We had a wood stove in our first house and loved the heat but it was a lot of work. Years later in our second house we installed a pellet stove fireplace insert since dealing with pellets was much easier and cleaner. The stove ran well for the first two years but after that was nothing but problems. We had several different techs clean it and try to get it running well, without luck. Last year it was running very poorly and I just couldn't keep it going without the burn pot quickly loading up. We'd had it thoroughly cleaned over the previous summer and it was still awful. We barely made it through a half-ton of pellets because I couldn't keep it running to any real extent, and then the feed mechanism failed right about this time last year.
Enough was enough with that stove. I had zero interest in getting it repaired so we started looking at new stoves, particularly Harmon based on reputation. But we also decided to explore propane inserts. We found that having a propane tank installed and lines run by Eastern was very reasonable, and ended up going that route. We absolutely love having the convenience of pushing a button on the remote control to start, adjust flame height and fan settings, and turn off whenever we want. Being able to run it just for an hour to knock the chill out or just to relax in front of, makes for great convenience. In terms of maintenance, I'll clean the glass in the spring, and we'll have it professionally serviced every other year or so.
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NHskier
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