Negatives of wood pellet stove heating?

[debf]

We have a pellet stove and love it. I like how it's so easy to turn on and off. Just push a button. We already bought our pellets for next year. We got a good deal at home depot and bought four ton. We bought that amount last year and still have quite a few bags left. We store them on our basement. The bags of pellets are a little heavy at 40 lbs. DH is usually the one to bring them up to our living room. Also the stoves tend to get dirty but again DH is the one to deal with the cleaning about once a week. I have an open floor plan and the stove heats our house very well, even the bedrooms which are upstairs.

 

[jlewisinsyr]

My in-laws have one and their house is much more dry now then it was running on their gas heat before. Not sure if it's common, but because it is such a dry heat being let off, I would guess it would be.

 

[mickeyboat]

We hated ours. In its defense, it was not a top of the line model and it was 10 years ago. It was noisy to listen to the fan and to listen to the pellets drop into the burn pot. It was a pain to light. There was a lot more left over ash than we expected and since we direct vented it outside, the ash that went out the pipe blew back on to the house leaving a big brown splotch. We ended up putting up a smokestack, which looked ridiculous. It also didn't seem to throw off much heat, although our pets loved to lay down right in front of it.

As much as it is harder to deal with wood, we absolutely love our wood stove.

 

[poohbear227]

We have a pellet stove and love it. I like how it's so easy to turn on and off. Just push a button. We already bought our pellets for next year. We got a good deal at home depot and bought four ton. We bought that amount last year and still have quite a few bags left. We store them on our basement. The bags of pellets are a little heavy at 40 lbs. DH is usually the one to bring them up to our living room. Also the stoves tend to get dirty but again DH is the one to deal with the cleaning about once a week. I have an open floor plan and the stove heats our house very well, even the bedrooms which are upstairs.

The house we are looking into buying is an open floor plan as well. The stove is located in a partial finished basement & I think the current owners store their pellets in the unfinished room off of that. The first floor has an open floor plan. Is cleaning it an extensive or expensive process? What does it entail?

Also, this might sound like a dumb question, but does a wood pellet stove make your house smell like a fireplace? That nice hearthy homey scent?

 

[formill]

The house we are looking into buying is an open floor plan as well. The stove is located in a partial finished basement & I think the current owners store their pellets in the unfinished room off of that. The first floor has an open floor plan. Is cleaning it an extensive or expensive process? What does it entail?

We bought a shop vac we use only for cleaning the stoves and buy the bags and the drywall dust filters......the dust from stove is very fine and will fill your room with a layer of dust without a good vacuum. I don't find cleaning extensive or expensive just dirty and I only do it once a week or so although every other day I scoop the ashes aside or in a bucket and clean the window- some have an ash pan under the stove ours do not....once a year we take apart the pipes outside- one stove has a typical pellet pipe goes up about 4 feet outside- the other just looks like a dryer vent and is super easy to clean. There is no scraping or anything just dust/ash comes right off.

 

[3boymthr]

So, if we lose our electricity does that mean we would have no heating source for the basement and first floor? (where the pellet stove heats)?? It's not very common for us to lose our electricity in the winter where we live, but if we did, would we have any options for heat?

Ummm.... this would be true of any heat source. No heat when the electric is out. It's just a fact of life. Oil, gas, etc. The only heat that works when the power is out is wood and that's only if you don't have a power vent. DH is in HVAC. I can't tell you how many people he has to tell to call back when the electricity goes on.

We also have a pellet stove and I have to say I love it. Drawbacks that I find are the extra dust (as compared to our oil boiler) and the noise, again as compared to our boiler. Because DH is in HVAC we get our oil at a discount (cost - so a savings of about 50 - 75 cents/gallon) and the pellets are definitely still cheaper.

 

[Mermaid02]

We love our pellet stove. We heat the entire house with it. We do have oil as a back up- but very rarely do we turn it on. We find the heat travels well, we put up 2 fans in the corner of the 2 doorways of our den (where the stove is) and that propels the heat into the rest of the house and upstairs. It is cooler upstairs, but we like it cooler to sleep anyway. We have asthma and allergies and have had no problems with the stove and dust.

 

[npmommie]

We have a pellet stove. the insert kind in our fireplace. Its a harmon brand and we love it.
we heat the entire house with it, and save a lot of money from when we used to use oil.
we still have oil as a backup and for hot water.
we buy the pellets when they go on sale, which is now for next winter.
we probably go thru 4 tons on average I think we used more this year because it has been colder longer, in fact we turned it on last evening for a little bit.

we have a generator to plug it into if we lose power.

which doesn't happen too often. hubby cleans it and we also have the shop vac just for the pellet dust. the people who sold us the stove recommended the shop vac.

what else can I tell you?
it heats our entire house both floors very well. on super cold times like below zero I may turn the heat on upstairs but that doesn't happen very often.
we also have ceiling fans that help to distribute the heat.

OP, I am wondering how this house was heated before the pellet stove?
or did they build the house without an alternative way to heat?
what if you can't get pellets? how would you heat the house?
just wondering.
oh, and we store ours in the basement on a pallet, this year we had to buy an additional ton, we ran out, and we stored it on the back deck up on a pallet covered with a tarp and it was perfectly fine.

I also want to say, I think the pellet heat is nicer, and more even than when we heated with oil.