Pellet Stove Right for Me?

[fly4fish207]

Good evening all. New to the forum and pellet stoves (been lurking for a while.) I've pretty much decided on the Castle Serenity, but have a couple questions...

My home is a 1400 sq ft cape. Newer home, well insulated, tight... Centrally located stairwell, mostly open downstairs, 2 bedroom upstairs. My hope is that by installing the pellet stove I can offset my oil consumption and heat the home with the stove when I am home and have something nice to look at in the process. The stove will be installed in the living room, and I'm thinking the air will naturally move throughout the first floor and up the stairwell (approximately 15 ft from stove location) and into the upstairs bedrooms.

I currently turn the heat down to 60 while away at work, and when I get home I'll turn it up to 70. I dont really care for it too warm, even in the dead of winter. When I go to bed, I drop it back down to 60 again. I'm thinking with the pellet stove installed, I'll be able to turn the thermostat for the boiler (essentially) off, and only rely on the pellet stove for heating the house, keeping it on it's lowest setting while away at work.

Is this wise? I don't want to end up paying for two sources of heat, and I've heard two different schools of thought on heat recovery time vs savings, etc. I'll always be tied to oil so long as I have a boiler. but am hoping I can cut back to using that exclusively for hot water needs only. I'm thinking my pellet consumption *should* be fairly low if i'm only cranking it up for 5-6 hours in the evening during the week then all day on the weekends. This being the case, I should be able to heat the house fairly inexpensively, correct?

Oil in my area is currently $1.98/gal, which isn't too bad. Maybe even cheaper than pellets when broken down into a daily cost. I'm just sort of on the fence whether it'll all be worth it (cost of stove, pipe, making a tile hearth pad, and then pellets) or if I'd be smarter to just stick to oil and run the thermostat a little higher.

I'd really appreciate input from those who may be in the same situation. Thanks a ton in advance!

Matt

 

[lsucet]

It will be hard to tell you it will work out just fine. The experiment here is to see if the heat front the stove recirculate well enough that you feel comfortable. If you are going to save, hard to tell you also. The stove will have two fans running plus other electrico/ electronic parts that consume electricity plus cost of pellets. At the end for me the only way to know if will be worth it is trying it. It's a gamble

 

[bogieb]

I think with a centrally located stairway a pellet stove would work out well. However, as Isuset mentions, it all depends on real-life air currents that are generated in your house. The sticking point, in my mind, is that you turn the heat down 10* while you are away and also while sleeping. I would think that adjusting your preference to 68* while home and awake, and 65* while away/sleeping, would give you better return. I set my main floor thermostat 2* lower when I leave for work and it doesn't take much time for it to catch back up when I get home and up the thermostat.

I have a propane boiler and leave it off during the winter - that is until it gets really cold outside then I have a ThermGuard fire up the boiler every 8 hours for 10 minutes to circulate warm water thru the pipes regardless of what the indoor temp is. But, I also have pipes that run thru an unconditioned garage that stays 10-15* above outdoor temps. If al your pipes are in a conditioned space, you may not need to do that.

However, it is always possible that you would end up with air currants that don't work well. I ended up with two stoves because I could not get currants to flow from the basement (950 sq/ft main floor and 650 sq/ft basement) even with cutting in registers and massive fan power (tried a variety of configurations). But, then my stairway is at the wrong end (not located centrally) of the house so the bedrooms above the garage never got heat. But, now with the main floor stove directing the air directly down the hallway to the bedrooms, all works well. And my basement is heated by the downstairs stove, which it isn't heated by the FHW system besides residual heat from the boiler. I also save a ton of money over using propane, but it costs me >$3/gallon and I have a 25 y/o inefficient boiler too.

Unfortunately, each situation is different, so it is extremely difficult to say if a pellet stove will absolutely do what you are looking for it to do.