Cause Essay

I recently purchased a wood pellet stove, if you go out and try to buy one today, most likely it’s not showing up until next spring. So many people are looking for alternatives because the markets are so volatile. If you walk into any shop that sells pellet stoves there is always a crowd of people standing around staring at them, this includes home depot too. I noticed it to be more difficult to get a clerk’s attention if you weren’t asking about a stove, and that was at my local lumber yard. I too became one of those people mindlessly gazing at them, thinking where I could put it, and that I could save money this winter. I’ve got oil fired forced hot water heat in my house and after last winter I decided that I wasn’t going to go broke over heating oil. A pellet stove was the answer, I still have to use oil to heat my hot water for now but if I can lower my heating bill I’ll be happy. The main reason for going with a pellet stove was cost, even though I’ve invested nearly the total of last year’s oil bill in this project. Second was the ease of use, I grew up with wood heat and spent my time cutting, splitting, and stacking, with pellets I just open the bag and pour them in. Third was safety, I have curious little fingers wandering around my house and most pellet stoves are slightly warm to the touch. As I learned when I was a kid, you only touch a hot wood stove once.
A cheap and effective way to heat the house this winter had been on my mind since last winter. I was really struggling to stay warm and keep gas in my tank. Going to the grocery store would use half of the funds after oil. I wasn’t going to be in that position again. Record high gas, heating oil prices, and a drive nearly seventy miles to work and back every day didn’t help at all either. I knew that gas and oil would most likely not be cheaper in the upcoming winter so I started shopping around. I found a nice pellet stove, a Harman Advance, this stove has all kinds of bells and whistles that I probably don’t need but wanted anyway. It wasn’t cheep listing at $3’200, over half of last year’s oil expense, but I bought it anyway. The stove is a onetime expense, it will sit in my living room for ever as far as I’m concerned and all I have to do is buy pellets. Pellets average around $250 a ton for standard pellets. Availability is the only problem with pellets now. Fortunately, several new pellet plants are opening up in central Maine and I already have four tons sitting in my garage.
I also have no room for my car in the garage due to four tons of pellets standing in its place. I’d rather deal with that though than work on splitting nine or more cord right around now. Carrying in a forty pound bag every day is fine. Not loading the furnace before bed and raking coals first thing in the morning is fine too. I have to be honest though, I haven’t dealt with that in three years. My wood furnace and oil furnace both went through the same flue and I had to take out the wood furnace for insurance reasons. I am still insured to burn wood and this new stove has its own separate flue so I’m all set. Cleaning the new stove is a breeze too. Every other day all I need to do is shut it down for a half an hour, plug in the shopvac, and give it a good once over. After a ton of pellets I pull out the heat exchangers and clean them also. Supposedly you can burn a ton of pellets in the Advance without emptying the ash pan, I don’t believe it but maybe I’ll be proved wrong.
I installed it myself, which was quite the learning experience. I learned, because my house is a pre-fabricated, there are two half inch sheets of plywood, spaced an inch apart in the wall running down the middle of my house. Getting through them proved to be interesting. Once I was through though, hooking up the double wall vent pipe was easy. I’ve only run the stove a few times, and most of that was testing it out. When it was running though, my nine month old boy Ryan was wide eyed looking at it. I think he likes watching the fire dance around inside. I could tell all he wanted to do was go over and pull himself up on it. The glass on the front gets pretty hot but not bad enough to bun yourself, not unless you held your hand there for five seconds or so. Even when it’s not on and he’s headed for it, my wife and tell him “That’s a no no!!”. He just smiles a big happy grin and keeps on going. I hope he has learned not to touch buy the time I have it running full blast.
At the very least, I know I’m doing my part to keep some of my spent money here in the U.S. I already send enough money to the Saudi’s at the gas pump. Even if I’ve spent more than I can afford on this whole project I can sleep easier knowing that the money I spent on the stove went to the people who manufactured it in Pennsylvania. The pellets that I bought were made right here in Maine, and I saved a bunch of cash doing a lot of it myself. My back may be sore but, it’s not from splitting wood.