Now that the heating season is here I have had a pellet stove put in the shop. So far I am quite pleased with its performance. One does notice how much fuel it uses as you need to fill it manually. The big advantage over just a wood stove is that to light it you only press a button. It also burns very cleanly as you do not see smoke coming out of the chimney only some shimmering from the hot combustion air going out. My other choice here for heat other than wood is to use electricity. The vast majority of the electricity used in BC comes from hydro power but some is from coal fired power plants in Alberta and some from burning natural gas. Using electricity is much more expensive and not the greatest choice for being carbon neutral. I do have some baseboard electric heaters as backup heat. They will be used a bit when I have specific areas that need more heat. Luckily, for the most part, I only need the extra heat for short periods.
A side benefit of having bags of pellets is that I have found another use for them. Some of the moulds are odd shapes and hard to hold in place when you are working on them. Partial bags of pellets make good weights to hold them in place. Here is an example of a couple in use.
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