Maybe you’re building a new home, or considering upgrading your home heating appliance. It’s important to consider the pros and cons of the various types of heaters that can be purchased. Today, we will talk about whether gas, pellet or wood is best for your home.
The most common types of fireplace and stove that are used as primary heating sources are either wood, pellet or gas.
When making a choice on a home heater, it is important to consider lifestyle factors; your access to fuel, how much heat will need to be generated by the fireplace and the cost of operating the unit. You will also want to consider your physical ability to haul wood and pellets and your sensitivity to smoke and other byproducts of combustion like creosote.
Let us go over some of the positives and negatives of the various fuel types commonly used to heat homes.
WOOD:
People have burned wood to heat their homes since the dawn of time. A huge benefit of wood burning units is the fact that they can be operated even when the power is out. Even if the power grid is knocked out completely, people with wood burning fireplaces or stoves in their homes will not freeze.
This is one of the biggest benefits to wood burning heat. In an uncertain world, it’s good to know that you can continue to heat your home no matter what. In a pinch, you can burn just about anything to heat up your house. In the classic book Little House on the Prairie, the main character ends up burning the furniture in the home just to stay alive during a hard winter. You can’t do that with a gas appliance!
Wood fireplaces and stoves also bring a traditional ambiance into the home that simply isn’t provided by more modern pellet and gas appliances. Another important benefit of wood units is that they require less costly and frequent repairs than their gas and pellet counterparts. Pellet stoves have many ‘moving parts’: safety switches, auger and blower motors, control boards, and more. Gas units are similar though not quite as bad as pellet stoves; you can expect to have to replace your pilot assembly, valve, blower motors and more over a decade or more of use. With wood stoves, the only parts that typically require replacement are the firebricks. Remember the KISS principle: Keep It Simple, Silly!
However, wood burning units aren’t without their flaws. There’s the smell of smoke, which many people are sensitive to. You must cut and stack the wood and let it dry and season or pay someone else to do that work for you. You must monitor the moisture of the wood: green wood is less efficient and creates much more creosote. Creosote can build up quickly and become hazardous if it isn’t cleaned regularly. Burning cord wood is also considered the least efficient heating method and it emits the most particulates into the atmosphere. They also require frequent cleaning and maintenance, though the same can be said for pellet appliances. The smell of smoke and dehumidification effect (burning wood tends to dry out the home) can bother some people with allergies or sensitive sinuses. Additionally, lack of control over the heat output may irritate some users. Wood burning stoves or fireplaces aren’t typically linked to a thermostat and the only way to control the heat is to modify the type or amount of wood being burned. If you’re very sensitive to heat changes, this could become a problem.
PELLET
Pellet stoves and fireplaces are another common form of heating. They require more maintenance than their wood burning counterparts but make up for it with ease of use, thermostatic controls and other features. Pellet stoves burn flammable pellets, which are compressed sawdust processed into cylindrical pellets that bear a striking resemblance to rabbit food. There are different types of pellets of varying quality: the best ones are typically made of higher quality source material (wood). There are many sizes and brands of pellet stove and they vary on how frequently they must be cleaned and maintained. Just like with wood or gas, there are free standing and fireplace insert models of pellet stove.
Pellet stoves use an auger screw, powered by an auger motor to drop pellets at a specific rate into the burnpot, where they are ignited (typically by a glow-plug type igniter rod). The auger continues to feed pellets into the burnpot for as long as you call for heat, making operation extremely easy especially for people who lack the strength to haul wood around.
Most pellet stove hoppers hold between 35-130 pounds of pellets, and typically require refilling only once a day. Another appealing positive element of pellet heat is the fact that it’s ‘eco-friendly’. The wood pellets that are burned are usually the byproduct of other manufacturing, like using up the sawdust that remains when processing wood. Pellet stoves also use very little electricity to operate. Pellets are more compact than traditional wood; they can sit there in their bag for a long time, protected from the elements, compared to wood which will not burn well if it is left outside to become damp.
Just like with wood, there are some negative aspects of pellet stove ownership. The pellets, while eco-friendly, are often dusty and irritating to people who have asthma or other respiratory illnesses. The flame is also not as attractive as a classic wood burning fireplace and resembles a blowtorch more than a regular wood burning flame. They also require much more maintenance than a wood stove, as they are equipped with control boards, numerous motors, and many small moving parts which can warp and break over time. Operators of pellet units must also clean and maintain their heaters with much more regularity than wood users. If cleaning and maintenance aren’t kept up with, the unit will become far less efficient, or develop issues that prevent it from working (a common one is for the stove to become dirty, overheat as a result and trip a limit switch, preventing the unit from turning on at all).
Even though they use little electricity to operate, electricity is required for it to operate, meaning that a power outage could result in your home freezing.
NATURAL GAS/PROPANE
We’ve gone over the two types of home heating appliance that actually burn physical wood products: either cordwood or wood pellets. Now it’s time to discuss gas fireplaces and stoves.
There are two types of fuel used in this type of fireplace. These units burn either natural gas or propane. Natural gas is a fossil energy source that forms deep beneath earth’s surface. It’s actually a mix of numerous compounds; the largest component of natural gas is methane. It also contains smaller amounts of hydrocarbon gas liquids and nonhydrocarbon gases such as carbon dioxide and regular water vapor.
Liquified Petroleum Gas (Also called Liquid Propane) is separated from natural gas and is a hotter burning fuel than regular natural gas. Natural gas or propane are both clean burning alternatives that emit minimal smoke and pollution. An important ‘pro’ of gas fireplaces and stoves is the fact that they will not aggravate respiratory problems thanks to lack of smoke and other bothersome particulates. The gas is clean burning, but it is a fossil fuel and is nonrenewable, making it far less eco-friendly than wood burning units (cordwood and pellet).
Maintenance on these is usually infrequent and minimal, but when it needs to done, a qualified professional is required. Cleaning and fixing your own wood and pellet stove isn’t out of the question for a technically inclined person, but it’s definitely not recommended for a homeowner to start messing around with a gas appliance; they could easily harm themselves and anybody else living in the household, and technicians use specialized equipment to avoid this outcome.
There are several ignition systems and several types of venting that are used in gas appliances, which I’ll go over in another article. The most common ignition type in a gas fireplace is the ‘standing pilot’ type. As the name implies, standing pilot units have a pilot light that always remains lit. This pilot light will remain lit even in the event of a power outage, allowing you to use your gas appliance even in an emergency. Electronic ignition systems don’t have the same benefit, but many of them allow for AA battery backup packs that allow you to electronically ignite the unit when the power is out.
Gas appliances are extremely easy to operate and require infrequent maintenance. They also won’t stink up your house and there’s no messy wood or pellets to haul around. However, you will still have to pay for fuel, and when a part eventually burns out, an expensive service call by a qualified technician will be required to fix the unit.
In conclusion, there’s no easy blanket answer when it comes to picking the right heater for your home. Which fuel type is correct for your house depends entirely on your use case and needs.
My favorite preferred fuel type is wood due to it’s simplicity and the abundance of availability of wood in the Pacific Northwest. What’s your preferred fuel type?
