ALEXANDRIA — Bob Bosley has been selling firewood and wood stoves for more than 20 years, but he's never had a busier winter season than this one.

        “I have customers coming in here showing us monthly heating bills for $700 or more,” the owner of Bosley's Fireplace Shop in Alexandria said. “We're always busy at this time of year, but business this winter has been up considerably over other years.”

Bob Bosley with some of the firewood he sells at his Alexandria business. He said stove sales are up this year (Patrick Reddy photo) | ZOOM |

        Mr. Bosley has no doubt that soaring heating bills are why more people are buying heating stoves and firewood and Ohio vendors are seeing a similar reason for wood-stove purchases.

        Sales of wood stoves are up 10 to 15 percent at some local shops and customers are seeing the potential savings as worth the $2,000 to $4,000 investments a wood stove, chimney and hearth can cost at installation.

        “I remember a customer who bought a wood stove who said his heating bills were running about $600 a month with electric heat. He later told us he had lowered his heating expenses to about $100 a month,” said Ada Buttelwerth, who with husband Don owns and operates Buttelwerth Construction and Stoves off Springdale Road in Colerain Township.
       

New technology
        One of the big sellers is stoves that are specially designed to burn wood pellets, made of compressed wood product and about the size of rabbit food. Wood pellets are easier to handle than cut logs and provide a somewhat cleaner burn.

        Mr. Bosley, who said he does not sell many of the pellet stoves “because most people can get wood very cheaply in Campbell County,” said the pellets burn at just about the same rate as cut wood.

        “You'll use about the same weight in cut wood or pellets to maintain a certain heat level in a home,” he said. “But cut wood is generally cheaper than the pellets.”

        Mr. Buttelwerth said wood stove sales at his store have increased 10 percent to 15 percent this winter.

        “But the big increase in our sales has been in the wood pellet stoves,” he said. “Sales of pellet stoves and pellets have gone up all over the country by 25-35 percent. That's the most popular form of wood stove right now, especially in the city and suburban areas.”

        Mrs. Buttelwerth said they sell wood pellets for $3.60 for 40-pound bag and $165 per ton, which is 50 bags. By comparison, the same weight in cut wood is about $80.

        Firewood is measured by the cord, and a cord of wood is measured by size, not weight — 128 cubic feet stacked 4 feet high, 4 feet wide and 8 feet long. Mrs. Buttelwerth said current prices for cut firewood range from $75 to $150 a cord.

        “I can foresee wood prices changing in the near future,” she added. “When prices go up for natural gas and fuel, everything else goes up.”

        Prices for natural gas, propane and heating oil have skyrocketed in the past few months, resulting in utility bills double and triple what customers paid a year ago.

        Wood stoves start at $649 and go to more than $2,000, Mrs. Buttelwerth said. Depending on the house, the existing chimney may be suitable for a wood stove, or it can be relined if the interior is badly worn from weather and other effects. Companies like Buttelwerth and Bosley also install chimneys.

        “A complete job with a chimney, hearth, everything, can run anywhere from $2,000 to $4,000,” she said. “Most stoves won't claim to heat more than about 2,000 square feet.”

        A comparably priced 90 percent efficient forced-air gas furnace, at around $4,000, will heat at least 4,000 square feet.

        But Mrs. Buttelwerth pointed out, for example, that the wood pellet stove used to heat their showroom and offices runs 24 hours a day, five days a week, and uses about one 40-pound bag of wood pellets a day.

        That adds up to less than $100 a month in fuel, compared to monthly natural gas bills of $600-$700.

        Mr. Bosley said that, while the wood stove is a less expensive form of heat, it is not for everyone.

        “Some people with asthma have problems with the dust in the air.”
       

Stoves old hat for some
        Heating a home with a wood stove is old hat to 73-year-old John Crail of Newport, who has warmed his 50-year-old Cape Cod-style house on Waterworks Road with cord wood for about 45 years.

        “I have a gas-fired hot water boiler in the basement that's about 25 years old, but I haven't used it to heat the house since the first year it was installed,” the retired steeplejack said. “I use the pump on the boiler to circulate water through the wood stove and then through the baseboard radiators in the house.”

        “I don't spend much on wood,” he confessed, “so I can really operate the stove cheaply. I get my wood where I can find it, and most of the time it's free. I burn about five cord of wood a year.”

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