NDL Hearth Blog

In the Northeast, heating homes with wood or pellets is becoming a more and more attractive option. It will be more challenging than ever on our wallets to stay warm this winter. Those who use oil to heat their homes are expected to spend the most they have ever spent.

Higher than average fuel bills are expected for those using heating oil, propane and natural gas, says the U.S. Energy Information Administration. Homes using heating oil will be most affected since heating oil prices are forecast to be 10% higher than last winter.

Bills for natural gas will be 4% higher and propane prices are 7% higher. Homeowners in the Northeast will be affected the most, 80% of the heating oil use in the US is consumed here.

Maybe it is time to think about heating with wood or pellets, both are renewable resources. You can heat your entire home with a wood or pellet stove or you can supplement your heating bill. Either way, your heating bills will be dramatically reduced. But there are more advantages. There is nothing more relaxing than sitting in front of the fire after a long day at work.

Today in Pennsylvania a delivery of 200 to 400 gallons of oil costs about $3.50 per gallon, about 80 cents more than last year. A delivery of 200 gallons would cost $700. Last year, it cost about $540.

With a few cords of wood or with a ton or two of pellets, you could heat your home for the winter, depending on your home’s size of course. The cost savings is impressive, but what many like the most is not having a home heating bill to worry about.

For an efficient and attractive wood burning stove or fireplace insert or pellet stove or pellet stove inserts, contact Northeast Distribution LTD today.

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Old Man Winter is fast approaching and there is no better way to keep warm than with a wood stove or a wood burning fireplace insert.  There are many efficient and beautiful wood stoves and inserts available that can heat your entire home, or that can help you supplement your home heating this winter. And, since wood is a renewable resource, wood burning stoves and fireplace inserts are eligible for the energy tax credit.
 
Wood burning fireplace inserts solve all the problems of traditional fireplaces while keeping the ambiance and enhancing the heating capacity. Wood burning fireplace inserts increase the heating efficiency of your fireplace. You also get a clear view of the fire with a fireplace insert so you can still enjoy the beautiful roaring flames.

Wood burning stoves put out an efficient, comforting dry heat. Wood burning stoves look great in old homes as well as modern homes and are a great alternative to a standard fireplace. Wood burning stoves come in many styles and finishes so can match with any kind of décor.

At Northeast Distribution LTD, we carry Archgard, Vermont Castings, Pacific Energy, DutchWest, VistaFlame, Thelin , Majestic and Supreme.Contact us for more information or to be directed to the finest stove dealer in your area.

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It was cold this weekend. If you live in the Northeast and you were on the fence about adding a wood burning stove, fireplace or insert to your home, a couple days with no power may have changed your mind!

Unless you have an alternate heat source like a fireplace insert or wood burning stove, the houses are refrigerator cold after almost two days without power. Utility companies are working painstakingly to get to all the downed wires, but it could be a week before some people get their power turned back on.

Enter the convenience of wood burning fires! Not only are they relaxing, they give your home and family warmth when the winter storms hit.

No Electricity required for heat! But wood fires also make power outages more fun, more relaxing, more romantic. Sit around the wood stove or wood burning fireplace insert, look at the fire, play games with the family, or get cozy with your spouse and forget about the storm outside.

For information on wood burnings stoves or wood fireplace inserts, contact Northeast Distribution LTD.

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Here comes the cold weather, have you felt it? In the Northeast, many home owners are trying to hold off on turning the heat on, but that may mean thinking about other heating options.

Wood is the fuel of choice this year. Adding a wood stove or a wood insert can dramatically improve the efficiency of heating your home.

Gas, oil, and electric heat are expensive. Traditional wood fireplaces add atmosphere and are warm, but these open wood fireplaces are very inefficient.

By adding a wood stove or a wood burning fireplace insert to your home, you are adding an efficient heat source to your home that is not only money saving but also provides warmth, character, and ambiance.

Wood stoves put out an efficient, comforting heat. Wood burning stoves look great in old homes as well as modern homes and are a great alternative to the inefficient open standard fireplaces.

Wood fireplace inserts use the same working technologies that wood burning stoves use, which cuts down on installation expenses. Fireplace inserts will increase the heating efficiency of the fire being burned.

Contact Northeast Distribution LTD for more information on wood stoves and wood fireplace inserts.

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What warms the hearth may not always be good for the environment – here’s a look at eco-friendly fireplace options.

It may look pretty, but according to the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency, the average emissions of fine particles into the air from one of the 22 million fireplaces in the United States are as much as 20 times greater than those from a wood burning stove, pellet stove, or oil or gas.

Not only do those fine particles go up the chimney and into the air outside, but depending on your fireplace and your flue, they are also circulated in the air inside your home. And all that air pollution isn’t even really keeping your warm. The U.S. Department of Energy estimates that a conventional open front-style fireplace is just 10-percent efficient at turning wood into warmth. But you can still have a beautiful fire and go green.

There are eco-friendly options in the fireplace market these days that look good, do the job, and minimize their impact on the environment. And, as more people are going green and burning wood, these options look more attractive.

Glass Fireplace Doors
One of the most striking alternatives to a wood-burning fire is using colored tempered glass fireplace doors. Colored squares or ovals of tempered glass chosen to fit your décor for you wood fires.

When the fire is ignited, the tempered glass can withstand heat, retain its color over time, yet does not emit any carbon toxins.  Fires in a fireplace with glass do not get quite as hot as an open wood fire. But they burn better and look beautiful, and the fire is still effective in warding off the winter chill.

Gas logs
Adding a gas log burner, and gas logs obviously reduces emissions. Not only are gas logs convenient they have very low emissions. And these are the fake gas logs of old. Our gas logs are gorgeous, hand-made and hand-painted ceramic log sets that exactly replicate the look of real wood both when they are burning and when they are not.

Interested in a greener solution to the open fireplace? Contact Northeast Distribution, LTD.

Original article Illinois Times

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Fall is a great time to get your seasonal, before winter, light-the-fire fireplace maintenance done. It's a good idea to have chimneys cleaned and inspected annually - even for homeowners who have switched over to burning natural gas.

"People who heat with wood stoves need to clean their chimneys once a year," says Edwards, who has run his chimney sweeping business for almost 30 years.

Even if you don't heat with wood it is a good idea to have the chimney checked because there is a danger of carbon monoxide poisoning if it is plugged and not venting properly.

Preventive chimney maintenance includes applying a sealer on the brick to minimize moisture saturation. While the chimney cleaning company is there, have them inspect the chimney and advise you if the mortar between the bricks needs to be repaired or replaced.

Northeast Distribution LTD distributes stove and chimney pipe as well as chimney caps for pellet, wood and gas fueled fires. If you are in need of chimney maintenance, contact us so we can connect you to a retailer in your area.

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Cooler evening temperatures are creeping in and homeowners in New England, NY, NJ, and PA need to ensure that their home heating equipment will operate safely and reduce heating costs.

Typically homeowners don’t think about heat until we have to turn it on in the fall. Fire marshals across the region have made some suggestions as to preparing your heating equipment for use this winter.

Suggestions include have your furnaces and chimneys cleaned and inspected by a qualified professional; check gaskets and seals on your wood burning and pellet stoves; installing and maintaining carbon monoxide alarms to avoid risk of carbon monoxide poisoning; when using an open fireplace be sure to have glass fireplace doors or fireplace screens in use when burning a fire; space heaters with exposed filaments are not suggested; and use only the approved fuel for each type of heater.

If you have any questions regarding upgrading your heating appliances click “home heating” to get more information from Northeast Distribution.
 
Original article HPBA newscast

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Wood burning stoves are much more efficient than traditional wood burning fireplaces. Our retailers get asked questions about efficiency all the time. An enclosed fire is much more efficient than a fireplace where the heat can go right up the chimney.

If you have a wood fireplace and you want to more efficiently heat your home and save money and energy, you should install a wood burning stove. A wood stove is an easy and effective way to update the look of your home and with so many styles, colors and sizes, there is a wood stove for you from modern to traditional.

But, the main draw of a wood stove is their efficiency. The fire burns hotter, and the heat is radiated into the room instead of being allowed to escape up the chimney with the draft.

Traditional fireplaces have very low efficiency ratings. The fire needs air to burn. The air is drawn to the fire, the fire burns quickly, and most of the air goes up the chimney. This is the draft.  This draft is the reason conventional fireplaces are ineffective and inefficient. They pull air from inside the house up the chimney. This creates a vacuum which pulls cold air into the house.

Wood stoves burn the fire in a metal box, that box radiates the heat out. So the heat isn’t wasted, the heat is more effective, and the heat is more efficient; the result is less money spent on heating bills.  

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Are you looking for a way to decrease your home energy bills? National Grid has been letting their customers know that the biggest and best energy savings comes from installing a fireplace insert: wood, pellet or gas or a wood or pellet stove.

You can save quite a bit of money each year in energy costs by installing a fireplace insert or wood burning stove. Save even more by taking advantage of the energy tax credit.

Sales of wood burning stoves and fireplace inserts are experiencing a boom fueled by the current economic uncertainty.

People are in search of a way to save on their energy bills.

The rising cost of heating is encouraging people to go back to basics when it comes to keeping warm. The price of oil and gas continues to go up, and for many people it is maddening to pay such high home heating bills.

There has been a huge growth in the sales of pellet and wood stoves and inserts. After the last harsh winter, many energy customers have had enough of paying for heat through that long winter.
Increasingly people have been installing pellet and wood-burning stoves and inserts, turning off the central heating and just getting a roaring fire going in one room in the house.

The availability of cheap fuels to burn and the ability to control exactly how much is spent is driving people towards both pellet and wood stoves and inserts.

It is less expensive to chop or buy wood or buy pellets than to use oil or gas heat and more and more people are installing stoves and inserts in their property. There are no complicated price formulas or unexpected bills involved with a wood-burning stove and people find it reassuring to have their fuel paid for in advance of using it.

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If you heat your home by burning wood, you are already thinking about that coldest night of the next winter. You know that unless you cut, split or buy, stack and store your firewood over the next few months, the wood stove in the living room or kitchen will be of little use.

Since Maine is the most forested state, we have a special relationship with firewood. But a more comprehensive study of that relationship, and its potential to wean Mainers off their high dependency on oil heat, is needed.

A recent radio talk show on WERU-FM gathered two College of the Atlantic professors and two COA students to talk about their recent study of wood heat in Hancock County. The take-away is that more people use wood heat than previously thought.

One COA professor said 10-year-old census data showed that about 11 percent of Mainers heated with wood, statistic state policymakers have been relying upon to guide their decisions. He believes, based on a survey of Hancock County households, closer to 55 percent of Mainers use wood heat. Of those, half use wood for at least half of their heat.

Interestingly, only 35 percent of those who burn wood cited cost as the reason. Instead, there are cultural factors at play.

The view of some who do not use wood heat could be summarized as, “I don’t heat with wood. My time is worth more than that.” Those who did use wood liked or took pride in the work involved, as seen in the old adage, “Wood heats you three times — when you cut it, split and burn it.”

The difference between those with oil heat and wood heat was further teased out in the COA analysis. The former were characterized as a “modern consumer family” who like turning a thermostat to make heat. They see heat as a service provided by professionals. Those who burn wood, the self-reliant “Maine Yankee” types, see heating as an activity, “something you do for yourself.”

The modern consumer family expects heat to remain constant and even. The Maine Yankee family likes getting near the stove to get warm.

The modern family sees heat like a waiter in a restaurant, at their beck and call. The Yankee family is engaged with wood heat, likes the look and feel of the wood, even enjoys the smell of smoke and revels in the stove’s ambiance.

Far from being a vanishing tradition, wood heat has a place in the 21st century. Given the supply of firewood and wood pellets in Maine, more can be done to maximize our use of it.

Original Article, Bangor Daily News

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