We bought our first pellet stove!
After watching the heat from the log fire go up the chimney and not provide any comfort unless we sat next to the fire on the floor of our Family room, we decided that the next reasonable step was a pellet stove. We did a lot of research into different styles and companies and finally settled on buying one at the stove store in Fallston. And it was on sale!! 15% off. What a deal. We purchased one for $3500 and tried to figure out how many years of cost saving we would have to have in order to actually save on what we were paying in oil deliveries.
So then we had to have it installed. We found a friend of a friend who did it for $900. Now we were up to $4300. Oh, we forgot the pellets....now we're up to $4600. And did I forget to tell you that the oil company just delivered 66 gallons of fuel oil at $3.89 per gallon....now we're up to $4900!!
Boy are we saving. I figure I'll make this up some time in the next mellenium...but the Family room is real warm!!
2 comments:
Yeah,you'll make back that investment about the time you turn 100 -- but it's all about the ambiance of being warmed by some sort of flame.
I fondly remember, in my Calvert Street minimansion of 30 years ago, the satisfying roar as the coal-converted oil burner roared to life (consuming 1.5 gallons an hour, I could go through 25 gallons a day in cold weather heating that 6,000-square-foot end-of-row Victorian that was utterly lacking in storm windows and insulation. And I felt pain when the price of heating oil jumped to around 60 cents a gallon in the late 1970s days of automotive gas lines. First thing the folks who bought it from me did was replace the burner with gas heat and install storms on the house's 36 huge windows.
I love the idea of a pellet stove, but am drawn to the versatility of a wood stove. When our economy finally hits the skids, we'll be able to use greenbacks for kindling.
Dave, nothing like an old cola-convert dinosaur, eh? Our old house in Remington had the coal bin and the oil conversion kit sealed...with asbestos. Healthy livin', baby!
Man, I love a Mt Vernon/Charles Village minimansion though. I'd take one of those painted ladies on St. Paul in a second if they ever dipped under 300K. Who am I kidding? 200K.
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