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If you’re tired of hauling and storing wood, consider a pellet insert

Your wood-burning fireplace is an asset to your home. It adds heat, ambiance, and style, and helps keep your heating bills low. But wood-burning fireplaces are a lot of work: Chopping, splitting, hauling, and stacking wood is time consuming, and it takes a lot of space to store the wood you need to warm your home during the winter. If you’re tired of hauling and storing wood, consider a pellet insert.

How pellet inserts work

A pellet insert can be placed inside your existing wood-burning fireplace, along with a stainless steel chimney liner. Pellet stoves burn either wood pellets, made of compressed dehydrated sawdust, or biofuels such as corn, cherry pits, or wheat hulls. The pellets are poured into a storage hopper, and then an auger automatically feeds them into a burn pan. The stove’s fans and vents pull in cooler air to be heated and pump hot air back into your home.

Save yourself storage space

One of the biggest advantages of pellet stoves is that the fuel is readily available and easily stored. Pellets are sold in 40 pound bags at most hardware and many big-box stores. Because they come in 40 pound bags, you can buy bags of pellets as needed. With firewood, you either stack what you need for winter, or you have to buy wood one cord at a time. Pellets can save you from finding somewhere to store all of your firewood. One cord of wood occupies 128 cubic feet of storage space, compared with 80 cubic feet of storage space for one ton of pellets, which provides the equivalent heating power. On average, a home with a wood stove or wood-burning fireplace burns three cords of hardwood each year.

Save yourself from hauling firewood

Of course, wood also comes with the hassle of hauling it back and forth from the woodpile to your house, and adding logs to your fire several times a day. Your firewood needs to be stored a distance from your house to avoid attracting pests to your home. Pellets can be stored in your garage or basement, and because pellets are automatically fed from the storage hopper, pellet stoves don’t need to be tended throughout the day. Depending on your pellet insert, one hopper of pellets can heat a home for up to 24 hours.

Save yourself energy

Another major advantage to pellet stoves is their energy efficiency. Pellet stoves are hailed by green-living enthusiasts as one of the cleanest ways to heat your home. Because the pellets are dehydrated, they produce very little smoke when burned, and almost all of the energy from the fire goes back into heating your home. The fuel is considered carbon neutral because the wood or bio-pellets would have released the same carbon into the air during natural composition. And, of course, whether you’re burning wood or biofuel, your pellets are made from a renewable resource.

If you’re interested in freeing yourself from the headache of chopping, hauling, and storing firewood, call the experts at Beach Stove and Fireplace. We can tell you everything you need to know about upgrading to a pellet insert!

Tax Credits: 2013

Who doesn’t like saving money?  We wanted to make sure that you were aware of a soon-to-be expiring tax credit relating to wood and pellet stoves as well as fireplace inserts.  It’s not too late to invest a little money to do some last minute improvements to your heating system before heating season really gets ramped up. Every dollar you save can go toward a summer trip to the beach.

On January 1, 2013, Congress passed a bill addressing parts of the now infamous fiscal cliff.  This bill included a reinstatement of the $300 tax credit for biomass heaters; the tax credit initially expired at the end of 2011.  The provision allows taxpayers to receive a tax credit for the full cost of the equipment and installation up to $300 for stoves bought in 2013 and is retroactive, which makes it possible for stoves purchased in 2012 to also get the credit.

The credit applies to energy efficiency improvements including but not limited to the purchase of high-efficiency heating, cooling and water-heating equipment.  The efficiency improvements or equipment must be for a home in the U.S. that is owned and used by the taxpayer as his/her primary residence.  The maximum tax credit for all improvements in 2011, 2012, and 2013 is $500.  The cap includes tax credits for any improvements made in any previous year.  If a taxpayer claimed $500 or more of these tax credits in any previous year, any purchases made in 2011, 2012, or 2013 will be ineligible for a tax credit.

The are a few conditions associated with the tax credit.  The equipment must be at least 75% efficient and have been purchased in 2012 or 2013.  The taxpayer cannot have claimed an aggregate of more than $500 in previous years for this same tax credit; this means that every new EPA-certified stove purchased is eligible for the full $300 tax credit, as they all meet the 75% efficiency threshold and cost more than $300.  However, a taxpayer could not collect the full $300 if they have already received tax credits under this provision in previous years and the total amount was over $500.

Numerous websites have reported that the credit is only for 10% of the purchase price, up to $300, but this is incorrect.  As long as you know that you haven’t claimed this tax credit in previous years, feel free to do your pellet stove and/or fireplace insert shopping knowing that, there’s going to be a $300 credit waiting for you at the end of the rainbow when tax season rolls around.