Steady, low-maintenance heat for Kent's forested winters.

Most pellet stove and insert installations here run $6,000-$10,000 CAD. An insert dropping into an existing masonry firebox with a straightforward liner run to the top of the chimney sits toward the low end of that range. A freestanding stove in a home without an existing chimney, needing new wall-through or roof-through PL vent, lands closer to the top. Your municipal building department will want a permit either way, and most installers in Kent build that into their quote.

Yes. New installations go through your municipal building department, and CSA B365 is the installation code your dealer will follow for venting and clearances. Most home insurers in New Brunswick also ask for a WETT inspection on any wood-fuel appliance, pellet stoves included, before they'll add it to your policy, so budget for that as a separate step after the install rather than assuming it's automatically covered by the building permit.

With winter lows averaging -13.1°C and a climate zone (6A) that puts Kent solidly into serious-heating territory, most main living areas here do well with a stove in the 1,200 to 2,000 square foot rating rather than a small supplemental unit. Older homes near the village center with less insulation, or larger farmhouses common on the outskirts of Kent, often do better sized toward the top of that range so the hopper doesn't need refilling twice a day during a cold snap. A local dealer will size against your actual insulation and layout, not just floor area.

Kent has a genuine wood culture: a household DNRED permit gets you up to 14 cubic metres of sugar maple, yellow birch, or red maple a year for around $85 total, which is hard to beat on raw fuel cost. Wood also keeps working with zero electricity, a real consideration during Maritime winter storms. Pellet stoves trade that fuel-cost advantage for convenience: no splitting, no stacking, and a cleaner, more consistent burn from bagged pellets running $400-$575 a ton. Plenty of households here run both—a wood stove or insert as the primary heater and a pellet unit in a second living space for lower-maintenance day-to-day heat.

Groupe Savoie and Shaw Resources are the two regional producers most Kent dealers stock, generally in the $400-$575 a ton range depending on the season and how early you order. Buying early in the fall, before the first real cold snap, tends to get better pricing and guarantees supply, since pellet demand across New Brunswick spikes hard once temperatures drop and trucking gets tighter. Your dealer can also tell you which brand burns cleanest in the specific stove model you choose, since ash content varies enough between mills to matter for how often you're emptying the ash pan.

No, not without a backup power source. Pellet stoves rely on an electric auger to feed fuel and a blower to circulate heat, so a power outage stops the stove along with everything else on the NB Power grid. Ice storms and high winds do knock out power in Kent most winters, which is why some households here keep a small battery backup or generator specifically for the pellet stove, or keep a wood stove or fireplace as a no-electricity fallback for extended outages.

A WETT inspection verifies your installation meets clearances, venting, and hearth pad requirements under CSA B365. It's a one-time check most New Brunswick insurers require after a new install or when you switch companies, not an annual requirement. That said, most WETT-certified technicians recommend a re-inspection if you have chimney or venting work done later, or roughly every few years if the appliance sees heavy daily use through Kent's full heating season.

Plan on cleaning the PL vent and inspecting the hopper, auger, and burn pot at least once a season, ideally before the first cold stretch in November. Households running the stove as a primary heat source through Kent's full winter, often five to six months of regular burning, sometimes need a mid-season check too, especially if you're burning a lower-grade pellet with more ash content. It's a lighter job than a wood chimney sweep, but skipping it is a common reason a stove starts smoking back into the room mid-winter.

Natural gas through Liberty Utilities (Gas NB) reaches only limited parts of New Brunswick, and Kent isn't in the thick of that footprint, so a gas fireplace here often means confirming your street is actually served before you plan around it. Electric heat through NB Power runs about 14.6 cents per kWh, which is simple and permit-light but costs more to run day to day than pellet. Pellet stoves land in between: a $6,000-$10,000 install, fuel at $400-$575 a ton from regional mills like Groupe Savoie, and heat output that rivals a wood stove without the splitting and stacking.

Because a fireplace is an iceberg—there's more behind the wall than in front of it. A low quote often covers only the unit; the full scope includes vent pipe, gas line or electrical, framing, and the tile or stone that has to come off and go back on. Make every bidder price the whole job. If a dealer can't speak to the full scope with confidence, that's your signal to keep looking.

Ask three questions: Is it ugly? Is it drafty? Does it actually work? Most old fireplaces fail at least two. Beyond looks, an old unit leaks air around the damper year-round and—if it's gas with a standing pilot—quietly burns a couple hundred dollars a year. A modern replacement seals the wall, heats the room, and changes how the whole space gets used.

A clean pellet stove is a happy pellet stove. Plan on cleaning the burn pot about once a week when you're burning regularly—ash and clinkers gum up the air holes just like a pellet barbecue. Most pellet stove problems trace back to skipped cleaning that nobody explained up front. Some designs make it easy with a trapdoor burn pot: pull a lever and the gunk drops into the ash pan.

An insert does two things: it seals the chimney completely, so you stop losing air you already paid to heat, and it radiates warmth into the room through the firebox and glass. Most add a heat-exchange fan that pulls cool room air underneath, wraps it around the hot firebox, and pushes it back out warm. Your home is more efficient before you've even lit the first fire.