Pellet stove fireplace insert

[Dave Lehnert]

Thinking about adding a Pellet stove fireplace insert.

Any tips on what to look for in a unit. How often do you run it (all day?) and how long a bag of pellets last.

Like a fire in the fireplace without the mess but also supplement some heat in the house.

have a local dealer that sells this Lopi model, Kinda like it but searching online it is around $5,000
https://www.lopistoves.com/product/agp-pellet-insert/

[Bill Dufour]

Natural gas is cheaper to buy and run, also less to go wrong. I would guess propane is cheaper then wood pellets unless you are planning to burn corn. My county often bans wood burning in winter on days when the air is stagnent.
BilL D

[Mark Wedel]

Now there are certainly high efficiency fireplace inserts that burn natural wood (eg, logs, scraps, what have you) - those have I think existed for longer than the pellet stoves (remember seeing those 40+ years back). If firewood is cheap in your area, that could be another alternative, though is not going to be as maintenance free as a self feeding pellet stove. But I would presume pellet stoves still produce ash?

[George Yetka]

As far as inserts there are wood burning(standard , efficient, and super efficient), Gas, and pellet. All seem to average 5k plus install and can be had at 2,500 and up to 10k.

The standard wood burner can burn a cord of wood in 7 days, efficient in 28 days, and super efficient in 10 weeks. I went through all of the research and planning and decided to remove my fireplace and chimney all together and replace the wall with windows. Because we cared more about sunday morning looking out the back windows than having a fire.

[Jerry Bruette]

When I tore down my old cabin and built a new one I considered a pellet stove. Old cabin had a wood stove and we wanted the ability to leave the cabin for a day and return to a warm cabin.

We went to a dealer that handled pellet and propane stoves. The sales person told me to stay away from pellet stoves and go with propane. His reasons were.
1. Pellet stoves have to be shut down about every two weeks and maintenance done, cleaning fire pot, cleaning pellet hopper.
2. Be careful of the brand of pellets. Some pellets have excessive fines which will cause the pellets to bridge and not feed. Some brands of pellets have foreign material which can jam the auger and burn out the motor.
3. Cost of propane was the same as pellets and you never have to haul and load the propane.
4. You may need a different/special chimney depending on what you want to burn, pellets vs corn vs cherry pits.

We went with the propane and have been very happy with our decision.

[Jack Frederick]

Pellets come in 40# bags which you have to move and store. Then lift and pour. Better have someone on a vac over the hopper as you get quite a lot of dirt/dust as the pour goes on. They are noisy. Sitting in the living room on a quiet evening you have that constant grind of the auger and the blower. I find that obnoxious. Jerry’s points are all correct as well. They require electricity. You do not want to store pellets over the summer as they can absorb humidity and turn into kitty litter. The glass in fornt of the fire pot gets dirty. One thing they have going for them is that they require only a 4” pellet vent which is much less than a wood stove liner. Should you install a wood insert you will need a full length liner. Wood and pellets are a hobby, but with a wood insert if I need heat I can kick the 250 yr old Windsor apart to burn it. For comfort and supplemental heat in the fireplace I would go gas. Make sure you see one operating and listen to their fan in operation as they too can be noisier than you want. Also, they are direct vent so you are using outside air for the burner. I called on a Stove shop up in Yakima 10 yrs r so ago and spoke with the owner. He had over the years sold about 6000 pellet stoves. One of his biggest sellers was anything that an elderly woman did not have to try to lift 40# bags when she was alone in the house

[Mike Cutler]

Dave

It really comes down to fuel cost and availability.
In CT, Propane would be my last choice. there are very few consumer protection laws for propane in CT. It can really be the Wild West with respect to price gouging here.
Natural gas, if already piped to the house would be a good choice. For me, it's not available.
I have a hard time understanding the answer about pellet stoves needing to be taken out of service every few weeks. That's certainly not my experience. I've known them to go for years with nothing more done than empty the ash tray. Maybe new emissions rules have changed things causing them to be more maintenance intensive?
Wood is messy! I've been burning wood to heat our house for almost 40 years, and am considering a pellet furnace. I'm finally getting tired of the mess. I go through 4-5 cords in a winter, OCT-April, and that's burning 24/7 for pretty much all of DEC/JAN/FEB. I have a Quadrafire 5700 stove in the basement that heats the entire house. This is the largest "wood stove" sold. Anything larger is a wood furnace. It's not possible to push a cord of wood through it in a week. That's a lot of wood.
Pellets are nice, and clean. You do have to be a little picky about the quality, but one of the nice things is that any one can operate one safely, and easily. You also easily store 80 lbs.. of pellets in a decorative container right at the stove, and all you need is a grain scoop to keep it going.
I would go ahead and get the quote from the local guy. I doubt it will be $5K.

PS.
I heat my house because it's the cheaper alternative. Our house is 100% electric heat, and that's really cost prohibitive to use.

[Cameron Wood]

Some clients had a pellet stove.

Heavy bags, bought and transported, stored in detached garage. Dust from filling the hopper. They converted to propane even 'tho more expensive.

I tore out my big double brick fireplace and gained 50 SF of living space. Probably energy savings as well without warm air going up the chimney.

[Dave Lehnert]

Just looking for advice on a pellet stove insert. Wont consider propane.
I ran a retail garden center for 25 years. I would hand load a 18 wheeler load worth of mulch on a Saturday morning. Lifting one #40 lb bag of pellets is not a concern.

[Dave Lehnert]

Dave

It really comes down to fuel cost and availability.
In CT, Propane would be my last choice. there are very few consumer protection laws for propane in CT. It can really be the Wild West with respect to price gouging here.
Natural gas, if already piped to the house would be a good choice. For me, it's not available.
I have a hard time understanding the answer about pellet stoves needing to be taken out of service every few weeks. That's certainly not my experience. I've known them to go for years with nothing more done than empty the ash tray. Maybe new emissions rules have changed things causing them to be more maintenance intensive?
Wood is messy! I've been burning wood to heat our house for almost 40 years, and am considering a pellet furnace. I'm finally getting tired of the mess. I go through 4-5 cords in a winter, OCT-April, and that's burning 24/7 for pretty much all of DEC/JAN/FEB. I have a Quadrafire 5700 stove in the basement that heats the entire house. This is the largest "wood stove" sold. Anything larger is a wood furnace. It's not possible to push a cord of wood through it in a week. That's a lot of wood.
Pellets are nice, and clean. You do have to be a little picky about the quality, but one of the nice things is that any one can operate one safely, and easily. You also easily store 80 lbs.. of pellets in a decorative container right at the stove, and all you need is a grain scoop to keep it going.
I would go ahead and get the quote from the local guy. I doubt it will be $5K.

PS.
I heat my house because it's the cheaper alternative. Our house is 100% electric heat, and that's really cost prohibitive to use.

I had a wood stove furnace add on back in the 80's (Still have it stored in the shed) Had a chimney fire once and took it out of service.
I have looked for a pellet furnace add on but not seeing too much available ??????

[Bill Dufour]

California will be outlawing gas furnaces and forcing heat pump only replacements in the next decade or so. So I plan to replace our ac and gas furnace in the next five years or so with a more efficient gas furnace.
Bill D

[Mike Chance in Iowa]

I don't have experience with inserts, but we did buy a pellet stove while in the dreaded 1900's uninsulated drafty farmhouse rental and then took it with us to put in the future shop at the new house. We were able to receive a federal tax credit because it was a high efficiency stove. Jerry's response was what we experienced too. A few things to add.

If you do install a pellet stove insert, experiment with different brands of pellets and save your notes. We found one 40 lb bag of ABC brand could last stove 18.5 hours and produce a tremendous amount of ash in the pot, while one 40 lb bag of DEF brand could last 15 hours and produce minimal ash, while XYZ would have pellets spilling over in the pot because it wouldn't burn well in our stove. The reason I mention to save your notes is even though we found a brand that worked best for our stove, we often had to buy an alternate because it was not in stock, or it was discontinued.

We ran our pellet stove 24x a day at the farmhouse and even with the pellets producing minimal ash, with the new emission regulations, we still needed to shut down the stove every 1-3 weeks and clean out the ash as well as any build up in the pellet pot.

As far as durability, we replaced the igniter a number of times in the first two years and now use a small propane torch to start it up instead. We have had challenges with the auger and other components over the years too. There are times when it's quite noisy. You learn to tune it out until you realize the pellets dropping sound different, or the auger sounds different and go investigate and see what is amiss.

[Thomas Bittner]

IÂ’ve burned various fuels to heat my home and hot water over the last 40 years.
Coal was the best but it became unavailable and expensive in Ct, it was a pain to get rid of the ashes.
I eventually went to cord wood, I burned 10 cords a year, while it was a good workout it took a lot of time as I cut and split, well IÂ’m sure you know all about that.
Then I went to a Harman pellet furnace which burns 8-9 tons a season. I was buying 18 tons at a time at the Home Depot but now they are limiting your purchase to 4 tons and they became much more expensive. I still have this year covered but will have to look for another source if oil prices stay high enough to warrant it. So I burn 1200 gallons of oil a season if I choose to go that route. The pellet furnace (boiler) was expensive to install and complicated at the time but now itÂ’s much easier, I think I paid about $7,500 for the furnace and installation.
Maintenance is a breeze, one cleaning per ton and not much creosote buildup takes me 30 minutes max and starts right up with no heat lost.
To be honest I might have been better off not doing anything and just stayed with oil/hot water. I admit a driver for me was oil prices changing so radically depending on what politicians decided what oil prices should be. If oil goes down enough $2.00 a gallon or so then IÂ’ll just buy oil.
My wife likes the house warm, sheÂ’s on blood thinners and gets cold easily. Even when itÂ’s 73 in the house she complains of being cold!
There doesnÂ’t seem to be many of these furnaces around, the place I bought it from went out of business years ago.
IÂ’ve had to fix the unit myself, luckily I have a background in electronics and electrical systems and you can buy parts on the internet so IÂ’ve been able to figure it out. IÂ’m getting older, I donÂ’t know how long IÂ’ll be able to schlep 40 pound bags around although it helps keep me in shape and I have no problems as yet. My wife certainly wonÂ’t be able to do it if IÂ’m not around.
This year IÂ’ve broken even with my investment I figure, I got a two year supply of pellets last year and saved about $4,000 when itÂ’s all said and done.
This is after 7 years but your mileage may vary.