(Yeah, yeah, I know: I write novels! Well, how can anyone help if they don't have all the facts?)


Does anyone have any experience they would like to share about Pellet or Gas stoves?

We've been in our house for almost 20 years and don't see moving anytime soon because of the business. And, for that time, we've dealt with a pretty severe imbalance between the temperature of the second floor and the first. The second floor is where my offices, living room and bedroom are, so we spend most of our time there. The first floor has our reception room, studio and kitchen. The heating system is a gas-fired steam system with only one zone house-wide.

The studio and reception room typically run about 8° cooler than the upstairs, but it's not too big of a deal as most customers are here for just a couple of minutes to pick up / drop off something and don't even take off their coats in the winter. A longer appointment likely means someone is in the studio, and then the lights/flash warm things up a bit. I've never had a customer say they feel cold.

The kitchen and half-bath right off the kitchen usually run about 20° cooler than the upstairs, though, meaning when Joyce and I go down there at 5AM, it's typically about 52°. To the best of our knowledge, there is no difference in wall insulation and the floors/ceilings are no different then the other rooms on the first floor. There is one steam radiator for the largish kitchen, a pantry, and the half bath. In the kitchen wall in front of where the chimney runs, there is a "patch" where you can tell that a stovepipe once ran. My gut feeling is that the whole-house heating system was installed when there was a stove there and they therefore installed one radiator in a room that should have two…if it weren't for that old woodstove. Well, now it doesn't exist and those rooms are always cold.

So I started considering a pellet stove a couple of years ago to be installed in the basement under the kitchen. I figured it would warm the basement (laundry, workshop) and turn the kitchen floor into a radiant heat source. My brother-in-law put one in and raved over Christmas, so I've been considering it even more these last few weeks. This Saturday, Joyce and I stopped in a place and I fell in love with a gas stove. I had never really considered one before, but the salesman (who seemed great with all my newbie questions) recommended it because there's no loading of pellets, no cleaning of ash and we have Natural Gas in the house already for our furnace / water heater. He recommended putting one right in the kitchen and after seeing a few models, I really liked the idea. These stoves, as opposed to the simplistic pellet stoves I had been considering, were beautiful!

I had always wanted a fireplace, but adding one to an old house like this is not a simple proposition. I grew up in a house with a fireplace and to me, it always carried the allure of turning a house into a home. Much as this house serves our needs, it's never been what I considered a "warm home". If I weren't relying on it for the business, I'd give it up in a minute for a cozy ranch somewhere in the country.

Anyway, I had a bit of an epiphany on Saturday when I realized that a gas stove in the kitchen might have all the practicality of warming that whole area of the house while adding a whole lot of charm and coziness, much like the fireplace I missed.

This is the type of model I'm primarily considering, by JØTUL:



Anyone have any thoughts or suggestions for Gas Stoves, Pellet Stoves, advantages of one over another, etc., etc…? Despite their increased popularity over the last few years with rising fuel prices, I'm not really finding much on the net. Lots of stuff on woodstoves, but far less on gas or pellet stoves…. It's a sizable investment with installation, and I'm having a hard time determining if it's worth it over bundling up when we're downstairs. We don't entertain much at all… if we did, it would be a no-brainer to have something like that in the kitchen.

Is it practical or am I just being nostalgic?


::::::: No disrespect to Axiom, but my favorite woofer is my yellow lab :::::::