We built a garage last summer that required the elimination of several rather large hardwoods (big maple and several smaller red oaks). We had it cut into to 16" rounds and picked away at the pile last fall/winter. We did OK, but we weren't really serious about dealing with the bounty as we were otherwise occupied with DIY finish work inside the garage. We were on vacation last week and we spent 5-6 mornings in the company of our splitter to get the rounds split and stacked before it rotted on the ground. It wasn't unpleasant work at all. We managed to get nearly 4 cord put up for the '09/'10 heating season and beyond (we have seasoned wood put up for the coming season). We have a few more small piles of rounds to address in the coming weeks, but it's pretty much under control. And we had a good time doing it, laughing and joking as we stacked and finding an easy rhythm for the teamwork of splitting. OK, I'll get to the point. We have just under 3 acres that were wooded when we built our home in '91. Our "first major appliance" was our Woodstock Soapstone stove. In the years hence we've never purchased wood. We've simply used what was taken down for the house, garage, or landscaping projects. And we've had plenty for our needs. We set the thermostats at the lowest setting and use wood to keep the house as cozy as we want or to simply "take the chill off" when it's raw outside. We have a splitter and honestly, the hardest part of the operation is just DECIDING that we're going to deal with wood. Once we make the decision the work is pretty easy and the feeling of accomplishment is terrific. I live in New England, too. And there have been a number of stories of pellet manufacturers being stretched beyond capacity by the volume of orders. I'm all for eliminating the middleman whenever possible.

Thanks for your reply Chelone. So you burn hot in the morning and afternoon, but also add some wood between the hot burns to keep the stove between 300 and 400? What do you do at night before going to bed? Just add enough to have some coals in the morning, or burn it hot again? As I understand it, we're not supposed to do a "smolder" burn in this stove (as we did with our Lopi), but I find that even cranked way down, our wood burns beautifully, and completely, so I'm getting more comfortable with tossing in a piece here and there and damping way down to keep it going. Like you, we really love the fact that we can be in the same vicinity as the stove without being baked. I'm finding we're burning about as much wood as we did previously, but of course, we're now heating nearly 1700sf where before, we were in a 1400sf home. Overall, we're really happy with our stove, and it's such a beautiful piece to look at as well. Thanks again, Geordie

Stowy, In most places for $3,800 you could get a nice fireplace insert like an Hampton HI300 and a stainless liner installed, (ballpark). I'm biased to the Pacific Energy brand and would also suggest you look at a PE Summit insert, which might even be less. There are obviously other brands as well. Two things to note: first, virtually all new wood stoves have glass windows, nice for atmosphere and you can monitor the condition of the fire much better. Secondly, stainless flex pipe will not burn out in two years unless you misuse your stove and have a lot of chimney fires in it. It is the mainstay of the industry for most relines. Interestingly, I had almost exactly the same quote for my fireplace. One reason it is so much is that most fireplace flues are 12x12 or bigger. There is much more stainless steel in a 12x12 square liner than a 6" round liner so the cost of the product is much higher. I just bought my own 316Ti stainless 6" liner for $300 and insulated it and installed in about 4 hours with some family helping out. This is going into a wood stove which I put in my fireplace. I thought about an insert but stole a nice used stove at a yard sale for $75 and fixed it up for $50 of parts and paint. I bought $40 of unfaced ceramic blanket insulation, $35 for a stainless mesh wrapper and $5 of foil to tidy up the ends of the insulation. So I'm safely burning in an as good as new stove for just about $500 but as my name suggests I am a New England Yankee skinflint. It is a fairly easy thing to do if you are relatively handy but not everyone likes getting on a roof. A lot of stove shops in my area charge about $1,000-$1,200 for a reline. I would suggest you look at doing a hearth mounted wood stove if you have the room but be mindful of clearances to a mantle if you have one. You'll generally get a bit more heat from a stove than an insert. Also inserts have integrated blowers which need electricity. If the power goes out, it is nice to have a stove which can convect more heat. Good luck

I heat my house (and I live in nothern NY) entirely with a Vermont Castings (Defiant Encore) woodstove and a Harman pellet stove (Accentra). For many years it was just the VC woodstove. I think wood heat is great, but it does require a certain amount of dedicated attention to burn it safely. Not to mention you have to be willing to put up with increased cleaning (mostly debris from the wood) of the inside, and of course, regular chimney care for safety. Pellets are easier, but they are essentially forced air heaters which is not as nice as a woodstove. With a pellet stove you just pour the pellets in and it burns merrily along without further care. Pellet stoves can be direct vented, and they create much less ash and creosote to deal with. But they also require electricity, while wood stoves don't. Regarding the enamel question: We actually have two identical VC Defiants, one with just the plain cast iron black and one with taupe-clored enamel (not paint) finish (referred to in our house as Blackie and Blondie.) We only burn one at a time and have the two so we can alternate them when one needs to be rebuilt, or if we have a mid-winter problem since for a long time the WS was our only source of heat. While I like the colored stove, I would never buy another enameled one again as it eventually chips and then it looks terrible and the chipped places never can be repaired (though it's still functional, of course.) Last year we considered buying another woodstove when it appeared that Blackie was not operating correctly (and I couldn't bear to look at Blondie anymore). We decided not to buy another VC as the quality as declined a lot since ours were made (20 years ago). Instead we would have bought a Jotul (non-catalytic), and only in the regular black cast iron color. Luckily, we had a long, warm, fall so we had time to break it apart and rebuild it. We're still going to use Blackie for another season. (So far we haven't fired him this year; we're still using just the pellet stove as the heating demand hasn't been very much, yet.) If I was looking for a stove in a little-used room (particularly one of those gas-burning ones) I might consider an enameled stove, but if it was for serious, daily use, then I'd always stick with black so I wouldn't have to look at chips for thirty years. If you haven't been woodburners before, I'd suggest getting one to see if you like tending a woodstove. One of the reasons we opted for a pellet stove rather than an additional woodstove is that it takes a fair amont of concentration to pay attention to the state of the fire in one stove; minding two was more than I wanted to tackle. Molly~