Keep Your Family Warm and Safe—No Matter What

No—realistically, it's uncommon. Most Old Forge homes sit on narrow rowhome-style lots built during the borough's coal-mining era, and natural gas service reaches nearly every address in town, making gas fireplaces and furnaces the default choice. Wood stoves show up more often on detached properties at the edges of the borough, on larger lots in surrounding Lackawanna County townships, or at camps in the Endless Mountains. If you're in a tightly-packed section of Old Forge, a local dealer will usually walk the property first before recommending wood over a gas insert.

For homes that can accommodate one, a wood stove installation in this part of Lackawanna County typically runs $3,500 to $8,000, depending on whether you're installing into an existing masonry fireplace or need a full Class A chimney run through the roof of a home that's never had one. Because wood installs are less frequent here than gas conversions, expect your installer to spend extra time confirming clearances to combustibles given how close Old Forge's attached and semi-attached homes sit to their neighbors' walls.

Sometimes, but it depends on the specific house. Attached and semi-attached rowhomes common in Old Forge often have limited interior floor space for the clearance a wood stove requires from combustible walls, and running a Class A chimney pipe through a shared-wall structure to the roof can be more complicated than in a detached home. Many owners of these homes end up choosing a gas insert instead, since it uses the existing chimney flue and needs far less clearance. If your home is detached or semi-detached with room to work with, a wood stove is still very possible—a local installer needs to see the space to say for certain.

Oak, hickory, maple, and cherry are the standard hardwoods found throughout Lackawanna County and the surrounding Endless Mountains, and all four season well and burn hot—oak and hickory in particular are prized for long, steady overnight burns. Firewood suppliers serving the Scranton–Wilkes-Barre area typically sell seasoned cordwood by the cord, with pricing that varies by species and how far in advance you order, since well-seasoned hardwood (moisture content below 20%) needs at least six months to a year of drying time before it burns cleanly.

Yes—any new wood-burning appliance installation requires a building permit, typically through the Old Forge Borough code enforcement office or Lackawanna County, depending on the scope of work. The stove itself needs to meet current EPA emissions standards, and most reputable local installers fold the permitting into the installation process so you're not chasing paperwork yourself. Given how few wood installs happen in the borough compared to gas conversions, it's worth confirming with your installer that they've pulled a wood-stove permit here before, not just a gas one.

It's one of the better reasons to consider one. PPL Electric Utilities serves Old Forge at a residential rate around $0.1234 per kWh, and like most of Northeastern Pennsylvania, this area sees occasional ice storms and downed lines in winter that can knock out power—and with it, any furnace that relies on an electric ignition or blower. A wood stove needs no electricity to produce heat, which is real peace of mind on a below-freezing night. If backup heat is your main motivation, make sure that's the priority you communicate to your installer, since it affects stove sizing and placement.

For most Old Forge homes, gas wins on pure practicality: natural gas service is already run to nearly every address in the borough, a gas insert or fireplace lights instantly, and it doesn't require clearance-heavy chimney work in a tightly-packed rowhome. Wood wins in narrower circumstances—a detached home with room to spare, a desire for heat that works without electricity, or access to free or cheap hardwood from a Lackawanna County property. If you're not sure which category you fall into, a local dealer can look at your specific lot and chimney situation and tell you honestly which fuel actually fits.

Firewood dealers serving the Scranton and Wilkes-Barre metro area deliver into Old Forge and the rest of Lackawanna County, generally selling seasoned oak, hickory, maple, and cherry by the full or half cord. If you're heating primarily with wood rather than using it occasionally, plan ahead—ordering in spring or summer for fall delivery gets you properly seasoned wood at a better price than scrambling for it once cold weather sets in.

Pellet stoves face a similar uphill fit here as wood—regional pellet brands like Energex, Hamer Pellet Fuel, and Greene Team Pellet Fuel are sold across Northeastern Pennsylvania, but pellet appliances are just as uncommon in Old Forge's borough housing stock as wood stoves, and they add a dependency wood doesn't have: pellet stoves need electricity to run the auger and blower, so they won't help during a PPL outage the way a wood stove will. If convenience and clean burning matter more than off-grid backup, pellet is worth discussing with a dealer—but it doesn't solve the power-outage problem the way wood does.

New wood stoves are 70%+ efficient, so far less heat goes up the flue—which also means less draft to get a fire established. The rule: build a genuinely hot fire for about 45 minutes before you choke it down. Skip that and you get smoke in the room, creosote in the chimney, and a fire that never takes off. Most performance complaints trace straight back to this.

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.

Yes—by creating a comfort zone. A furnace heats every square foot of the house just to warm the one room you're in; a gas fireplace on low burns roughly a sixth of the gas a typical furnace does. Set the furnace around 55–60 degrees as a baseline, then heat the rooms your family actually uses. Families who heat this way commonly save $20–$60 a month.

It's a visit where a hearth professional measures your space, confirms the model you picked actually works in your home, and walks the specs—framing, gas line, venting, finish work—before anything is ordered. Some details you just can't know until you see the house. Never make a down payment without one; it's the single most-skipped step that burns buyers.