Thanks for all the info, everyone. Yes, the current wood stove is truly messed up (previous tenants were real charmers, having left holes in the walls etc. as well), so I don’t think simple repairs will help.
The “nearly 33% of the tank in 2 days” incident was pretty extraordinary even for this house, but it does run through propane pretty fast. I think the tank holds 300 gallons, and when the weather is consistently cold (in the 20-30 deg F range) my friend will go through most of a tank in about 2.5-3 weeks time, and that’s even with keeping the thermostat fairly low, around 64 deg F. He can’t put it much lower than that because otherwise he runs the risk of having the pipes in the kitchen freeze. The pipe situation was part of hte reason he started running a kerosene heater in the first place, and then he made the happy discovery that it helped heat the entire house, but as I said he is looking for an alternative.
The pellet stove does sound promising, given his lifestyle. I’d be interested in knowing too what an actual cost for the pellets might be and the amounts they are sold in.
$200 sounds about right for a ton of pellets. Hardwood weighs about 5300 pounds per cord, so a ton would be about .4 cords. Figure costs for processing and delivery, and the $200 per ton sounds reasonable. (That would equal about $500 per cord of wood, much higher than buying the actual wood, but effeciency and convenience play a part.)
The question is if pellets are universally available or not. You’d require a dealer in your immediate area.
I talked to the MIL for some hard numbers for her pellet stove.
It cost her $2200 about a year ago. It was an upgrade from her previous one, which worked about the same but needed more frequent cleaning. There were cheaper models available but I’m not sure how much cheaper.
She heats the entire house with it - a three bedroom, prefab ranch, with the normal number of windows and amount of insulation. I know from experience that it works fine even for the farthest away bedroom, especially if you leave the door cracked.
She goes through 4 tons of pellets a year. It costs her $159 a ton, delivered. So, <$650 a year.
I’ve never looked closely at the price, but I know that I’ve seen bags of pellets at Home Depot. If the price is comparable and there’s one nearby, he may be OK even without a dealer.
The 200 dollar figure I used was for a literal ton of pellets. They come in 40 pound bags. Last winter Wal-Mart was carrying them but they weren’t this winter. If its consistantly in stock, you really cant get much more universal than Wal-Mart.
The stoves are kind of expensive, but I’ve had mine about 15 years and the only repair that I’ve ever had to perform on it is to replace the motor that operates the auger that feeds the pellets into the fire box at a cost of about $90.00.
In NM a ton will last me all winter with minimal supplemental heat from a propane heater, but I’ve never been to Maine so I wont even try to guess at the tonnage needed to maintain comfort. I was in a store in Silverton, Colorado once and the proprietor was burning a pellet stove in the store. He told me that he went through about 5 tons in a winter and I’d hazard a guess that the climates may be somewhat similar.
I think they’re really a good deal. Vacuum out the ash every 2 or 3 days, dump in a bag of pellets every other day and thats about all there is to it. Hope this helps.