Saving with a Pellet Stove

I know that among homesteaders, a wood stove is generally the way we want to go. You can harvest your own fuel, and woodstoves don’t require electricity. The thing is that they’re also extremely expensive to have installed, especially if you don’t have the know-how to do it yourself. We had a quote done, and found out that it would cost us upwards of $7,000 to have a stove installed (including the stove, parts, and labor). I would be okay with investing that much into a house we’d be staying in forever, but we hope to move within the next five years. So, a pellet stove was much more reasonable for us at this time.

My grandparents offered us their pellet stove which they no longer use. We installed it for a little less than $250 worth of supplies and 3 hours of labor. I was also able to find a nice hearth pad on Craigslist for $80, which saved us another $300 or so. Installing a pellet stove is much less involved than installing a wood stove. Much more newbie friendly. It’s so easy that my husband and I were able to do it ourselves. That’s saying something, especially since neither of us are particularly handy. We’re learning, but it’s a process. How did we learn to install such a thing? YouTube of course! What can’t you learn on YouTube? Here’s the video that we followed:
Part 1: https://youtu.be/blZHAsDmVMc
Part 2: https://youtu.be/4IVHbXlbUDg

Cool. But do you really save money?
This year has been extremely cold. We’re in NY, so a harsh winter is a given, but the subzero wind chills are happening to a greater degree, and more frequently than typical thanks to these polar vortex thingies that keep coming down. With that in mind, we’ve been saving $60-$100 per month off of our utility bill, including figuring in the cost of pellets ($4.50/bag, and we use about 1 bag per day). So, yeah! We’re saving! On the sub zero days, the pellet stove acts as a supplement to our furnace. It doesn’t get quite as warm. On the days when it’s in the 20’s or 30’s, our house 1,800 sq ft house gets up to 77 degrees with just the stove, no furnace. I’ve been impressed!

What if the electricity goes out?!
We actually have a converter on our van that would allow us to run the stove using our van as a power source. We also have a huge generator. This should get us through a few days if needed, though we don’t typically lose power for more than 12-16 hours a time. The last time we had a long term power outage in my area must have been 1991. Hopefully the S doesn’t HTF before we move onto a dream homestead with a wood burning stove.