Pellets Stoves: Don't Suffer from the Gas Price Blues

When I joined the crowd huddled around the cart displaying wood burning stoves at the local county fair in 2005, little did I know it would send me down the obscure path of a pellet stove owner. At the time, I was just starting to suffer from the gas price blues and was looking for an alternative heat source as I edged my way through the mob, sweating from the fierce August summer sun.

I grabbed a couple of brochures from the vender that day, sparking some serious investigation into my home energy situation. I live in a mobile home with an outdated kerosene furnace in upstate New York. My husband insisted that we should install a traditional wood stove, but I grew up with this kind of stove and I knew how much work really goes into it. They say wood warms you three times: cutting it, hauling it and finally burning it. I can still hear the heaving and grumbling, and see the beads of sweat popping out although the wind was cold, caused by the exertion of axe-splitting logs. I can still hear the clunking, for as a young girl my job was to stack the wood in great long rows outside. The wood then had to be transferred to a room inside so that it was dry enough for burning.

The ironic thing about this wood-burning system though, is that in between the warmth there were long stretches of bitter cold. At night the stove had to be stocked and put into a sleep mode called "banking" that left it so freezing cold when I woke up, it was as if there was no heat in the house at all. It took what seemed like an eternity to get the fire roaring again, and even longer for the heat to radiate enough to fill the room. My sister and I pretended we were California raisins (based on a popular 80's commercial), and would stand right next to the stove, scalding one side of our body and then shout, "Flip!", and jump around 180 degrees so that the backside could have a chance to thaw out. A series of flips and we were warmer, I'm still not sure, however, whether it was from the fire or from all the jumping around.