In October of 2007, Black Swan Fireside Hearth & Home installed a Quadra-Fire Castile Pellet stove for a customer who was looking for an alternative option to heating with oil. This is her story:
During the summer of 2007, our customer had set up a plan for oil delivery for her home which was pre-paid for the first two cycles. The payments were set in the vicinity of $800 and the cycle was approximately 6 weeks. In September, she received her first scheduled fill, and decided that she would look into alternative options. She came to our store to learn more about the benefits of heating with pellets. Because of her work schedule, pellet was the best alternative heat source for her application. Our certified staff installed her stove on October 20, 2007, just before her second scheduled fill. Her third fill was scheduled, and pre-paid around this time.
The customer came to visit our staff in early January, 2008. She said that the oil company came for her third fill that week, and had actually issued her a $550 credit on her third fill. She came back a few weeks later to tell us that the fourth visit from the oil company resulted in a fill of around 18 gallons of oil. She explained that she kept the house at 75 degrees all winter, and paid about the same amount in pellets as her first oil fill for the season. The customer came home one day to find a message on her machine from the oil company. Her oil company wanted to know if her oil burner had been operating correctly or had been removed from the house. Before the stove was installed, the customer had been burning around $800 worth of oil every six weeks. Currently, however, the household uses less than one fill of oil for the entire season. She returned the oil company's call, explained to them that she had a pellet stove installed and that is why her usage dropped so drastically.
This customer, along with many others who have switched to pellet heating, are able to save money on their heating bills and keep their house comfortably warm with little effort due to the automatic capabilities of pellet and wood alternative heating.