only itself, but the fuel for the saw , gas to go and cut and load wood , i split by hand so no gas for a splitter. and better than all this , i got to learn wood heating from experience, which is priceless in my job as a technician for a major stove manufacturer