Does anyone use Wood or Pellet Stove for Heating? (Scranton: house, buying)

[skittlzski]

I am looking for an alternate to my oil heat and considering some type of stove.

Where should they be installed? I heard that some people put them in the basement.

I appreciate any useful information.

Thanks.

[johnqpublic]

I had a wood/coal stove in my last house, I burned both, coal was dirtier, wood creosoted up the smoke pipe quickly, a stove does take some maintanance, but it will greatly cut down on your oil heat bills..If you have the time and energy you can get free firewood almost anywhere. It warms you twice, once when you cut it, and again when you burn it.If you do go with a wood burner, burn only hard woods, {Oak, Maple, etc.}Stay away from pine and other soft woods... that includes commercial lumber scraps.I cut a heating register hole in my 2nd floor to let the heat rise.....paddle cieling fans pushed the heat thru out the house. you should humidify the air though, it is dry heat.

[BLUEDIAMOND64]

Wood stoves require a lot of work if you are cutting and splitting the wood yourself. If you are buying the cords of wood it can be very expensive. Familiar with pellet stoves, they are great! They are easy to clean and registers are good to have on the floor. I would talk to someone that better advise you. Good luck.

[FightinPhils]

With the price of heating oil, you're best off getting rid of oil heat altogether. With the cost of oil, you could put in a natural gas furnace and it would pay for itself the first winter. We got rid of oil heat 2 years ago, and I'm sure glad I did....I'd be losing my shirt with these prices, while gas has been manageable.

[Rosanne]

MrKrabs, I'd love to have natural gas heat when I move to PA (which is what we've always had in So. Calif.) and also a gas stove, but doesn't it have to be offered by a gas company in the area that has gas lines installed? I know that most of the PA homes we've been looking at online offer only oil, propane or electric heat. I mentioned to my husband that natural gas is seldom offered.

[thecoalman]

You can cut that NG gas bill even further with coal, coal is about a 1/2 the cost of NG supplied through a city supply. Simply put there is no fuel that is cheaper including wood, pellets corn or anything else if you're paying market value. There is a great fuel comparison calculator here:

http://www.eia.doe.gov/neic/experts/heatcalc.xls

You'll need Excel to open it, if you don't have excel you can download openoffice to open it. Note that the default values are quite old. If you're right in the Wyoming Valley you can estimate a ton of coal at about $150 to $160 delivered. $130 if you want to pick it up yourself. I'll also note that's the same price it was last fall. I used to be in the coal business and looking at my records adjusted for inflation its a few bucks cheaper per ton now than it was in the 80's. Coal prices historically have been very stable.


The dirtiness was mentioned but if you have good clean supply and are careful it shouldn't be any more of mess than wood or pellets. I don't have any experience with pellets myself and little with wood but from the posts on my forum that is what I gather from ex wood and pellet users. You can eliminate this issue altogether if you purchase a stoker boiler and isolate it either in your basement or outdoor building. Besides the cost it has many advantages over both.

• Coal can be stored anywhere indefinitely, its not subject to moisture issues like wood or pellets. This is more of problem with pellets, even a little bit of moisture will make them useless. A little dampness to the coal is actually desirable to keep dust at bay.
• A modern stoker on average can burn unattended for 2 days or more during really cold weather and even then it's just a matter of taking the ashes out and filling the hopper which amounts to a few minutes. We burn ours year round for domestic hot water because its a lot cheaper and have to attend to it once a week during this time of the year. Other than keeping it supplied with coal and taking the ashes out a large boiler like the EFM's and a few others these are no different than any furnace... except of course the cost to keep them running.
• Low maintenance, besides the relatively low amount of work required to keep it going chimney sweeping every year is not needed. For that matter we haven't had ours done since it was installed 25 years ago. Other maintenance includes cleaning out the fly ash in the flue pipe and within the unit itself. This varies by model but for a large boiler you'd only have to do it once a year. The smaller stoker may require this be done once every 1 to 2 months. Rough;ly speaking its about a 1 to 2 hour job.
• Reliability and durability, large stokers will last you a lifetime and that isn't an exaggeration. The lifetime of many of these stokers is about 30 to 40 years at which time they can be refurbished fo very little money and put back into operation. These are simple robust machines and things simply don't break.
• You'll be supporting the local economy here in PA, bothe coal and the stokers themselves are all made here. Makes you feel real good.

There are of course many other reasons, other than the little bit of work they really isn't any major downsides to coal heat. To give you a real world number we heat a nearly 4000 sq foot home for about $1500 a year and that includes domestic hot water year round. The house has all new windows and reasonably well insulted except for one side. That doesn't include our basement which is where the furnace resides and stays at a very comfortable temperature.

Ours is large stoker boiler however they make stokers or hand fired stoves to meet the needs of just about anyone from small stoves to heat a few rooms up to an including the boilers that can heat heat the largest homes.

If you want to learn some more you visit my forum: Anthracite Coal Forum

[FightinPhils]

Originally Posted by Rosanne

MrKrabs, I'd love to have natural gas heat when I move to PA (which is what we've always had in So. Calif.) and also a gas stove, but doesn't it have to be offered by a gas company in the area that has gas lines installed? I know that most of the PA homes we've been looking at online offer only oil, propane or electric heat. I mentioned to my husband that natural gas is seldom offered.

Depends on where you live, I guess. Maybe they don't have natural gas lines in the rural areas, but they do in Scranton and the towns in the valley. The gas company here is UGI, you may be able to contact them to see what areas have natural gas.

[FightinPhils]

At those costs, coal just might make a comeback. That would be great for the NE PA economy.

[thecoalman]

Well I wouldn't really ever say coal died, certainly no where near the levels it was a century ago or even half a century ago but it's a little "secret" that many people have been aware of. I always cringe when I see the media refer to it in past tense or something that is not done. They are still mining something like 2 million tons a year, overall thats not really a lot but its not insignificant either. Even when oil was at the real low of around $1 a gallon coal was still cheaper. I don't thing NG ever broke through the barrier either. Close a few years ago but now its not even close.

Now if you really wanted to talk cheap EFM is experimenting on a bituminous version of their stoker they expect to release late summer or in the fall. Bituminous presents a lot of problems though, specifically that it has tendency to form what they call a clinker which is a molten mass, anthracite will burn to powder. It's also not very neighbor friendly because it burns with a very sulfury sooty smoke, they are targeting this for this for the midwest. In any event bituminous coal is half the cost of anthracite. This unit won't be available in NEPA, there's no bit. coal close.

It's sitting in a pretty good place, it's cheap, plentiful, easy to use and its not that much work. People hear coal and they envision big black clouds of smoke and some sweaty dirty guy shoveling it into a furnace but that is not the case. Anthracite is 90 to 95% pure carbon, it burns with no smoke and very little smell . You'd have to be right next to the chimney to get a smell. My neighbor of 10 years was surprised to learn we burn coal...

Some other points I forgot to mention,

• The hand fired units that would be equivalent to a wood stove can go a minimum of 12 hours. May not seem much to those of you not burning wood but most wood burners would find that very long.
• Anthracite packs about double the BTU's of pellets in the same volume so you need less of a storage area.
• If you have an existing oil or gas furnace you can keep it if you have the room, actually I'd recommend it. This can be used in case of an emergency or if you have to go out of town for the week in the winter.
• If you do not have an existing chimney the smaller stokers can be power vented.
• Already mentioned it but I'll mention it again... You'll be supporting your local economy, nearly every cent you spend from the start will stay right here in Northeastern Pennsylvania from the furnace to the fuel to run it.

[valentine92]

We are getting ready to look at coal stoves. I was wondering if you wouldnt mind answering a few questions for me?

1. We are planning on putting the coal stove in our basement in an unfinished area and have it direct vented. Do they sell any hand fired stoves that can be direct vented?

2. If we go with a stoker stove and we loose power will we get a lot of smoke in the home? That is the reason I am asking about the hand fired stove (no electricity needed).

3. What size stove would we need? We live in a ranch home with a partially finished basement. Total about 1300 square feet upstairs and 400 downstairs.

4. Who manufactures the best coal stove for the money? There is a Harman Dealer in Wind Gap that we were planning on seeing since we live in the Lehigh Valley. We have our eye on the Harman Direct Vent DVC 500.

5. I was told stoker stoves requires rice coal. I have heard that rice coal is washed twice and bagged and therefore is clean. Do you know if this is true? My son is asthmatic and we do burn wood in the fireplace and he is ok with that so I am hoping that coal isnt any dirtier than wood.

6. Can you recommend a coal dealer in the area where we can purchase probably 3 tons of coal that is washed and bagged?

7. Do you know the current price for a ton of bagged rice coal that would include delivery to the Lehigh Valley. If it is much cheaper to pick it up we can probably do that as well.

I really do appreciate it if you would be able to help us out a bit.

PS: We were thinking of a coal boiler but since neither of us are mechanically inclined we decided to just stick with a simple stove.

Thanks!