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Solar panels vs. a wood stove this winter, I picked wrong first
Back in October I had maybe $4,000 to put toward heating help for my place in Barre. I went with a small solar setup for my workshop instead of fixing the old wood stove in the living room. Turns out we got barely any sun in December and the stove still leaks smoke when it's windy. Now I'm scrounging for a used insert on Facebook Marketplace, anyone else made a similar swap backwards?
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lilycraig5d ago
Man, I feel this one. Back in 2019 I did almost the same thing, blew my savings on a pellet stove for the garage and left the old smoke dragon in the house untouched. What finally worked for me was hitting up the scratch and dent rack at the hardware store in Montpelier for a stove pipe kit, then sealing every joint with furnace cement, like seven bucks a tub. I also started burning drier wood, that alone cut most of the smoke puffing into the room when the wind kicked up. For the sun thing, yeah, December in Vermont is just brutal, we get maybe two good charging days a week, so don't beat yourself up over that. My two cents is fix the smoke leak first since it's cheap, then save up for the insert over the summer when nobody's buying them. Inserts go way cheaper in June, I got mine half off that way.
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