Heat

We have propane that we use in our home to heat with, also to heat our water.  This being our first year ever using propane we did not know what to expect.  On Christmas Eve we ran out of propane, we knew we were getting close but thought we could make it until the next delivery.  We had just put in 100 gallons in September and thought it would last us for a little while as we keep our temperatures down as well as our water heater on the lowest setting that we can handle.  Needless to say we put another 100 gallons in which cost around $300.00.  I thought for sure this would last us a couple of months, but low and behold 20 days after the delivery we were about out again!  I was shocked and so was hubby.  Where did it all go?  I started to look online to see if I could find out any info from others on what is normal as far as usage goes, I did find some information and it shocked me.  You see, propane was once pretty inexpensive to use for your home, around $.80 a gallon just a few years ago, but that all changed and the price started going up.

Well, we purchased 200 gallons this time which put us at 50% full, we had zero when the delivery guy came out but we were not completely out, thanks goodness!

We started to figure if we keep this up were going to be spending a lot of money on propane, especially through the winter, we had to figure out another way to do this, especially for heating purposes.

Our home came with a propane fireplace insert, completely propane though, we knew the chances of us using this with the price of propane were about zero.  So we took it out and sold the insert and the idea hit us to put a wood burning stove in its place.  As luck would have it some friends of ours had one they wanted to get rid of, it needed work and was a bit rusty but would make a great fire.  We got it from them and cleaned it up and painted it
.  In our state you have to pull a permit to do fireplaces or wood stoves, so we did that, got the permit and then found out that because our wood stove has no "tag" on it that we would be held to the largest setbacks from any wall.  We measured and there was no way we could fit the wood stove in the space we had and to conform to the setbacks.

The space that we have is not that big, so we researched other options and found that we did not have many.  We had already did a bit of work in the area that we want to put our new heat unit, we placed cement walls up, added tile on the floor and rerouted some electrical.We looked at the smallest wood burning stove you can get and still our area was not quite big enough.

My hubby called the inspector to tell him of our situation and he suggested to maybe look into a zero clearance fireplace insert.  We had never heard of those before but looked into them and found three things.  First you need zero clearance space because of the way they are made, you don't have to worry about walls catching fire, that was a big plus for us since we don't have any room anyway!  Second, they heat really well, and our very efficient as well as EPA approved, that translates into they don't use as much wood and still heat really well, another plus to us.  Finally, we found out they are a bit expensive, at least a lot more than our free stove that we had.  Your talking around $2-3k depending on how much stove pipe you need as well as how much work you need to do around the insert.  Yikes is all I could say!  But, I knew this will cut down on our propane needs which hopefully intern will cut down on our propane cost and in just a year or two the savings should have this insert paid for.  By the way the one we are looking at is called a Kozy Heat.  You can find out about them here.

So the next thing to do is get our permit changed from a wood stove to a fireplace insert and to get one ordered, once we have it it should take a day or two to get it installed and working, then we can worry and play with the mantel and surround.  The only big draw back for me in doing this is that you can't cook on them or boil water, I was really hoping to be able to do that, at least it would be nice to have that option if our power ever went out or we ran out of propane again.  But at least will have the heat and I love the idea of sitting in front of the fireplace with the wood popping and being nice and toasty warm!

As for our wood stove, we are hoping to be able to use it somewhere else, maybe when we get our nice big barn/workshop someday or maybe in the garage, will have to see.  For right now it sits out back and we fire it up when were BBQ on the grill or doing some projects outside and need the extra warmth.

I will post more as we get into the project and show you how its turning out! 

Stay tuned!