Keep Your Family Warm and Safe—No Matter What

Not really, and it's worth being upfront about that. Most Taylor homes were built during the borough's coal-mining heyday on small, tightly packed lots, and natural gas has been the standard heat source here for decades. Wood stoves show up mostly as a secondary or backup heat source—in homes with a bit more land, in older houses with an existing masonry fireplace, or at camps in the hills outside the borough. If you're set on wood, it's absolutely doable, but it's a smaller, more custom project here than in a rural or mountain town where it's the default.

Because wood installs are less common locally, pricing tends to be more custom than in areas where installers do them every week. As a general planning range, expect somewhere in the $3,500 to $8,000 range for a stove and venting, with the higher end reflecting Taylor's older housing stock—many coal-era rowhomes have masonry chimneys that need a new stainless liner sized for the stove, which adds cost but is often required for a safe, code-compliant install. A local dealer can give you a firm number after seeing your specific chimney and clearances.

Oak, hickory, maple, and cherry are all common in the hardwood forests of the surrounding Lackawanna and Wayne county hills, and they're the species you'll most often find from local firewood dealers. Oak and hickory burn hot and long, which matters given Taylor's real winters (average lows around 20°F), while cherry and maple are easier to split and season faster if you're buying green or semi-seasoned wood. Ask any supplier how long the wood has been seasoned—unseasoned oak in particular needs a full year or more to burn cleanly.

Yes—like the rest of Pennsylvania, Taylor Borough requires a building permit for a new wood-burning appliance installation under the state's Uniform Construction Code, and the stove itself needs to meet current EPA emissions standards. Because wood installs are infrequent here, it's worth confirming directly with Taylor Borough's code enforcement office before work starts, and using an installer who routinely pulls these permits so nothing gets missed on inspection.

Two main reasons. First, the housing stock: Taylor's rowhomes and small-lot single-families, many dating to the anthracite coal era, often don't have the side-yard clearance or storage space a wood stove setup needs. Second, natural gas is already built into most homes here and handles Taylor's cold winters reliably without any wood handling or ash cleanup. Wood still makes sense for specific situations—backup heat, a detached home with more land, or an existing fireplace—but it's not competing with gas as an everyday choice for most Taylor households.

For most homes in the borough, gas is the practical answer—it's already the standard heat source, the infrastructure is in place, and it doesn't require the clearances or storage a wood stove needs on a tight lot. Wood makes the most sense as a supplement: heat that works when PPL Electric power is out (gas furnaces with electric ignition and blowers typically won't run without power, either), ambiance in a home with an existing fireplace, or primary heat for a camp or detached property outside the borough core where lot size isn't a constraint.

Often, yes. Many of Taylor's older coal-era homes have an original masonry fireplace, and a wood-burning insert is usually the best way to make that fireplace actually useful for heat rather than just decorative. The insert fits into the existing firebox and vents through a new stainless liner run up your existing chimney. It's a smaller-footprint project than a freestanding stove since you're not adding new clearances—a good option in a house where lot size and wall space are tight.

Firewood suppliers throughout Lackawanna and Wayne counties sell seasoned cordwood—mostly oak, hickory, maple, and cherry from the surrounding hardwood forests. Regional cordwood typically runs somewhere in the $250 to $325 range depending on species and how well-seasoned it is; ask specifically about moisture content, since a stove burning wet wood in a home with a shorter burn season needs it to catch and hold heat efficiently. Buying a full winter's supply in late summer usually gets you better seasoning and better pricing than a mid-winter order.

With average winter lows around 20°F and a long, demanding heating season, Taylor sees real cold, but sizing still depends heavily on your home. In a typical rowhome or smaller single-family house, a small-to-medium stove used for supplemental or backup heat is usually enough given that gas handles the base heating load. In a larger detached home or a camp outside the borough where wood might be the primary heat source, you'd size closer to a medium or large stove based on square footage and insulation. A local dealer can size this properly during an in-home visit—getting it right matters more in a compact rowhome, where an oversized stove can make a small space uncomfortably hot.

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.

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.

If you're putting a fire in your house on purpose, it's best to work with an expert. Unless you're genuinely experienced in framing, gas line, vent pipe, and the national code on clearances to combustibles, have a professional do it—and ideally the same company that sells you the fireplace, so warranty, service, and liability all live under one roof.

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.