Pellet Stove Buying Guide

They both burn wood, and they can look similar at a glance, serving as cozy, functional centerpieces of your living area. But you may find pellet stoves to be more convenient to own and operate. In fact, many customers purchase a pellet stove when a wood-fired stove becomes too much work, according to Melissa Bobst, a sales associate at S.O.S. Stove and Fireplace Shoppe in Port Murray, N.J.

Pellets typically come in 40-pound bags, and they look a bit like animal feed. Pour pellets into the stove’s hopper and the stove will do the rest, automatically adding more fuel as needed to maintain a consistent temperature. With a sufficiently large hopper, an efficient stove can run for well over a day.

By comparison, wood-fired stoves are more hands-on appliances. You may need to manage the fire more often. Even if you get split firewood delivered, it will be more cumbersome to handle than a bag of pellets. On the other hand, firewood may be cheaper, or even free, depending on where you live and how much work you’re willing to do yourself. 

Wood stoves do offer the cozy sound of a crackling fire. With pellet stoves, you’re instead likely to hear whirring from the motorized auger or fan, or the dropping of pellets. Wood stoves also tend to last longer because they don’t have the motorized parts of a pellet stove. Importantly, while a wood stove may use an electric fan to circulate warm air, the stove will work fine without it. In contrast, a pellet stove needs a backup generator or power station to stay in operation during a power outage.

People often turn to pellet stoves to shrink a substantial winter heating bill. But you’ll have to do some back-of-the-napkin math to price out potential savings. You might spend around $900 on pellets to supply one stove with 3 tons of pellets through the colder months. Your actual cost will depend on factors like the region where you live, your current heating system, and the layout of your home. Open floor plans, for example, may make it easier to heat your whole house with a pellet stove, but this will cost more than heating one enclosed room.

A pellet stove can help you avoid unpredictable utility bill hikes, when the price of natural gas or oil rises, or electric rates go up.

Chris Jenson, a salesperson at Higgins Energy Alternatives in Barre, Mass., gives his customers the money-saving advice to set the main thermostat in their home way down and place the pellet stove in the spot where they spend the most time. “There’s a huge difference in the cost per BTU,” Jenson says. “Because it’s a space heater, you’re putting efficient heat right where you need it.” 

You can get a federal tax credit for 30 percent of the total cost of your pellet stove, including installation, up to $2,000. The stove must have an efficiency rating of at least 75 percent, a number that expresses how well a stove converts pellets to heat. A more efficient stove also saves you money on fuel. You can check whether a specific model qualifies by searching the EPA database. The tax credit is effective through 2032.

Big chains like Home Depot, Lowe’s, and Ace Hardware, as well as online retailers such as Amazon, sell pellet stoves from popular brands such as Ashley Hearth, ComfortBilt, and US Stove Company.

But there are advantages to buying a stove from a specialized hearth dealer. You may find a wider range of options, and these outlets can provide advice tailored to your specific home, then take you through the full process—from picking the right size stove to coordinating installation with a vetted technician to supplying the necessary replacement parts and servicing should your stove ever need a repair.

Installing a pellet stove should be left to a professional. The stoves are heavy—sometimes upward of 300 pounds—and the installer needs to follow exacting standards to ensure fire safety and proper venting for air quality. 

With freestanding models, a hole needs to be made through an external wall or your roof to vent the stove’s exhaust fumes and often to bring fresh air inside for use in combustion, though some models rely on indoor air for combustion. A professional will ensure the stove maintains proper clearance from walls and any combustible materials in your home, following safety standards, local building codes, and the manufacturer’s instructions. You’ll also need a hearth pad made of a fire-resistant material like stone to protect your floors. You’ll want to be sure you have enough room for proper clearance before purchasing a specific model. 

You can also get a pellet stove insert for your fireplace. The installation process is different but still requires expertise. Among other steps, you will need to have a chimney liner installed.

The cost to install a freestanding pellet stove can vary widely, depending on where you live, the model, and where you’ll place it in your home. The home improvement platform Angi states that the price ranges from $1,000 to around $3,500, but these installation costs will vary depending on where you live. A local dealer of pellet stoves can coordinate installation or you can find an independent contractor. Before you make a purchase, check local regulations for any restrictions on the use of pellet stoves, and to see whether you’ll need a building permit. The use of pellet stoves is limited by certain municipalities when air quality advisories are in effect.

Pellets come in bags, typically 40 pounds each. The amount of pellets you’ll need to get through the colder months will vary depending on your stove, the layout of your home, and the region where you live. But an average customer using their stove daily can expect to go through about a bag a day, according to Jenson. Over five months, that would equal 150 40-pound bags, or 3 tons of pellets. Pellets typically cost around $6 per bag, or between $250 and $350 for a ton, not including delivery. 

But not all pellets are the same. Pellets made from softwood trees typically produce more heat and less ash than hardwood pellets. If you burn lower-quality pellets, you may find yourself cleaning out the ash pan more frequently. What brand works best can vary by stove model and other variables, according to Bobst, the salesperson from New Jersey. “I always recommend that people buy a couple bags of each brand and burn it in their stove and see what works for them,” she says. “Everyone’s perception is different, and their stove may have different settings.” 

When you’re storing pellets, it’s important to keep them off the ground and in a dry environment, just like you would with firewood. Many experts also recommend storing pellets in a structure set apart from your home, like an unattached garage or shed because pellets are both flammable and capable of off-gassing carbon monoxide and VOCs (volatile organic compounds). You can get pellets delivered by the ton straight to your home, but people who don’t have a lot of storage space often buy just enough bags to last a few weeks and bring them home in their car. 

Pellet stoves produce airborne particulate matter and other pollutants, though less than modern stoves that burn conventional firewood, let alone old-fashioned stoves and fireplaces. You can look up the average hourly emissions of PM 2.5, which are inhalable particles, for individual pellet stoves in the EPA database. These emissions include "ultrafine particles," a subset of PM 2.5 emissions that measure less than 0.1 micrometer across and are small enough to pass from the lungs into the bloodstream, potentially carrying toxic chemicals like PAHs (polycyclic aromatic hydrocarbons) and heavy metals.

A properly installed, functioning, and maintained stove will minimize indoor air pollution, but the stoves can still expose you to some level of harmful substances, both during combustion and when you’re cleaning the unit. “Any solid fuel combustion is always going to be a significantly greater source of air pollution than other types of heat,” says Brian Moench, MD, the board chair of the advocacy organization Doctors and Scientists Against Wood Smoke Pollution. Indoor air pollution can affect anyone’s health, but certain people—especially the elderly, infants, and children, and those with heart or lung conditions—are particularly vulnerable. 

As for environmental sustainability, virtually all pellet manufacturers serving the homeowner market use leftover wood from other industries, like sawdust from mills or even leftover shipping pallets, according to John Ackerly, the founder of the Alliance for Green Heat. “Most pellet plants are built on the back end of a sawmill,” he says. This makes pellet production for small-scale home heating more sustainable than pellet production for large-scale biomass power plants, which often relies on logging and requires the energy-intensive process of drying fresh wood.