Pellets And Wood

We do both. We were 100% wood. New pellet stove last year, now we are 90% pellet.

 

I burn both and as much as I love burning wood? I burn pellets and supplement with wood when I want to now (mainly weekends and evenings). It's to easy to load a bag of pellets and set a tstat.

You having a BK would make a big difference in how I did things. I'd probably burn the wood stove 24/7 and let the pellet run when it needed based in the temp you set the stat.

 

Scotty either did or was considering a wood fired cook stove.

 

I also burn both. Both stoves are in the basement of a raised ranch. Primarily pellet and wood for extreme cold and power outages. Don't really burn all that much wood since we got the Omega. I think I've burned maybe half a cord in the 6ish seasons I have had the beast. The Omega handles the heating chore full tilt even in the coldest weather we have had as long as there is power!!

Now a days, I mainly burn junk mail and stuff. But will throw a load in it once in a while to make sure I burn the bees out of the flue!! Its a great secondary source to have if pellets go cookoo or are nowhere to be had. Always seems to be someone selling wood in the local paper. May not always be properly seasoned is the only risk. So once I get down to 1/2 cord I'll see whats available and get a cord to keep a good buffer. Tough keeping 5 tons of pellet and 5 cords of wood with no land per say and little basement space. But I wished I could!!

 

What wood burner do you have?

We went from something like 8 cords to ~~3 last year with the pellet stove I had diffuculty feeding the smoke dragon all day even though hubby put splits by the front door on a wind protected porch. I complained about leaning over baby gates to stoke both stoves so often (doors opened from top and swung down), but wow, our new insert is so close the floor and such a little door, that is difficult too even though the baby gates are now gone. The pellet stove rocks!!!! A bit loud but heat is more important.

We are lucky, we have a fence post company near town. The owner stacks his discards cut to stove length by year so we can buy dry wood when we need to, but need to haul it and split it ourselves (olde beetle kill pine). We ran out of wood spring 2014 and bought off of craigslist for dry splits and paid extra for stacking. Nope, splits were not dry and the fool did not stack it either. Hubby will be back at the fence post company soon.......and we have almost a cord left of the not dry stuff from spring 2014.

 

Its a Glacier bay wood/coal stove. Doesn't burn coal all that well, Or I couldn't get the hang of it is more likely. Plus coal was pricey compared to free wood.

Here in New England, We mostly burn hardwood. Pine a bit in shoulders(only after 3 seasons of drying). Cut split delivered is roughly $275/cord. No savings over pellets IMHO. When we bought pickerloads when the inlaws had the far and scrounged all the free stuff we could was it cheaper than pellets. Pine isn't sold here, Its not popular at all with the denser hardwood so readily available. I got my pine when scrounging or clean up at the old farm.

We went pellets 60% to wood 40% when my son was born. Pellet was good enough(and on stat so no over fire) until it got really cold. Then the wood eater was fired to help it along. Now that the Omega is here and we have the heat ducted upstairs. Don't need to burn wood much if at all. Kind of nostalgic when I do. Usually cook a bit on it or warm up some beans for giggles. I do like the heat a wood eater pumps out though.

 

Its really tough to get the heat upstairs I was OK until it got below zero and then we froze! Adding the duct was like adding in a furnace IMHO. I get 70's upstairs and the basement is basically heated by the returning air from upstairs and maybe a bit of radiant off the stove.

I wanted to go with a pellet furnace, But there wasn't many available in 2008, So when I saw that they had a duct kit on a European stove. I kind of copied it. Now some pellet stoves have duct options and We are even seeing some of the used pellet furnaces on CL.