How did you settle on your choice of stove?

[MikeNH]

I had to replace my aging wood stove with something...wood or pellet. Once we decided on pellets (that decision is another story), doing lots of math, and laying out the pros and cons of a basement vs living room install, I came here and started reading. Selected Harman as the brand, started pricing them and figuring heat output for what we wanted it to do. Decided on the P61a.

It also took me 1.5 hours to move 3 tons of pellets from the driveway to the basement...no rain during cutting, black flies during splitting, deer flies during stacking, and if I ever have to shovel snow off of them, I have bigger issues. when I die and meet God, if He lets me ask him a question it will be a struggle between "why did you create ticks" and "why did you create black flies?"

 

[SXIPro]

I had to replace my aging wood stove with something...wood or pellet. Once we decided on pellets (that decision is another story), doing lots of math, and laying out the pros and cons of a basement vs living room install, I came here and started reading. Selected Harman as the brand, started pricing them and figuring heat output for what we wanted it to do. Decided on the P61a.

It also took me 1.5 hours to move 3 tons of pellets from the driveway to the basement...no rain during cutting, black flies during splitting, deer flies during stacking, and if I ever have to shovel snow off of them, I have bigger issues. when I die and meet God, if He lets me ask him a question it will be a struggle between "why did you create ticks" and "why did you create black flies?"

Correct me if I'm wrong, but isn't the black fly your State bird?

 

[MikeNH]

Correct me if I'm wrong, but isn't the black fly your State bird?

Might as well be. The real state bird is a purple finch. I don't think I've ever seen one of those. Maybe the black flies drove them off.

 

[sculptor]

Mine was an easy calculation. The max sq ft. for the least out of pocket expense. I wasn't sure if I'd like a pellet stove or if it would heat the house, so I didn't want to spend a lot of money. I also chose Englander because once you go south of Va, pellet stove dealers are sparse. The closest Harman dealer was in Va, and the only local dealer was extremely pricey, and could barely answer any of my questions I was asking him. And he only carried 2 Quadrafires.

Lucky for me though, the only two brands of pellets that are available within 50 miles of me are Turmans and Greenway. Talking with the pellet dealer there are probably a dozen of us buying pellets from him.

 

[Coyote_nb_ca]

We was looking a longer time around to find a changes to lower our heating bill.... 3.5oo cnd in the first winter in this House with oil.

some weeks ago i see a nice offer on kijiji .... 500$ for the eco45 4-5years old.
jump in the car and pick the stove 200km away up.
grape some bags from my neighbour.
now 53 days later we save around 1050cnd on oli ...
plan to buy a 2. stove for the backrooms and main hall

...

 

[chuckster]

I got mine because they were real cheap, on Craig's list. What I got was enough parts to assemble two stoves, they work great!

One is in the garage and the other is on an enclosed porch that I couldn't use in the winter due to the cold. It gives off enough heat that I leave the door to the porch open now so that it augments my oil burner. I burned about half the oil last year, than I used the year before, when I didn't have a pellet stove.

Dave

Same here. Have an enclosed porch that never got used in winter. Put the stove out there facing the kitchen door that I removed. Keeps the whole downstairs no lower than 68 on the coldest days plus we get to sit on the porch every day. Cut a hole in the kitchen ceiling and installed a thru the wall fan and it keeps the upstairs bedroom over 65 degrees. I turn it down at night and the only oil I use is about 15 minutes every morning to take the chill off until the stove takes over again. Second year for the stove and I still have 3/4 tank of oil left. Oh Joy

 

[jtakeman]

My first stove was a used Quad we picked up once my son was born. We wanted to be warm when we got home and couldn't do that with the wood eater. Did pretty well for most of the season until the cold settled in. Ran it for 8 seasons but felt we were abusing it running full bore from December to Febuary. Decided to upgrade to a bit bigger unit so we bought the bige due to its 55K btu rating. Well it didn't cut it at all. No way it even came close to the little quads 48K btu's. Turns out it was really just 45K btu's(thats their new rating on them these days). Struggled with it for a season or so and sold it once we could afford to buy something larger.

I did my homework this time. I joined here and asked a couple of member what they though about their stoves. One was the Harman P68 and the other was the Omega. 2 reasons I ended up with the Omega was Price(I stole it really-see my thread)

https://www.hearth.com/talk/threads/finally-i-got-my-omega-today-update-photo.31386/

and this thread by member hearthtools.

https://www.hearth.com/talk/threads...-go-with-meridian-or-omega.11352/#post-207135

Not having to fuss with the stove every day like the quad or the bige or clean every few days is just plain priceless. I don't normally run mine for more than a week but have burned more than 40 bags without touching mine. I have also burned many many brands and it just eats em all.

I just plain love my stove! As rod said, It rocks!

 

[Mr. Spock]

New pellet stove owner and forum member!

I choose Harman because it was highly recommended by friends. I thought choosing a model would be more difficult than it was. The salesman, bless his heart, brought my wife right over to the enameled XXV and there was no going back. (Why can't girls pick clothes out that fast?) The XXV was a little more than I wanted to spend but two free tons and 100 bucks off sweetened the deal and I was in without a fight. At first I thought it would be a little big for our 1000 sgft home both in size and heat output but it does look great and runs just fine. I really do enjoy this stove and it has already saved me a small fortune over electric heat in addition to actually being warm for a change. So we are both very happy.

p.s
I am both electrically and mechanically minded so if a fix is needed its a non issue. I don't mind the minmal maintenance at all. Enjoy it actually. My parents burn wood but in no way do I miss chopping, stacking, stoking and cleaning. They too I guess, they saw the XXV and now own one too.

 

[becasunshine]

We started looking for an alternative source of heat for our house in town when local natural gas prices jumped by as much as 25% from 2007 to 2008. Natural gas prices have since stabilized, and I've read countless calculations that claim that pellets are more costly than natural gas. I don't know what to say about that. I do know that the monthly *budget billing* amount calculated for us by our natural gas provider would add up to more than we spend in pellets per season, so I'm betting on the pellets. We skipped the "budget billing" and we simply pay what for what we use to heat water every month. We went with a pellet stove because the heat is gentler and more forgiving of small rooms in small houses than a wood stove. There really isn't a "good" place for a wood stove in this house- it would run you out of any room in here. We called around, asked around and ended up going with one of the older, well-established stove and fireplace shops in the area. From their inventory we chose the Napoleon NPS40 free-standing stove. It's a good basic stove that produces enough btu's to heat our entire house, plus it has a good sized ash pan, not that we let any ash build up in there- I'm pretty OCD about having a clean stove. They offered us the best deal on the Napoleon, it suited us and so that's what we bought. We were commenting the other day that we can't believe we are in our fifth season with this stove... it seems like we just started using it yesterday!

 

[Chain]

Now, THAT, is a great set up. So you can buy them at nice Spring prices and he holds the inventory for you. Outstanding. If I could find a deal like that, the dealer would have my business forever. (as long as he carried decent pellets and his prices were not crazy high)

And this service is available to anyone who buys pellets from him. He has a fairly large warehouse and so he'll have a spring sale on pellets and load up on them in late summer. Basically he'll have several tractor trailer loads delivered in August and then those customers who have purchased pellets simply come by and load up whenever they wish. He keeps a running balance on your account and simply deducts whatever you pick up on any given day.

Right now I have about six bags remaining in my garage of the stash I stored there back in September. This Saturday I'll go to his shop and pick up 25-30 bags and be good for 2-3 weeks until I need more. Those are the last of the bulk purchase I made last spring so I'll probably buy another 2 ton Saturday and so 100 bags will be placed on my account to be picked up whenever I need them. This is basically how most of his customers who heat primarily with pellets do business with him. I will say it's very convenient and makes things MUCH less crowded in my garage and basement. The only drawback is that you get the pellets that he sells. Fortunately Empire Brand is, I think anyway, a good pellet.

 

[DAKSY]

I knew absolutely nothing about pellet stoves or any stoves for that matter, other than the old Ashley that burned in the early 80s to keep a rented 1850-built farmhouse sorta warm. I was hired to be a service tech after taking an "early out" from a civil service job & learned pellet units from scratch. I worked on Whitfield, Vermont Castings Quad & Enviros & then went to PA when we picked up the Harman line & went thru the factory training. What I learned on how the Harmans worked from the ESP to the under feed system convinced me to go that route when I finally made the move to get away from Heating Oil...Because I worked at a Platinum Harman dealer, I was able to get REALLY good deals on the P43 & the P61A & I was able to take advantage of the "Cash for Clinkers" program.