Some like it hot 10

You have bought your property in Bulgaria and now you have to decide how to keep it warm in the winter. Is it better to have a pellet stove or a logburner? Well, this is a bit of a non-question if you have an apartment. Your apartment probably will not have an outhouse that could serve as your woodshed and so you will not want to have the mess and hassle that comes with a logburner. If you are going to be burning firewood, as opposed to pellets, then you will have significantly more ash. That is not a problem if you have a garden, as ash is a very good fertilizer for many plants, but most apartments do not have their own gardens and so a pellet stove would be the sensible choice.

Pellet stoves normally have an electric pump to push the water round to all of the radiators, so they really are central heating for all of your property. With a logburner, it might be connected to the radiators or you could have a “standalone” that just heats one room.

What are the main differences between pellet stoves and logburners? Well, the most obvious one is the fuel. Wood pellets are small pieces of very dry small fragments of wood that have been compressed and manufactured to a particular size. Unlike most firewood, pellets are usually sold in sealed plastic bags and so storing them is quite easy. With ordinary firewood, you always have to ask yourself if the wood has been properly “seasoned”, but you will not have to worry about this if you buy a pellet stove.

Because the pellets are small, dry and all the same size, pellet burners have hoppers and the pellets are automatically fed into the combustion chamber. With most pellet stoves, there is an electric fan and a small computer. The computer has sensors that monitor the temperature of the water in your radiators and it also controls electric pump and the rate of pellets falling into the combustion chamber. (Our little Jack Russell was fascinated by the “plink plink” sound of the pellets falling down.) The combustion chamber has an electric ignition system, so you will not have to bother with matches, screwed up pieces of newspaper and firelighters.

In short, most pellet burners are automated, cleaner, more efficient, less effort and a lot less messy. Another significant factor is the safety aspect. Pellet burners shut down quickly if something is going wrong.

So why doesn’t everyone buy a pellet burner? There is a simple answer: cost. The average price for a new pellet stove is between 2000 and 3000 euros. As well as the price of the actual stove, you also have to buy lots of pellets. A 15 kg bag of Class A1 pellets will cost you about 5 euros, but pellets made from sunflower husks are quite a bit cheaper. Buying in bulk will also help to keep the cost down. However, I would emphasize that with a logburner, you can use just about any sort of wood as your fuel: that old fruit tree, the wooden fence that fell down, and the wood that you bought at a discount from your local mayor. A pellet stove means burning pellets, so it does not give you the option of burning freebie firewood. With some woodburners, cooking is also possible and some of them even have ovens, but I have never heard of a pellet stove that gives you hotplates for cooking.

So is it better to have a pellet stove for your central heating? Or a logburner? Well, you could try to have the best of both worlds and have a pellet stove and a logburner (or two!) as well This gives you flexibility and you could still have some heating when there is a power cut. If you just want to heat one room, then a “standalone” logburner makes sense.

How many bags of pellets will you use, during a typical Bulgarian winter? That is one of those “How long is a piece of string?” questions and of course it very much depends on the size of your house and how warm you want to be. Another critical factor is insulation and I will be writing about that in my next post.