I've had a few pellet stoves and my current house has an Englander pellet stove in the basement family room and a Vermont Defiant in the open concept floorplan upstairs. My house was built in 1997. I run the pellet stove in the basement on its lowest setting just to try to keep the chill off in the basement. I am burning just over a bag a day. That's about $180/month. This house is drafty! Lots of windows. Pellets were about $300/ton after taxes. My primary fuel is natural gas and I have a pretty efficient hot air furnace. Gas is pretty cheap when comparing to pellets on a $/BTU basis. Like half.... I have not burned a fire in my wood stove yet as I need to remove the flue and inspect the refractory in the stove. I don't have much useable firewood left over from the previous owner. One of these days I'll buy some and light a fire in the stove and see what it does. I'm a little concerned that it might be too big for the space as I have heard they are heat monsters.
So the cost to keep the chill off my basement is about $180/mo and my furnace still runs quite a bit. I don't see any way you could heat a house for $300/season on pellets. I won't even get two months of semi-comfort heating in an El Nino year for that price. In southern NH I used to burn 2-1/2 to 3 tons per year at around $300/ton for softies. I was on #2 oil there and oil was pushing $4/gal at the time. That made more sense. Today I'm just burning money to keep the basement warmer. My neighbor in NH used to burn cord wood and he would get it delivered by log truck with a grapple and they would just put it in his yard. He would cut, split and stack it. I think he switched to pellets after his kids grew up and left home.
As far as noise, the bottom feeder stoves seem to a bit quieter. Englander's, Harman's, etc. You don't get the clink of the pellets hitting the burn pot.
So the cost to keep the chill off my basement is about $180/mo and my furnace still runs quite a bit. I don't see any way you could heat a house for $300/season on pellets. I won't even get two months of semi-comfort heating in an El Nino year for that price. In southern NH I used to burn 2-1/2 to 3 tons per year at around $300/ton for softies. I was on #2 oil there and oil was pushing $4/gal at the time. That made more sense. Today I'm just burning money to keep the basement warmer. My neighbor in NH used to burn cord wood and he would get it delivered by log truck with a grapple and they would just put it in his yard. He would cut, split and stack it. I think he switched to pellets after his kids grew up and left home.
As far as noise, the bottom feeder stoves seem to a bit quieter. Englander's, Harman's, etc. You don't get the clink of the pellets hitting the burn pot.
