Heating with firewood all winter for 42 years, missed my mark felling large hardwood trees only once.
Heating with firewood warms you 6 times: felling & bucking the tree, hauling the wood to the house, splitting it, stacking it, bringing it in the house, and when its burning.
When it’s 9 degrees out, ain’t nothing like a hot fire in the fireplace furnace that heats the whole house........
I’m lazy. Firewood only warms me 5 times.
I don’t stack it. I throw it in a pile about 20 feet from my outdoor boiler.
There is nothing quite like a real wood fire.
I thought the exact same way as you did, right up to the point when we installed the Harman pellet insert. I cut, split, stacked, hauled and cleaned up after cordwood for 16 years. Now I fill up the pellet stove once in the morning and once at night. I empty the ash pan once a week. I completely clean it once a month. It also heats my 2500 square foot 1972 house much more evenly. Also, from a “green” point of view, the pellets come from a factory within 30 miles from my house. I have also cut my heating oil usage by 2/3.
The pellet stove is very efficient too(rated at 85%). I used to clean my flue 2x a season. I checked it a week or so ago. Nothing. I had a pretty good wood stove too, A Jotul 3. It was supposed to be about 75% efficient. It was not big enough though.
7 times if you count hauling out the ashes. ;-)