Buy Green: Pellet Stoves

With energy going through the roof, now's the time to embrace a greener, cheaper alternative home heating option.

Enter the Pellet Stove. Requiring only a smidgen of electricity and a few hundred pounds of compressed wood pellets (which are easier to manage than they sound, honest!), these efficient stoves can heat your home cheaper and greener than both wood and natural gas.

Here's a brief pellet stove 101: A motorized auger system feeds a continuous stream of pellets from a refillable hopper (the pellet storage container) into a burn pot, where they combust. The combustion creates a visible flame, and gives off regular and consistent heat. For precise temperature regulation, models are available with a thermostat.

And now for the green part: Pellet stoves pollute so little that they don't require certification from the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) (though many companies get certified anyway), they create no creosote (chimney fire fodder), and fall well within clean air standards. And the pellets? Most are made from compressed sawdust and other wood waste, though some stoves can also take wood, recycled paper waste, and biomass pellets. Therefore, pellet stoves don't contribute to deforestation or consumption of other precious natural resources (natural gas).

All of these reasons have led to a burgeoning popularity for pellet stoves: Some 800,000 Americans have gone the pellet stove route. However, tracking down the right stove can be tricky, as most manufacturers don't sell the stoves directly due to a difficult and complex installation process.

A Few General Tips:

Find a local vendor that consistently sells affordable pellets.

Contact a certified pellet stove dealer for installation—they're more complex than they look.

Make sure you have a battery backup if your pellet stove does not have an internal backup system to handle power outage. A power outage while the stove is still running will prevent the blowers or fans from functioning—and make your home smokier than a Pink Floyd laser light show.

Here are five solid stoves on the market—each is thermostat compatible and available with an automatic igniter.

After you check them out, read more about pellet stoves here: