Reg the installation guy stopped by today to double check the dimensions of our fireplace to ensure that we could indeed replace our (came with the house) current propane fireplace insert with a wood-burning fireplace insert.
Why are we spending a heck of a lot of money replacing a propane-burning insert with a wood-burning one? Because Charlie who lives around the corner from us doesn’t chop propane. He does, however, chop & sell wood. And heating with wood is going to cost us a lot less than heating with oil (or propane – the propane insert was probably the previous owner’s emergency heating plan). By my math, the new insert will have paid for itself in three years, and after that, we’ll be heating this place for about half of what it cost us last winter, heating with oil alone. We’ll still be using the oil furnace some of the time, the fireplace insert may not always hold a fire overnight, and on really cold nights, the oil furnace will kick in to keep the house from getting too cold.
Oh, and it’s more environmentally friendly, too. Wood being a local, renewable resource. Unfortunately we can’t heat with (relatively) clean electricity the way we could when we lived in Montreal, because Ontario’s electricity is a) twice as expensive as Quebec’s and b) 45% nuclear, 34% hydroelectric and 22% fossil-fuel derived (as opposed to Quebec’s 97% hydroelectric, with the other 3% being a combination of wind, biomass, fossil-fuel, and nuclear).
Actual installation won’t be until the second or third week of October, as this is, unsurprisingly, the busy season for wood stove installers. That gives me plenty of time to talk to Charlie (whose little brother Ben is in my Karate class) about buying 4 or 5 cords of firewood from him.
Maybe one day, if I’m really lucky, we’ll have a wood cookstove as well.
out here 
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