I've had a little over a month of use out of my pellet stove, and I can't even begin to say how much I love the darned thing!
I've set the house thermostat at 60 degrees. That's made it kind of chilly waking up some mornings, but normally Seren gets me up to go out at least an hour before my alarm rings to I kick it on when she's outside on level 2 or 3 and by the time my alarm goes off and I get out of the shower the heat is coming up nicely in the house. I never got around to programming it; I'll do that next year.
In the evenings when I get home I kick the stove on again and, when it's cold out, let it run on either setting 1 or 2 most of the evening. By the time I get ready for bed the upstairs has warmed into the high 60s and the bedroom into the mid 60s, which is just fine with me.
Maintenance is a weekly thing; a good cleaning with the vac, emptying the ash catcher and suctioning out all of the ash and soot. Cleaning the door glass is a more frequent thing, but that's easily done with a damp paper towel to remove the soot and ash that collects on it. Now that the end of the season is here I'll do a deep dive clean and blow out the exhaust passages and clean the exhaust fan (which should be done every ton)
I was originally thinking about putting a very quiet 6" bath exhaust fan in the living room ceiling that would take the warm air and move it up to the upstairs hallway (could be easily done given the design of my house), but it's been enough to let the warm air simply circulate naturally. On colder days I used a small fan in the hallway to blow cold air into the living room; that really helped move the warm air down the hall and up the stairs. We'll see if I need to revisit the exhaust fan during polar vortex times, but I'm thinking not.
All told I've used 11 bags of pellets ($5 a bag) since I started using the stove. As I've expected, I'm not really saving anything on the cost of heating the house, but at least I'm warm. And there's something so nice about being able to stand in front of the stove when I'm really cold and just let that warm air wash over me.
All in all, perhaps the single best purchase I've ever made to make my house more livable.
