Dec 1, 2008 11:12 am US/Eastern
3 On Your Side: Heating Your Home With Firewood
PHILADELPHIA (CBS 3) ―
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It happens like clockwork. As temperatures fall, heating bills rise. Your Money Team is always looking at ways to cut costs and as 3 On Your Side's Jim Donovan reports, an old fashioned way of heating your home is making a comeback.
CPSC
It happens like clockwork. As temperatures fall, heating
bills rise. Your Money Team is always looking at ways to cut costs and as 3 On
Your Side's Jim Donovan reports, an old fashioned way of heating your home is
making a comeback.
The crackling glow of a fireplace offers so many things.
It's romantic. It's warm. And guess what? It's cheap too!
"We didn't think we'd be saving this much money on our
fuel bills, but it's been great," said Chuck Watson of Medford,New Jersey.
Chuck and his wife Cathy were sick of rising heating
bills. So they converted their regular fireplace into an efficient heater using
something called a fireplace insert.
Without an insert, heat escapes up the chimney.
Inserts enclose the fire behind a glass door. The heat
then travels through an air chamber into your home.
"It heats most of the house," said Watson.
It costs between five and six hundred dollars a year for
enough wood to heat the entire first floor of their home. That's a lot less
than they were paying before.
"We've almost cut our heating bill in half," said Watson.
The lure of lower bills has led to a big jump in sales of
wood burning devices.
Janet Letts with Stoveworks in Medford, New Jersey
says, until recently, people were more interested in buying gas operated
devices.
"I would say, I don't know 75, 70 percent gas burning and
then a small percentage was wood burning and that's totally flipped," said
Letts.
Demand for wood is up too. And while the cost for wood has
risen year to date.
"Wood is always gonna be the least expensive fuel
available. Whether you're comparing gas, oil, pellet, you know whatever, wood
is always gonna be the least expensive," said Letts.
At Jerrell's Landscapes and Nurseries in Mount Laurel,
Brian Jerrell has seen demand for wood grow too. All of his customers have one
thing in common.
"They're trying to conserve," said Jerrell
These days he's cutting, loading and delivering a lot more
firewood to people like Paul Ginty. Before relying on wood, Paul's house was
chilly in the winter.
"With this, the wood burner, you can keep burn it as hot
as you like it. You can get up 70, 80 degrees if that's what you like, without
it being very costly at all," said Ginty.
After installing a wood burning stove he's been able to put
a damper on high heating bills.
"Oh yeah, significant savings," said Ginty.
The cost of installing a wood burning stove or a fireplace
insert ranges on average from $2,500 to $3,500.
But many say depending on how high your gas or oil bills
are, you can recoup the cost of the device within the first year or two.
www.stoveworksnj.com
www.jerrellslandscapes.com
(© MMIX, CBS Broadcasting Inc. All Rights Reserved.)
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