What are the advantages of a wood pellet stove? My family is considering one, but I don't want to get it if it's wasteful. We currently have electric heat and the house is two stories and about 2500 sq ft (including the garage, which obviously doesn't need to be heated).

Ross, they use a waste product (at lease many do - sawdust from furniture manufacturing). It's generally cheap, especially if you buy in bulk before the season. In some ways it is similar to a wood stove, but instead of having to put in logs, a hopper on top feeds it pellets. It's also on a thermostat, so the house can stay whatever temperature you need. I would highly recommend them. I've been using pellet stoves for 3 years now and have been very pleased.

Lloyd Alter and I do not share the same taste. Sure, these pellet stoves are rather nicer than the utilitarian units you might find in workshops or cabins, but "gorgeous" is hardly the term.

I would have opted for a title more along the lines of: "New Italian Pellet Stove for People Who Miss Big CRT TVs". The Yule log video just got a lot more real.

Ross, it depends on prices in your area, but generally electric is the most expensive way to heat. It is also the worst use of a very valuable resource, because electricity can do anything, like power a computer, so reducing it to heat is wasteful and inefficient. Wood is often the cheapest. Wood pellets are usually made from sawdust and other waste wood, so it is an excellent use of a renewable resource. Prices have climbed sharply in places where the fuel is getting rapidly more popular. Pellet stoves can be quite efficient and clean, though I would expect in terms of air pollution, a natural gas furnace would be cleaner, but in terms of climate change, pellets are better.

I agree with grandin and not with Lloyd about the style of these stoves. They may fit some style furnishings well, but at least in the places I've been, the traditional ones are much more suitable.

One of them looks like a news paper machine.

with all the problems with the saw mill companies have right now, I would stay away from pellet stoves as the pellet makers are having hard time getting the wood mill byproduct right now (at least in Canada)

and what about corn you may ask ? say thank you to ethanol for a nice 200% increase on price for dry corn kernels.

right now my call is to get something that can burn anything.
so right now, I sold my used overpriced pellet stove to get this : http://www.sedoreusa.com/howitworks.html

it will but anything including pellets and wood chips.

"It is time to start complaining; people with a modernist design sensibility are as entitled to an efficient stove as anyone else."

If there was a market for people who want a shiny box with fire inside, who live in a stainless steel and white linen loft in Manhattan, and who look down their bespectacled noses at folks who *gasp* don't think that sharp corners and uncomfortable furniture are the height of fashion, I'm sure someone would have made them by now.

As it stands, people who are willing to give up comfort for design are also willing to give up energy efficiency for design.

Gorgeously loud pellet stoves (Of course, they're noisy)

specialy when they are standing right in front of the couch next to the TV. (any they throw A LOT of heat)

pellet stove are made to be installed in a basement where you don't hear them.

"As it stands, people who are willing to give up comfort for design are also willing to give up energy efficiency for design."

I wholy disagree. I like Modernist style and Modernist design and think that it can definitely be comfortable. I also believe in energy efficiency and having a small environmental footprint. These two things are not mutually incompatible.

Good design and comfort go hand in hand. Good design and energy efficiency go hand in hand.

Not everyone who cares about the planet wants to live in a yurt made out of cobb.