dvetter, I think that you can heat your area in your New Jersey location with a regular corn/grain-fired heating stove. I am a bit concerned about your 14 foot ceiling situation, but 60,000 BTU units can heat up to around 2,000 sq. ft. in the Great Lakes area, colder than your area, I think, if the residence has good circulation and insulation. There are a small number of companies in a cartel that run world grain, which make few reports, as most them are privately owned, not joint-stock companies like the oil companies, who have to publish much more of their information. The grain cartel has proven for many years that they are effective in keeping prices paid to farmers for their grains low. A number of users in this area find that they can heat using 150 - 200 bus. of corn per heating season. Not too shabby a price. But - you must operate it similarly to a wood stove, which needs managing oftener than once daily, so such a heater should be an alternative heat source - but you say that you have a furnace in place now, which can heat the place when you're away. They run somewhere around $2,500. in price, I think. Try www.grainstovesinc.com (or maybe ending ".ca"): my friend builds a high qualtiy stove. Good wishes as you seek an alternative heat source. joyful guy

I put my Harmon stove in the basement. It is slightly unfinished. Before the stove the floors were always cold and the basement was cold. Now the basement and first floor are warm and the second floor stays around 68 to 72 degrees with the house fan on. I would NOT put it on the first floor. GO for the basement. You won't regret it. Any questions just ask.

thanks for responding bruce! we currently heat our home using propane, as a matter of fact, we use propane for heat, hot water, dryer, and cooking. needless to say, we go through ALOT of propane over the course of a year. when we first purchased our home, 4 years ago, i remember getting our first propane fill-up, it was 1.39 a galon, not a big deal, not a lot of money. since then, propane has skyrocketed and our last propane fillup cost us $3.40 a gallon. we are trying to lessen our dependency on propane, and if it weren't for the furnace, my propane usage would be approximately 250 gallons per year instead of 2000+ gallons. we would invest in a new higher efficiency furnace (ours is about 10 years old), but we live in a mobile home and the ductwork is run underneath the home. i don't feel that the ductwork itself is efficient, i believe we lose a good deal of heat through our ductwork itself. when the furnace is turned off on cold days, i can feel a definite draft blowing up through the vents. the underside of our home is completely insulated and covered with a vapor barrier. to inspect the ductwork we would have to completely take down nearly all of that. this past winter we supplemented our heat with a kero-sun kerosene heater which did a fantastic job of heating the majority of the house. i am not really comfortable with using a freestanding kerosene heater (i'm a bit paranoid), but the heat it put out was wonderful. i don't mind spendin the money on fuel to heat my house, even at over 3.00 a gallon, but i object to spending the money and still feeling cold. i like the idea of pellet and/or corn stoves. i like the idea that it is a renewable resource and that it puts the heat directly into my home. i also like the ambience of an actual fire, but i don't want a woodstove (we looked at them at the fireplace store and they got way too hot to the touch). a direct vent gas stove kind of would defeat our intention of being less dependent on gas. we haven't narrowed down our choices on pellet stoves yet. any recommendations would be greatly appreciated! i like the Quadra-Fire Castile and Mt Vernon models, even though they are a bit pricey. the castile might be a bit under-sized for what i want it for, but it's a little more attractive than the mt vernon model. i'm going to google the nutone fans, i think something like that to move the air from one room to another would be ideal in our situation. thanks again! jiggreen

I vote for a real fireplace or zero clearance stove We put in a fireplace at Lakehouse with SS pipe . A zeroclearance woodstove with SS pipe that we enclosed like a fireplace in this house. I like our EnergyKing best Have access to free wood for the splitting and taking Plus scrounge the neigborhood for when tree work is done. Lots of tree services will dump off cut up wood in my yard for the asking Course we split lots ourelves w log splitter and chain saw But the main reason here in Suburba is backup heat. Plus I need the exercise. We built 4 small "cribs" to hold that wood in backyard. Each has a nice fiberglass roof Plus I made nice tarps to cover the fronts. Put a nice made lattice hinged divider so it doesnt show from street We are one of the few on this dead end street (late 1950) 1000 plus ft )not built with a real fireplace unfortunately That is my humble opinion . Most would not want the "mess " but I like being prepared