Warm days are quickly approaching, but like every summer, the season is over way too fast. With cool days extending into May and starting again by September, we are often left with just a few short months of warm weather.

Why is summer a great time to buy a wood fireplace, a corn stove, or a flex-fuel furnace?

We’ll all work our way through a list of “to do” items that beg our attention. If you’ve made the decision to save money next fall by heating your home with alternative fuel, then now is the perfect time to add the purchase and installation of an alternative energy appliance to your list of summer projects.

There is no better time to install a corn stove or switch out an inefficient gas fireplace than during the hot days of summer; the days are long, offering more free time to get things done. Round up friends or family to help get your projects done! The weather is great for garage sales to sell your old fireplace unit. The weather is also perfect for working inside and out to vent your new stove or fireplace, and other tasks that keep you busy.

Right now if you buy online, shipping is free; What a Hot Deal!  With rising fuel prices and projected high heating costs for 2010/2011, alternative heating MagnuM appliances are HOT! Shop now, save on shipping, and enjoy later when others are scrambling to find and install products when the cold weather hits.

photo credit: holmanphoto

Frugal living at our home?

Absolutely!

We live frugally at our house, or at least, we try to. I love finding a good deal, shopping the sales rack, saving money, and having a coupon when I go out to eat. It is very, very seldom that I pay full price for anything.

We have a sun-room addition on our home that is our “family room” and pretty much the hub of our house. We added a Magnum Baby Countryside stove to the corner a few years and just love it. It helps to extremely reduce our heating bill.

How a Corn Stove Figures in to Our Frugal Mix

We purchase corn in the fall from a local farmer that is dried to the optimum level for our stove. He pulls the gravity box into our driveway late each fall, and we use a 5 gallon bucket, wheelbarrow and lots of arm power to put the corn into a hand made wooden box in our garage. This year we briefly used wood pellets in our stove, until our corn arrived. That is the beauty of a flex-fuel stove!

Last year, we spent about $400.00 to purchase enough corn to last us all winter. It even got us through October and November this past year (2009).

Minimum Maintenance

We pretty much run our corn stove day and night, shutting it down every other day to clean it out briefly. Maybe once a week we shut it down for a more thorough clean.

Heat Distribution Through-Out Our Home

We have ceiling fans in the sun-room, adjoining kitchen, and then above our stairway which rotates the warm air and keeps the main level of our home warm. On a really windy, cold day, our furnace might kick-in a tiny bit, otherwise, our corn stove keeps us toasty warm.

Guest Post: The author of this post is Cindy Haugland, a frugal Minnesota Mom who is known by her friends as a tightwad. She started her own business, aptly called TidyTightwads, to help other people save money and live with less clutter and stress. She recommends a Magnum corn stove to those who want to save money on heating costs.

American Energy Systems has a rich history of providing superior corn stoves and flex-fuel heating appliances; including fireplaces and furnaces. We are pleased to offer a blog community to people passionate about using alternative energy to heat their homes and offices.

If you want to shop online and skip directly to our extensive Magnum and Country Flame product lines, please jump over to our Main Website at Magnum Heat. To go directly to our Magnum E-com Store click here.

For specific questions or assistance with one of our appliances, you can participate in our online Magnum Forum -which is getting rave reviews for quick, easy access to all your technical needs. 

 Cme2heatitup on Ebay, one of American Energy System’s Resellers, sells overstock, scratch and dent, and  special promotion units for wholesale prices. These are one of a kind items and deals, as Cme2heatitup is the ONLY authorized AES online Reseller that can sell DEMO units for full factory warranty.

If a show room is more your style, and you’d love to see a corn or pellet stove in action, you can find a dealer near you! Just use our Magnum and Country Flame locator!

For a fun, new community of people passionate about heating their homes with alternative energy, you can join our Fan Page on Facebook at Facebook.magnumheat.com Be sure to leave us a comment so we can say “hi”!

We are active on Twitter now too, so follow us at Twitter.com/alternativeheat Be sure to @ reply so we can follow you back! We love the discussions on Twitter going on about green living, saving money, burning corn, and alternative energy for heat. Weigh in!

We are working hard to offer countless videos featuring all our our Magnum and Country Flame products. Dozens of easy to understand and helpful demonstrational videos are posted on Magnum Heat channel of YouTube. From trouble shooting and venting, to choosing your corn or wood pellets to buy, we’re here to help.