Wood/Corn/Pellet Stove

[stevew]

Was looking into all three of these options to augment/replace my existing inefficient furnace. Anyone have any experience with any of them? I do understand that there's a lot of extra work involved with these type of things. But after the initial outlay, I think it breaks even pretty quickly, and pulls ahead by quite a bit. Especially with how the cost of natty gas keeps spiking.

My neighbor swears by his setup, and I'm going to have to check it out someday soon. I'm also torn between getting a stove that you can feed the heat into the existing ductwork, or a free standing model that I could vent through an existing (shitty) gas log fireplace. Although the second option worries me cause it's not really centrally located, and I really wonder if the heat will make it throughout the ground floor of the house.

(apologies if I posted this topic previously, I couldn't find it via search)

[lungs]

I have an outdoor wood burner. The biggest benefit for me is that I like my house nice and warm in the winter and with burning wood I can keep it pretty warm without worrying about getting raped on the heating bill. The biggest drawbacks are making the wood and tending to it. Mine is pretty large, but I still had to check it or fill it three times a day on moderately cold days. Frigid cold days I check it a lot more often because if the fire goes out your fucked. My first year of having it, my pipes froze because I was sloppy and didn't start a good enough fire before I went to bed when it was -20 degrees. If it can be rigged up so that your gas furnace kicks in if it gets too cold, then it's not much of a concern. My gas furnace had taken a shit on me and I never bothered to get it fixed until this year, so it was much more of a concern for me to make damn sure I had a good fire going.

My folks have burned corn for a few years now and love it. We are farmers so procuring the corn is not much of a problem. Corn is pretty high priced these days but I'm fairly certain it's not so high priced that it's not cost effective.

My neighbor had a corn burner for two years but he took his out and went back to wood. He wasn't a big fan of the corn burner because he thought it used too much corn. Personally, I think his house has some major problems maintaining heat because his leftover wood supply lasted me for two years. He uses a shitload of wood too.