I grew up in a house with a wood burning stove with the smoke stack which ran up to and through the ceiling. It's still in the house, operating just as well, today. My dad always cut the wood and my brother and I would unstack it onto the porch. On cold mornings, the first thing we did was run to the fireplace and crowd around, trying to warm up. Such happy memories surrounding the fireplace!

Even as a child, I knew how to operate our fireplace. So one pro is that it's extremely easy. the one bad thing I can think of is that the entire thing - top, sides, back - all get extremely hot. My dad had a magnetic thermometer which stuck to the stack so we could tell if it was still hot. Other than teaching your kids NOT TO TOUCH the thing, I think it's a great alternative to a traditional fireplace.

Have you considered a woodstove insert into an existing fireplace? The nice thing is that it eliminates drafts from the chimney and doesn't take up a chunk of floorspace. The one thing we don't love about ours is that you have to plug in the blower part to blow heat in the room. That being said, it's super warm.

My parents heat their home with a wood stove. It's a lot of work to build and maintain the fire but my dad enjoys it. The bedrooms (far from the stove) get really cold at night when the fire dies down. And it takes awhile to heat the house back up if they're gone for more than a few hours. It's pretty cheap though if you're willing to haul/chop your own wood. A lot of people in their area just give it away to anyone with a truck. If you could use it with another heating source and find an efficient way to circulate the warmed air to farther parts of the house it'd be a great alternative.

We have both in our house upstate NY. The advantage of the pellets stove is that you can have it on all night long, which is a great one. The pellet stove has different settings for temperature, another advantage. Good luck!

we love our jotul, super efficient burning, very toasty.

My parents heat their old farm house mainly with wood and gas.

Wood can be nice if your home is built around it - my parents have a MASSIVE stone fireplace in the middle of the house, and once the stones heat up, the residual heat is a powerful force for keeping the place warm.

If your house isn't built for it, heating with wood can be really inefficient. Everyone I know with a modern house who added on those big outdoors wood burning things goes through massive, slightly obscene amounts of wood.

Small indoor wood burners can give you a lot more bang for your buck. Think of it like a heating "zone" - with a potbelly stove in the living room, you can keep it toasty while you're in there, then turn it off at night. Only drawback is that small firewood is generally more expensive than big chunks cut for large fireplaces.

My parents swapped out their woodstove in the living room for a small gas one, and working with the large main wood fireplace, it's AWESOME. Much less upkeep, and since it's small it doesn't actually use that much gas - again, it's like a tiny miniature "heating zone" in the house that lets you save money by being comfortable where you spend most of your time, and not waste anything in heating too much else.

I'm afraid I don't know much about wood pellets except that acquaintances who have them say the price of pellets has been skyrocketing since such stoves are becoming more popular. Pellets used to be very cheap because they were just by-products of the wood industry. Unfortunately demand has far outpaced supply, and now they have to actually manufacture the pellets directly, so they're much less of a cost savings or green solution as they used to be. Still might be a better solution for you depending on how expensive wood is in your area, though. Some modern pellet burners are supposed to have much lower emissions, as well.

As for how my folks deal with their wood - they have 20 wooded acres, so they usually cut a lot of their own wood. Now that they're older, though, they've taken to ordering about a truckload of wood per year. The wood goes in the barn, or you could have a woodshed. If you go with wood burning, make sure you know about chimney safety, how to tell soft wood from hard, and make sure you're ordering dry wood unless you've got the room to put green wood away for at least six months.

Oh! I did find what seems like a very good introduction article on wood and pellets at ConsumerReports.org. Here's the link, it might be helpful. :)

And do the best you can to insulate your house, even if it's little by little. One bitter Wisconsin winter we learned that if we put "baby proof" plugs into our outlets on outside walls, it actually cut down on the drafts coming into the house! No kiddin'!

We had 2 wood stoves in the house where I grew up. We used them to supplement the propane furnace AND for the times the power went out! A few years after my dad passed, mom put in a pellet stove.

I love wood for the cozy factor but it IS a lot of work. You have to feed the stove more often and that means carrying armloads of wood thru the house frequently.

The pellet stoves can be fed a LOT less often. Dump a 50 lb bag in the hopper and you're good for days. IIRC you can go a lot longer without having to clean out the ashes in a pellet stove. IMO it's a better stove for maintaining warmth in the house with less effort.

The major downside to pellet stoves though is that they require electric. If you're prone to loss of power for any length of time you'll need a battery backup or generator.

The 1,700 sf house I grew up in was primarily heated by a tiny Jotul cast iron wood stove. When it got particularly cold (low 40s) we'd use electric heat to warm up the bedrooms at night, but the wood stove provided most of the heat. It was my job to start the fire when I came home from school, which would make the rooms we spent the most time in (living/dining room and kitchen) toasty warm in about an hour. We usually went through two cords of wood each winter. Where I live -- Seattle -- a cord ranges from around $100 (you pick up, cut, split, and season someplace dry for a year) to $400 (someone delivers pre-split seasoned wood and stacks it for you).

Fireplaces are wonderfully cozy, but they're ridiculously ineffecient; I would never depend on one as a heat source. A fireplace insert makes it more efficient, but still, a stove will get you a lot more heat out of each piece of wood. I've never spent much time around a pellet stove, but my general impression is that it's kind of odd to buy a specially processed wood product to feed your stove when regular old unprocessed wood is widely available. Heck, I know a family that burns wooden pallets they get for free from local businesses (caution: pallets are full of nails). A commenter above states that a pellet stove can be left on all night ... a well-packed wood stove can as well. It won't be super warm in the morning, but there will be coals available to get it going again.

My ideal house definitely includes a wood stove!

Oops ... I should specify that the electric heat was turned on when it was in the low 40s OUTSIDE.

I grew up with wood heat and would not have it at all now. I do pretty well with natural gas supplemented with an electric heater in one room that does not have a duct. Wood stoves are likely better now, but the smell of wood smoke would permeate the house and it's difficult to distribute the heat. The room that had the stove would sometimes be unbearably hot and other rooms would be unbearably cold. Also, it seemed that the fire would die down or go out at the most inopportune moments. hahaha oh well, it's not something I have to deal with now :)

We love our Tulikivi and really enjoy the ritual of making the fire and watching it in the beautiful glass window. We consider it recreation. There is some smokiness and bringing in wood brings in dirt and some bugs.
We have acres of wood, but buying it all could get expensive.
I also put in a gas fueled fake woodstove in a an old house I renovated and it was a huge disappointment because of the company I dealt with, but having an instant fire may be worthwhile for some people.

Someone already suggested inserting a woodstove into an existing fireplace, which is kind of like what we have in our living room (except the stove sits on the hearth in front of the fireplace). It was installed by the previous owners, and they ran a duct from under the stove and into the kitchen where there is a vent with a blower that can be turned on and off to heat that side of the house.

I can't tell you how well it works though, because I am embarrassed to admit that we have no idea how to use any of it, but that might be worth considering if you did a stove like that.

@mojones, we had a wood-burning stove in the house I grew up in, and we all had to learn not to touch it too! All of us learned the hard way before believing Dad. And one of my plastic dinosaurs also learned the hard way... he started the day as a brontosaurus and a few hours later - a puddle.

a pellet stove is fantastic. it has a fan so the warm air circulates into the rest of the house. i have two floors and i placed the stove in the livingroom next to the stairs leading to the second floor. it keeps the house very warm - enough so that i hardly ever need to turn on the heating system. it is also easy to store pellets and the cost is still very reasonable.

If your house is small, a stove is workable but it's a ton of work and messy. We use a wood stove at a cottage where it's nice and cozy in the two rooms close to the stove but the bedrooms are freezing. Lots of blankets makes that OK.

We've had wood fireplace inserts in the past and now have 2 pellet stoves. We love them. They are much cleaner and easier to maintain than wood - which is filthy. One of our pellet stoves is on a thermostat, so it switches on before we get up in the morning and it's lovely to come down to a cheerful fire in a warm room.

We have a big house with lots of connecting rooms. The pellet stoves provide plenty of warmth for the large space.

Although I theoretically like the idea of burning wood, the pellets are so practical. They are nowhere as messy as wood. There is no risk of bringing wood-eating bugs into the house with the pellets. And, best of all, pellets are made from wood scraps and waste, so they are environmentally friendly.

I meant to add that pellet stoves are cooler to the touch than wood stoves, while still providing good heat through the blower.

The big problem is that they are mostly really ugly. You have to search hard and wide for attractive ones.

I don't understand why most wood stoves and pellet stoves are sooooo ugly. One of life's mysteries.

I wonder why nobody has suggested you look into ways to make your home energy efficient. It may require an initial outlay, but will pay off in the future.

wood/pellet burning is heavily regulated during winter months where i live. since a lot of cities/states are beginning to enforce environmental regulations, forecasting potential legislation in your region that might hinder use of wood-burning units in the future should probably factor into your decision.

My husband grew up with a wood stove, and now we are trying to save up for a nice one for our 60's era brick home. Putting it upstairs in the rather small living room would 'chase you out of the room' as they say, so it's going into the basement with a blower system and ducting. Basically you set it up so the blower forces hot air from the outside of the hot stove into your duct work, and that's how you can carry the heat to far corners of a house.

We replaced a lot of the flooring and made sure to cut holes and install floor vents when we did. Ducting can be a bit labor intensive, but if you're really not up to it just hire that out. An old cast iron wood stove should not cost you more than $500. A new, pretty one with ceramic glaze will cost you over $1500 though.

A fully stocked stove should last through the night. You fill it with logs before you go to bed, in the morning you'll have a nice bed of glowing coals, just fill it again before you go to work. Pellets do sound convenient though.

Neither a fireplace nor a pellet stove will heat a 2300 sf house. It may heat the room that it is located in, but the rest of the home will be cold, especially if you turn down the heat when the fire is going.

That being said, a pellet stove is easier than a wood stove because pellets are easily sourced, relatively cheap and don't need to be chopped.

The major downside of pellet stoves is that they don't work if there is no electricity. So, if the power is out then you need a generator to have heat. May not be a big deal if power outages are infrequent.

I concur with the above poster about making your home more energy efficient. Tax breaks are available to offset the cost of insulation, and it is a pretty easy weekend project.

Good luck!

Converted to pellet a couple of years ago. They are way tidier and throw out a lot more heat than the fireplace we inserted it in. A little less romantic than a wood fire, but less smoke! (I have asthma) Cleaning can be a bit of a faff, but what isn't. Invest in an ash vac if you are doing this, you can find dealers on ebay for a good price. My husband used to use the normal shop vac to clean it out and that was just a mess.

Yes, I second the comments that suggest looking into energy efficiency first. Get a home audit, then do some air sealing (biggest bang for your buck) and insulation. My house had no insulation at all. I insulated just the attic and second floor walls (blown in from outside, very easy), and the difference in comfort upstairs is night and day from what it was before. My energy bills are now much lower.

You should check into your local historic preservation non profits. Often they have workshops and information on winterizing your existing windows.
I'm not sure about MD, but there may be tax rebates available for this kind of work.

Back to praise the Tulikivi some more. The textured soapstone is beautiful and radiates a gentle heat that we like to lean against and absorb heat from before sitting down beside it.
It does not burn. The metal handle to the glass door requires a pot holder for opening.

Insulate! I almost think you can heat a truly well insulated house with light bulbs! (OK, a slight exaggeration, but not a big one!)

When the power went out in the Halloween storm, our gas fireplace kept us tolerably warm upstairs and down because we have very good blown-in cellulose insulation.

Unless you can cut your own wood or have a good source for scavenging, a wood stove will not save you money. Without the backup of a blower, the hot air may not circulate through out your house. Cutting enough firewood to last a winter is a he'll of a lot of work.

I love my woodstove, and the ability to install one was a factor when I looked at houses. Sitting by a fire is really pleasant, and it primarily heats the room in use, while warming the rest of the house. I bought an EPA-certified stove on Craigslist. Installation is not cheap - get it done by a pro, as safety is serious. I live in Maine, where wood is 190 - 210 a cord, delivered.

Hearth.com and other sites have great research on stoves and woodburning.

I have an oil furnace for when I'm not home, and to make sure things stay above pipe-freezing levels when it's -15 overnight. I'd like to have a small propane gas-powered stove/heater in the bedroom, for the combination of coziness and warmth, but there are installation problems, so it's pending.

Bubble-wrap on windows lets in light & insulates, drapes insulate and block drafts. Bookshelves against outside walls insulate. Get an energy survey, so you know where the heat loss is. The sooner you implement the recommendations, the sooner they start to pay for themselves.

Back to praise the Tulikivi some more. The textured soapstone is beautiful and radiates a gentle heat that we like to lean against and absorb heat from before sitting down beside it.
It does not burn. The metal handle to the glass door requires a pot holder for opening.
chimney pipe

Thanks, all. We've taken a few steps this winter and hopefully we'll see a reduction in our oil use by the season's end. We spray-foam insulated the entire attic and the crawl space under the kitchen is next. As for the wood/pellet stove decision, it was made for me--a friend of mine had a pellet stove they no longer needed. It's only been a few weeks so we'll see how it works long-term.