Pellet Stoves
I know I have written about pellet stoves before, but this week the NY Times had an article about pellet stoves that resonated with me.
The house was built in the late 18th century, and the fireplace is in what was then the kitchen. Back then it was the primary heat source for the house, just what it was going to be again, apparently. But while we seemed to be stepping back in time in terms of function, the language surrounding this enterprise was dryly contemporary, the poetry of the fireplace burning fragrant logs giving way to the prosaic efficiency of a sealed combustion unit fueled by a pellet product; where once we calculated how many cords of wood we would need to stack outdoors for a winter, now it was the number of pellet bags we would need to pile in the basement.
For a long time we debated whether or not to install a second pellet stove in one of the three original fireplaces in the house. My husband, ever practical, pointed out the heat savings. The fact that the location meant it would heat most of the house including the second floor. And the most painful blow, that making a fire in the fireplace actually sucked the heat right out of the house. But the aesthetics, I moaned.
To me there is something magical about having a fire in the fireplace. Sitting around a darkened room watching the flames dance, it is almost like being at a campfire, except in the comfort of your own home. Everyone loves a fireplace, don’t they? It taps into some sort of primitive collective conscious that we have.
So far we have not installed a pellet stove in any of the original fireplaces. Somehow that feels blasphemous to me. That progress means ruining something original and beautiful. But like the author of the aforementioned article, I realize that my home has been a series of improvements. Once upon a time there wasn’t running water or toilets. There were gas lamps. I somehow doubt that people objected to installing these modern conveniences. Even though it meant drilling holes through hardwood flooring, building boxes around heating vent pipes, marring plaster walls with those pesky outlets.
But somehow those of us living in and restoring old houses cling to some vestiges of antiquity and try to reconcile our modern needs with the historic aesthetic.
