What would the market be for that? Maybe a Rent to own? Would it be too much of a pain for dealers?
Stove Renting
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Might have to be like a lease agreement with x amount of dollars down. Otherwise you would have a used stove if someone backed out. Be a lot of up front cost.
realstihl said:
Not necessarily. Here's an example of what I was thinking:
Let's say someone rents a stove for the winter. We'll use Hearthstone as an example. Someone rents a Heritage for $400-500 for the winter. Maybe they rent it longer. But we will use one winter as an example. Next year someone else rents it for another $400-500. And this goes on for 5 years. Which equates to $2,000-$2500 in rental fees. The deal could then sell it as refurbished for about $1500.
You would offer renters damage insurance as well.
I think it is a great idea and has a potentially huge market. It would also allow people to try various wood stoves before committing to one and perhaps not liking it. And for those who may not be able to afford a $3000 stove, they can pay it off over 2-3-4-5-6 years (like everything else these days).
Andrew
Andrew
Intresting concept, alot like leasing a vehicle in some ways. That being said, there are cost factors such as delivery ,set up and installation that somehow have to be factored in. Not sure if the economics involved would make the bottom line worth while. good topic for discussion though.
rottiman said:
Agreed. I have to use broad strokes on the examples as I do not know the inner workings of dealer costs.
I think the risks to the stoves would be too great. You could put a 2k stove in a house and have a pile of junk in no time flat due to abuse. If someone owns something they'll typically care more for it. Now if you could get an insurance company on board(unlikely?) and cover the stoves if someone should turn one into junk on you I guess it's a little more feasible in my mind.
You will run into what I did three years ago setting up a service to install and maintain the box store pellet stoves. My business liability insurance carrier went bananas. "You want to install things that can burn down a house
? That is beside the fact of what happens if the stove gets wrecked coming off a porch.
Personally I have been drawing up the business plan for renting generators the last couple of days.
? That is beside the fact of what happens if the stove gets wrecked coming off a porch. Personally I have been drawing up the business plan for renting generators the last couple of days.
Shadow&Flame
Minister of Fire
Renting things is a tough road...there are people who would take the best care of their own car but will thrash a rented one. Then you have those people who want to rent because they don't take care of anything to start with and just want to destroy your stuff as well. I have been involved in allot of renting houses...only about 2 in 10 went well. Liability will bite you quick.
Last tag line says it all...be careful.
Last tag line says it all...be careful.
All of the labor involved makes me think it's not gonna happen unless you had specialty stoves that were designed for ease of moving. I think you would need some sort of portable chimney option too. I just don't see a market for it or the feasibility.
Rent to own? Same as a loan. They do that already.
Rent to own? Same as a loan. They do that already.
Stop by your local rent to own appliance store & see what the default rate is. I'm betting you go broke picking up no pay stoves. Now otoh, maybe a good finance business for stove & heating related durable goods?
fossil said:
Excellent point. If you can afford all that, buying a stove is the least of your problems.
What about the seasoned wood? Who would provide that? Lots of other conflicts I can think of, enough to say I wouldn't want any part of a business like that, sounds like the potential for nightmares.
Battenkiller said:
But it reduces the cost greatly. $1500 for the liner installed but you don't have to pay $2000-$4000 for a stove. It also gives the customer the ability to try out stoves before buying.
The wood is the users problem as it wood be if they owned the stove or not. Wet wood rarely hurts a stove. It gunks it up, but does not damage the stove.
BrotherBart said:You will run into what I did three years ago setting up a service to install and maintain the box store pellet stoves. My business liability insurance carrier went bananas. "You want to install things that can burn down a house
Personally I have been drawing up the business plan for renting generators the last couple of days.
That could be THE road block.
rdust said:
X2
Auto leasing you are responsible for insurance, that said you still need a license!
There are no "securities" for wood stoves..
The cost factor would greatly out weigh profit...
To make things right. Dealer would:
Have to do install
Have to do maintenance
Have to do removal
Have to set up appointments to "check" stove
Have to make sure leasee knows how to operate the stove
Etc, etc,
The idea is great but most stove shops aren't big enough to make that profitable
I could see about 1500 a season by the time you add in all the extras
Funny thing, my gas company is leasing furnaces .... High eff unit
75-148 a month (depending on size) plus some other 150 fee
Lease is 7 years with option to buy at the end of 2000-3500!
For my house 148 ... Equals 12000! @ 7 years .... Lmao
One problem you haven't consider is having to repossess a stove. Once something is 'attached' firmly installed in a building. It becomes part of the building. When I had my business, I installed a natural gas space heater in a building I rented. When I moved out, legally I wasn't allow to take it with me.
It would be easier if you ask a lawyer what they thought of this idea. The amount of liability you'll incur and have to be insured against will be phenomenal.
flueguyPA said:
You don't have to waste your time or money. I can give you Fast Eddie my lawyer's phone number and tell him to give you the five dollar answer instead of the $250 an hour answer he gave me.
I don't know what stove shops pay for liability insurance but the oldest shop in this area won't even think about an install. They give you a guy's business card. I have known the guys in this shop for 25 years and they just laugh and say "No way buddy. Give this guy a call. We will bring it out and set it on the hearth for a hundred dollars and we are out of there.".
BrowningBAR said:
It can do just the opposite. I've burned plenty of green wood in my Vigilant (I'm twisted, I do it just because I can), and have showed the pics of the inside taken the next morning right here on Hearth.com. White dust just about everywhere inside the stove. Pics taken with a camera stuck up the flue pipe in the morning also showed a complete lack of any kind of gunk. In fact, in two years of burning in the stove I have not had a single morning when I woke up to find any evidence of creosote built up anywhere inside the stove or in the flue pipe as far as I can see to the bend in the elbow, no matter if the wood was dead green or if it was in the 20% MC range.
Why?
Air control.
If you try to burn unseasoned wood, one of two things will occur. Either you get it going good and give it plenty of excess air in order to burn too hot for creosote to form, or you don't give it enough air and it sits there and smolders. OK... there are in betweens, but you get the picture. So, if you get a good fire going inside the stove with enough excess air to allow it to burn properly (i.e. hot and clean), once that moisture is driven out of the wood the stove will begin to burn hotter and hotter unless you back way off on the air.
Even with the thermostat on the Vig, I find that I have to manually adjust the air down about an hour into a burn with wet wood or all hell will break loose. Almost every instance I reported here of my stove beginning to run away on me was related to the burn picking up momentum after the moisture in unseasoned wood was driven off. Properly sized and dried wood does not ordinarily behave that way, it is much more predictable IMO. In inexperienced hands (as in "newbie stove renter") this could get out of control bad enough to cause an overfire situation and damage the stove. Your stove, that you leased out, and is now damaged or ruined.
Anyway, it is a fun idea you have, but I don't see it being done anywhere. If there was good money to be made, I'm sure somebody would have tried it. Or maybe they did and are now running a BBQ joint using all those overfired rentals as smokers. ;-)
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