The pellet stove was pretty easy to install. It is thermostatically controlled, and will go on by itself, without being lit, as long as it has pellets in it. It will hold about 60 pounds of pellets.
The total cost for the stove, and the accessories I needed to install it was about $2022.00 I have used about $220.00 in pellets, since 12/26/2010, and this was wrote on 02/03/2011. It has cost about $6.00 a day to run the pellet stove.
When I bought the stove, I picked it up myself, and also brought home 1000 pounds of pellets. I made one trip to buy another 2000 pounds of pellets in mid January, and that may last until the end of February, depending on the weather.
The pellet stove need a little maintenance. You have to clean out clinkers out of the fire pot every few days, and vacuum out the interior of the stove about once a week. there is a little more work, above that, but the cost to run the pellet stove is about the same as I was paying for firewood, in the old wood stove. And I do not have to buy wood, and split it every few days. The pellet stove runs all through the night, with out having to put more wood in it.
The pellet stove I got is rated to put out 8,000 to 30,000 BTUs/hour. It is rated to burn 1.5 to 4 pounds of pellets per hour. In addition to the thermostat control, it has a three speed switch for the feed rate of the pellets. It has a way of hooking up outside air to the combustion process, but in no way would I consider it explosion proof.
The Pellet stove cannot put a huge amount of heat in a short period of time, but if you turn it on early in the morning, It might be a good economical alternative to other sources of heat for a garage. The thermostat is just an on-off switch, and it would be very easy to get a thermostat with a timer that could turn on the stove early in the morning so the garage is warm when you want to work in it.