Currently my house is all natural gas forced air.  In the event of a outage, I run the furnace with a generator.  No issues as far as a short term solution.

I'd like to get a wood stove.  Unfortunately, the downsides are :  No easy source of fuel, the dirt and mess, the constant hassle of maintaining the fire, and the cost of installation is significant.  A wood stove really isn't going to work.

I've begun to consider a pellet stove.  It would be FAR more useful, day in and day out, than a real wood stove. I know its not a 'long term" solution to the end of the world kind of situation.  However, I'm liking the idea that I can buy a couple tons of fuel, which stores cleanly and easily, and keep it on hand.  Sort of a back up against a Natural Gas price hike or shortage (not that we have one now).  The issue is power for the stove in the event of a short term SHTF event.  I'm talking about 1,2 week sort of event.

I'm wondering how easily (or not) a pellet stove might run on a battery backup to provide power for the blower, etc.  Any input???

Fro

Any wood burning heat source that requires power is a no go for me.  When the power is out due do an ice storm I don't want to have to worry about running the generator or a battery for heat.

For day to day operations they have great reviews in general.  Very cost effect to heat with vs fuel, propane or electric.  Cost vs. natural gas, well that probably comes in pretty close and would be hard to justify.

I don't have natural gas or access to it, but I know many that do, and even for those with inefficient houses its pretty cost effective, or so I understand.

I heat with old fashion firewood.  Only requires human effort to function.  In my case much effort, as I cut, drag, buck, split, and stack all my own right from my property.  I have no heating bill.  My heat is paid with sweat equity.  ATV, chainsaw and splitter come in handy to.  I figure I pay for a new ATV, wood splitter, and chainsaw every 5~7 years or so not having a heating bill.  I also use the ATVs to plow, and for other chores so for me its worth it.  With proper care the ATV should hopefully last 10 years+, and the wood splitter much longer.  Value and cost are also subject to current utility rates so an exact amount is hard to figure.

I would say get a small regular wood stove and then just buy some firewood.  Then you aren't dependent on power.  Maybe build a small out building to store a cord or two of firewood in.

put a wood furnace in the basement
heat will use existing hvac ducts

Look at Whitfield brand. They make one that runs off a car battery during an outage.  

My mom ad dad replaced a wood burning stove with one and I told him he was crazy.  

Bu they are super clean and efficient but the pellets are pretty expensive.  

About $250 a ton and it takes about 5 tons to heat a 2000 sq ft house.

see if you can find a model with a TEG backup, that way it powers itself

If you run searches there are a lot of ways to power the little feeder motor with 12 volts.  So this covers the power outage folks.  I guess some brands may not be very easy to accomplish this with but at worst you need some batteries and an invertor.  For some I have seen discussed on the net the motor stepped down to 12 volts anyway so they made up a 2nd cord for it for when the power is out.



The pellets are a nice item that comes in bags I guess and I don't know if they produce less ash than a wood stove burning actual tree pieces that have not been processed, don't care.  



If I had a pellet stove I would have space and money to store a few pallets ahead.  About a winter's worth of pellets probably.  And I would put some serious thought into what I could afford to do if pellets double in price.  Or quadruple in price.  Just shipping cost could be an issue if fuel went nutty and this is processed wood so money for more than just that is needed.



In my rural area if you put word out you need a pickup load of fire wood you can get some.  Shop what is offered and go from there.



Biggest reason I see to have a wood stove is if you have a lot of trees on your property.  That way you can feed it yourself.

When I think of pellet stove usefulness I think of hipsters, as the pellets seem pretty spendy.

In my last house we had a pellet stove.  We liked it.  I tested running it off an inverter and deep cycle battery.  I could get about 6 hrs on the battery before it got too low.  So, I decided that the battery idea wasn't good.  I eventually bought a Champion inverter generator and converted it to propane.  The plan was to run the pellet stove off the generator with the generator hooked to a 100 lb propane tank.  The power never did go out though.

Why not just run your furnace off the generator ?

Hard winters bring shortages of pellets late in the season.  There have been fist fights in the Home Depot parking lot over a bag of pellets, and rationing is common.  Real old fashioned firewood is better if you have reliable access to supply.

Can you have propane? If so, what about some of those non-electric, non-vented propane heaters in key rooms? The propane will sit in the tank and be fine for ever (as long as it doesn't leak out). Keep some spare regs and pipe dope and you are GTG for a LONG time on a 500 gallon tank. Bonus: You can run your propane generator on the LP too!

Pellet stoves need electricity to run properly.  A regular wood burning stove is your best option for long term emergency use.

Because I had a heat pump in that house.  It takes a lot of KWs to run a heat pump.

But, if you buy your pellets early in the season by the ton, you won't have to worry about shortages.  In my area, pellet sellers try to sell out of pellets in the late winter because they don't want to be sitting on pallets of pellets through the summer.  That's the real reason for pellet shortages in the late winter.  

Buy what you need for the entire winter and then store over the summer what you don't use.  

We used to use about 1/2 ton in our last house per year.  I usually bought 1 ton every other year.  We didn't use a lot because we only used the pellet stove when the temps dropped below 25 degrees and we used it to supplement the heat pump.  

Another thing to be aware of with pellet stoves is the quality of the pellets.  You want good hard wood pellets.  I used to buy a couple bags of each of the available brands and try them all out.  I would then buy a ton of what seemed to offer the best value.

True....except the OP isn't talking about long term emergency use.  

And, there are now pellet stoves that don't require electricity to use....but I don't know how well they work.  I can't imagine them working as well as an electrically powered pellet stove.

Dang!  Maybe I'm out of date again?  Pellet stoves that don't need power?  Who woulda thunk it? Next thing you know they will be inventing phones that fit in your pocket!

Yeah....about that.............................

Harman pf100
9 tons down

I agree, no electricity required.

Something to consider about the pellet stoves is some insurance places might prefer them over wood stoves.  Don't know if they see a difference or not, never asked.  Mine lumps wood and coal stoves together, both would cost more for insurance.



I also got to wondering how long a pellet stove would run on a hopper of pellets?  Might be able to let it run longer than a wood stove, depends on wood stove and the operator for this.



I can get a fire going and manage but each wood stove can be a bit different, heck just changing the exhaust setup can change how well the wood stove works.



I am figuring a pellet stove is pretty much set it and forget it to some extent.



That might work better for some people if the wife won't mess with fire wood and what not.



I figure pellets lose their attractiveness if you try to use em in a wood stove, the hopper feeding the pellet stove would be the only reason I could see going that way.  And to some extent I am not beyond expanding the hopper if it did not change how the thing worked.

Check with insurance, may or may not be different than a regular wood stove.

Pellets need to be stored off the ground (pallet is fine) under good cover, otherwise they will get wet.




For backup/emergency use, a couple of 24k btu ventfree heater make sense to me, especially if you already have propane.

Why not stay with NG for a couple of vented wall heaters?  Many do not require power or are 12v.

http://www.amazon.com/PROCOM-Blue-Flame-Wall-Heater/dp/B002NLW93U/ref=sr_1_8/179-1839379-0153639?ie=UTF8&qid=1433001281&sr=8-8&keywords=Vented+Gas+Wall+Heater

As mentioned, NG will be cheaper than pellets....currently a LOT cheaper than pellets.  

Personally, since you have NG, I would install a vented NG fireplace or vented NG stove.  

When I built my last house, NG and propane wasn't an option.  So, we went with all electric.  Since a heat pump requires a lot of KWs to run, we needed something that would heat the whole house but not take much electricity.  I didn't want to install a wood stove so we went with the pellet stove.  We really did like it but if I could have installed NG, we would have had a NG fireplace or stove instead.  

Pellets were more expensive to heat with.....UNTIL....the outside temps dropped below 20 or so.  Then, we'd fire up the pellet stove and the house would be nice and toasty.  We had an Englander stove and would shut it down clean it about every 3-4 days.  Used a shop vac to clean it out.  Used to take 10 mins or so and then we'd fire it right back up.