Last weekend Andrea wrote about the buckwheat hulls in our wall. We are in process of installing a pellet stove for heat this winter. There is an oil furnace in the basement. We don’t intend to use it. The first reason we looked at alternative sources of heat was that neither of us like oil heat. We haven’t owned a house that had oil heat. But, we lived in one for part of one winter and didn’t particularly care for it. And, I found a study which said that wood pellets cost about half as much for the equivalent heat in heating oil. Even if that is somewhat off, it would still make sense if the cost was based solely on the cost of fuel.

The other factor we considered was cost. If we were going to use the oil furnace, there were a few issues we were going to have to deal with. The oil furnace has not been used in 3 years, so it would definitely need to be serviced and I doubt we would have gotten away without having to replace some parts (we do know the fan works ok). The oil tank is so old that it does not have the tag on it indicating when it was manufactured (which means it is too old to be used). So, we would have to buy a new tank. Finally, the chimney is not quite up to code because it does not extend above the roof line enough. So, we were looking a potential cost of $3-5000 to get the oil furnace in working order. Getting a pellet stove setup and ready to use costs in that same range (most of the variance comes from range in price of pellet stoves). The particular pellet stove we purchased in manufactured in Canada but the design is licensed from the UK.

We also considered a wood stove. In pricing it out we found that the install cost was in the same range as the pellet stove. The issue we would be up against this time of year is that it would be difficult to get seasoned wood. Looking forward to future years, I also did the math on the cost of fuel. By weight, pellets cost about 40% more than local seasoned firewood. Pellet stoves do have 10-15% higher effeciency rating than most wood stoves do which should offset some of the difference in fuel cost. So, realistically, we will be looking at slightly higher fuel costs. To offset that the nice thing about the pellets is that they don’t involve continual cleanup and Andrea and the girls will have no trouble keeping the pellet stove in fuel.

Our house insurance requires that we document the installation of the main heat source. Since I’m doing it anyway, I thought I would share how to install a pellet stove here while I was at it. After deciding where we were going to put the pellet stove, I did some rough measuring and some exploritory surgery on the wall in the area where the vent was going. Tonight we picked up all the pieces for the vent except one. I put enough of it together, and after reading the installation manual, so that we could hold it in place to mark the area where the thimble will go in the wall.

Here is a picture:

Yes, we have wood walls behind our exterior plaster walls. Given the house was built 100 years ago, I think it was an interesting way to give the house some insulation. The buckwheat hulls that Andrea referred to were put in the wall between the plaster and the boards on the inside of the exterior wall. Behind the boards is blown in cellulose insulation. The white area is a plaster refinish job which was probably done just before the wall paper went on. The white area is slightly larger than the thimble at 13 inches high by 12 wide. I’m hoping that I am able to finish the installation this weekend. We’ll see how it goes.