As far as how much the stoves can go down in the "off-season" depends on many factors. If there is a discontinued model, it will go cheaper. On others, it just depends on how motivated the dealer is or maybe there is a stove in a particular color that they want to clear out. Mostly, the off-season is best for scheduling the installation and ordering any parts. That's probably where you will save the most money. Maybe they can even throw in installation for free if they don't discount the stove. There is more bargaining room on everything when they have more time. As far as the motor and boards on the Harman, I only ever replaced one board, but I am convinced the owner of the stove messed it up (there were other issues with this guy). I never replaced a motor or even a blower, even on my own stove. There is fan noise with all pellet stoves and I would always recommend to people that it not be put in the TV room. It seems to bother some people more than others. If you are sensitive to sounds it will bother you. It is kind of like a range hood fan on low all the time.

I know this is an older post, but, I thought I would chime in. As a minimum, there must be no combustible material directly under the stove, and must continue 8-12" from the sides and 16-18" from the front. We currently have 2 woodstoves heating our entire house, but use our larger main for the majority of the year. It sits on slate tile over cement board, and out from the wall about 18-24". The wall is plaster behind some and plywood on each side. The wall gets warm, but never hot enough to ignite, and only when the dampers are open and the fire is roaring. You could easily do drywall or tile. Ceramic, marble, and slate are all safe choices.

Our Regency F1100 stove (www.regency-fire.com) cost about $2200 complete with installation. My advice is to let a pro do the installation as the homeowner's insurance company prefers that. I have seen far too many house fires resulting from a DIY installation. Besides, the job can be completed from start to finish in under a couple hours when done by a pro. The size of the stove is omportant too. If you're just gonna heat the small area, go for a small stove. I have the smallest Regency and I use it to heat my 1300 sq ft home. I have it in the living room and it heats the parts of the house I wanna heat. But the bedrooms stay cool. Mt stove has heat shields so the clearances are much tighter to the drywall . It's in the corner of the room and the stove is 6 inches from the wall. It has a ceramic ("glass") door and I like to view the fire in the evening. As a matter of fact, the fire is more entertaining than most of what's on TV! So go to your stove shop, or a couple of stove shops, and tell them what you want to do. Have a stove sized to your needs and location. (It gets colder here in VT than it does in VA for instance.) Be prepared for the work involved in a wood appliance. (Buying, stacking, splitting, carrying in the wood, etc.) But the fact you can turn down that OPEC addiction is well worth it!

Have you had your chimney looked at? That's a giant stove to have only what looks like a 6" collar, and there may be other issues that aren't immediately apparent. It is hard to get a clean burn in those old stoves without burning them really, really hot, which is usually too much heat for the house. They're really more suited to being used as shop heaters where you don't particularly care how much you have to burn. If that is a 1976 stove - and it certainly appears that it is - you'll probably need to get it to about 400 - 500F on the stove surface (not the connector pipe) to burn cleanly. The combustibles in the white smoke burn at 540 - 1225F. That being said, I'd take a real hard look at the required clearances before getting it that hot. If the wall to the left and behind are solid masonry, you're probably OK, but if there is wood behind that brick, your clearances are questionable. I hate to be a spoilsport, but if the house has been tightened up - new windows, insulation, etc. - or if you have a leaky central HVAC system, there may be some drafting issues that the stove didn't have originally when it was installed. Your best bet is to install a new EPA-certified wood stove, but a good chimney professional might give you some tips on how to make the one you have work better. You can find a certified pro here: Chimney Safety Institute of America One thing a Certified pro will tell you is that you need 18" of floor protection in front of that stove, unless the specifications for the stove say otherwise (typically, 16" is the least you'll see). You're a little short in that department. I'd recommend taking care of all of the potential safety issues before worrying too much about how the stove burns. Hope you can get that old stove to work to your satisfaction.