A dealer can suggest models that will work with your space, but choose one certified by the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency for efficiency and clean burning. Also look for a label from Underwriters Laboratories (UL) or Canadian ULC, which shows the stove has met safety standards.
Pellet stoves offer a more environmentally sustainable choice for homeowners; the units burn recycled sawdust that’s been compressed and dried. You fill a hopper with pellets, set the heat level, and the stove automatically ignites. An electrically powered auger continuously feeds the pellets into the stove’s firebox.
-
Price: You can pay as little as $800, but good ones start at $2,000, says Adam Martin, at Martin Sales and Service in Butler, Pa. You can’t always get replacement parts for the lower-priced stoves, and they don’t have as good a warranty as higher-priced models, he says. And sustainability has an upcharge: Pellet-generated heat costs about $200 more per heating season than cordwood, according to Thumbtack, an independent national product and services pricing database.
-
Convenience: There’s no need to split, season, or load wood. Depending on the heat you need and the stove’s design, you may need to refill the hopper just once daily. You can use a smartphone app or remote to control more advanced units. But the pellet-feeding augers won’t work during a power outage. And bags of pellets can be in short supply as winter wears on, Halsey says. “We have a lot of people calling for pellets now.”
-
Efficiency: Pellets contain less moisture than cord wood, so pellet stoves burn more efficiently. They dominate the EPA’s list of efficient units.
-
Safety and health: To add fuel, you don’t open a firebox, exposing you to flames, smoke, and gases. And there are thermostats and switches to help prevent over- or underheating.
-
Needed space: You can buy 40-pound pellet sacks individually or by the pallet; a 1-ton skid of 50 pellet sacks—less than half a season’s worth of fuel for many—is about 4x3 ½x4 feet tall.
-
Aesthetics: Fanned by a blower, pellet stoves’ flames aren’t so natural looking, Halsey maintains. “It’s a blowtorch look,” he says.
Traditional wood stoves can burn any type of log, though certain species—ash, locust, maple, oak, pinyon pine, and walnut, for instance—burn more efficiently.
-
Types: New wood stoves come in two versions. Both are designed to reduce air pollution by combusting the gases and tars left after the wood has been burned. Catalytic stoves use a platinum grid for that second burn; these stoves are generally used for whole-house heating and require more maintenance. Noncatalytic stoves send exhaust into a chamber where it’s reignited and burned. These stoves are more popular and cost $500 to $700 less than catalytic stoves, Thumbtack estimates.
-
Price: New stoves range from $100 to more than $2,500, according to Thumbtack. Cordwood costs about $200 less per heating season than pellets, the website estimates—and it’s free if it comes from your property.
-
Convenience: A wood stove can burn even when the power goes out. You may not have to empty the ashes every day. You also don’t need to depend on store-bought fuel. But depending on the heat you need and firebox size, you may need to stoke several times, day and night. Factor in labor, too, if you split your own wood. And seasoning the wood yourself can take a year or more.
-
Safety and health: Opening wood-stove doors regularly to add firewood can expose you to burn risk, smoke, and gases.
- Needed space: A cord of wood is 28 cubic feet. For a 4-foot-high, neatly packed stack, that’s about 4x8 feet on the ground. If you heat exclusively with wood, you could go through several cords per heating season.
"wood" - Google News
February 23, 2021 at 05:47AM
https://ift.tt/3unm7nk
Consumer Reports' Guide to Pellet and Wood Stoves - ConsumerReports.org
"wood" - Google News
https://ift.tt/3du6D7I
No comments:
Post a Comment