We've been going over this currently for our new house.

Our thoughts are this.

The house has a wood stove currently, and enough fire wood on the property awaiting splitting for maybe 2 winters (were in CA so ~5mo winters). We want something that we can 'set' too... so our thoughts.

1. Propane stove that works w/out electricity (less efficient) but will heat the bottom floor none the less w/out a blower motor. (Cost: $1500-$2500 for a nice unit)

2. Pellet stove. Requires very little electricity. 2000w honda generator can run ~15hrs on 1 fuel tank (<2g I believe) and is almost silent. (Cost: $1500-$2500 for a nice unit + $800-1200 for a generator and electrics).

3. Central AC/Heat plumbed to bottom story only (2 rooms, great room and kitchen). We don't need AC but the AC/heat units don't cost much more to add AC. I haven't checked efficiency compared to a propane stove but this may be another option as it can easily be installed on a roof.

4. Keep the Wood stove and get a small/cheap propane ventless high efficient 24,000 BTU "fire place". These are <$500 and may provide great additional heat, and probably enough to keep entire house comfortable (Where we are it doesn't get colder than mid/low 20s most of time high 20's low 30's at night). These are currently not for sale in CA so I would have to arrange importing one.

Ideally I`d love to have a pellet stove next to a wood stove but 2 stoves may look very funny. This way I could use the pellet 99% of the time and the other 1% for power outages I could use wood or run the 1000w honda. It would probably be pretty easy to tie the exhaust vent into both too.

There's more options but those are what we've looked at so far.