I"m jealous of you guys/gals that say you have stoves (pellet or otherwise). I bought a house last January...and the only source of heat I have besides on older plasma TV is my oil-burner.....and at 2.93$/gallon this past week.....I'm none to thrilled (or overflowing with cash ;-)
The windows in my house are original and I can feel all kinds of draftiness around each of them....I need to get those clear plastic covers that you use a hair-dryer to shrink...ought to help some!
Otherwise...just continuing to dig myself out of the remnants of this weekend's blizzard!
I'm into my stove and DIY chimney liner less than $1300. I bought 1 pallet of pellets so far for $2.87 per bag on sale at Lowe's and used a 10% off coupon for the total purchase of the stove, pellets and a big humidifier. So for around the cost of a tank of oil for me I'm up and running. I haven't used a drop of oil since I started burning pellets. Even though my stove is about the smallest available the hopper holds enough pellets to burn for 8 hours on high and can go better than 12 on the lowest setting.
In my opinion the stove is a better initial investment than windows or other insulation type tasks, a few excess btu's are cheap.
I got my woodstove from a friend remodeling his house for 200 bucks and it was two years old at the time. It's a big sucker that can take lengths of wood up to about 28 inches or so. Out of pocket for wood I paid 500 bucks ttl for 3 1/2 cords. I only buy a couple cords to finish filling my wood shed if I did not cut enough free stuff.
However, there really is no such thing as free firewood. Just ask anyone who has had to cut their own.