Interesting.
I used to Live in the Northeast in an older home. The fuel bills were horrible. On the end of the house was a family room with a fireplace – the room was a couple of steps lower than the rest of the house and wouldn’t it be nice to have a fireplace!! Wrong! Open fireplaces were horrible for doing much else than look pretty and make a mess when cleaning them or getting them lit.
I had the ceiling in the room insulated (it never had anything above it before!!) and invested in a wood stove. I bought one slightly too big – a little small and a small fan would have circulated the heat far better. Anyway it was far easier to get going and the heat – OMG – incredible. Even thought the fireplace was at the end of the house it could heat everything in it. The furthest bedrooms only got cold when the doors were shut preventing the heat getting in. Otherwise it was warm everywhere and baking hot in the family room. We even had to set a fan up to move the hot air out into the next room and around the house.
I reckon I dropped my oil bill by 50%. The stove paid for itself in 2 winters. Add in the cost of wood (I was in the city) and it was minimal cost by the end of the third winter. Looking back I’d consider adding more stonework that could absorb and hold the heat around the fireplace too.
I’d recommend looking at a full stove (great for power outages too). Be careful of the pellet stoves. My neighbor had one and it was great with the auto feed – until the power went down and the pellet auto feed stopped!!