Snuggle with a fat chick.
vent out the wall like a GD dryer… 6" hole, double wall thimble, and double wall 3" pellet pipe. Cake…
What old farm house doesn’t have a chimney?
Wood will be your cheapest but is more labor. Cut down tree, cut up tree, split, stack. If you get the big one like at the tractor show you can hot water into them. I mean HOT FUCKING WATER.
Or buy pellets and jump on the bandwagon.
Check out corn to, or stoves you can swap feeders and try what you like.
that is probably one of your biggest problems…more than half of your heat is going out the chimney probably at that age.
i have a 1000 gallon oil tank and it is no fun filling it up. i think i’m going to make it more than 12 months on 1 fill-up this year so i’m happy with that, but come the end of summer i call the oil company each week to check on the price…usually bottoms out at the end of august.
with all of the gas development down here, i’m probably going to switch to a 95%+ efficiency gas unit this summer, although i’m very tempted by the outdoor wood burner. i have a big garage with a spare chimney that could make a nice sheltered home for it.
my one piece of advice would be to do insulation before windows. upgrading windows without insulating the walls does very little, unless the windows are very drafty. air infiltration is your biggest enemy, but you will get much more bang for your buck in insulation as long as the windows seal properly.