Heating with Wood Pellets

I had my pellet stove serviced the other day because the Canadian winter is quickly approaching.  I'm trying to be as prepared as possible for the deep freeze this year.

Last year my wife and I purchased a Flame FP-45 pellet stove (pictured to the left) at Home Hardware, our local hardware store.  It burns wood pellets and puts out a maximum of 45,000 BTUs.

I highly recommend a pellet stove for those of you who live in areas that have pretty cold winters.

My pellet stove has six heat settings.  I usually run it on the lowest setting, which burns just one 40lb bag of pellets a day (a bag costs about $6).  So, in the Canadian winter, I'm able to heat the main level of our home with just one bag of pellets a day.  The heat produced by the pellets feels really nice and does a great job warming up the house.  I do have to heat the basement with oil but the main level is taken care of by the pellet stove.

For those of you who have hot water baseboards in your house I highly recommend installing the product ThermGuard.  The device manually calls for water from your boiler every so often in order to prevent them from freezing.  You are able to set the interval (how often the device calls for water) and the duration (how long it circulates water for).  I set mine to run every 2 hrs for 5 min at a time.

Wood pellets burn clean and are a renewable heat source.  It's much more eco-friendly.  I highly recommend a pellet stove for those of you interested in using less fossil fuels.