Electric Fireplaces/woodstoves??

[aprilvaca04]

I was wondering if anyone had any expereince with the electric woodstove type fireplaces? We were thinking of getting one for a smaller room to use occastionally. Don't really want to get into what wood pellet stoves entail. are the efficient and pretty reasonable to run? Any info would be appreciated...TIA

 

[eeyoresmom]

I'm not sure if this is exactly what you are talking about, but we have one that looks like a small old fashioned cast iron black stove. It's electric and has fake flames. It is essentially a large space heater. Ours will keep you warm if you are sitting right near it ( within 4 feet or so ), but is not efficient enough to heat a room. At least not in New England in the winter. You could probably bump your thermostat down maybe 2 degrees and this would make up for it. I've never actually figured it out, but I think they use a lot of electricity. When you switch ours on, the lights in the room dim My advice would be to buy one for atmosphere. Even though they
are fake, they are calming. Sort of like a candle effect.

 

[IleneF]

Bought one last year at Lowes. It saved us money but not sure how much. We can set our thermostat a couple degrees lower like to 64 and it will bring it up to 67. The problem is heat rises and we have a vaulted ceiling in our living room :-(

 

[drinkme]

Here's close to the one we bought in Jan 2008:

http://www.homedepot.com/h_d1/N-5yc...splay?langId=-1&storeId=10051&catalogId=10053

It's practically the same thing. The only difference is the "marble" in the middle. Ours must be the older model because it doesn't have that.

Anyway, when we bought it in January, Home Depot.com was having a sale, PLUS free delivery into your front door. The box is SOOOO heavy, there was no way I could have gotten it from my van into the house.

My ds (who was 7 at the time) and I put it together. It was super easy. I put it in our living room which has cathedral ceilings. That room is always cold and the fireplace takes the chill out of the room. It looks really nice, too. Everyone compliments us on it. I have it on thick carpeting and it's so heavy that it lays perfectly level. It has a big mantel that I decorate every season.

I think I paid around $600 for it (on sale). I used my Home Depot card and took the 12 months interest free to pay it.

There are many electric fireplaces out there. I did lots of looking around for a long time, and I'm really glad I found this one. It was the best price for what I wanted. I wish I could have gotten a gas fireplace installed in my living room, but I was quoted something like over $5000!!

HTH

 

[aprilvaca04]

Thanks so much for the input so far...we areally aren't looking to use it for a major heat source just to use if we are all in the one room and it can help us drop the thermo degrees a bit. Just looking to take the chill off of the one room we are in. We will def be looking into this further.