I'm late coming on but found a few interesting pointers since catching up and just wanted to jump in. Well, I bought a potbelly about 7 years back to replace the boxwood because I felt it might be nice to go from 76,000 BTU's to 200,000.
Now Bee mentioned that for the investment, her drum/kit gives the best BTU's and I'm not denying it, because I think I spent over $800 when I decided to make the change, but it REALLY was hot. But never did the study on how many BTU's Bee's method actually offers.
I have it centrally located in a very long house and it mostly keeps the whole house warm enough, except on very cold nights, to which I might rely on gas......but that was before we added a floor. Last winter and every other winter before, all I had was a subfloor and not I have a floor on top and the under portion of my house is closed in with greenhouse material, so its rather nice and all I have had to use is the stove.
Now the main, common areas of the house that are all extensions of the room that has the stove are warm, but the bathrooms and bedrooms do get a bit chili, so bedrooms I don't fret about. I just use a bedwarmer, because I figure even if the fire goes out, all I have to worry about is for the house not to freeze, which it won't anyway, and for the comfort of the humans in the house, which, hello.....they under the covers.
Now the bathroom, I use the terra-cotta, candle heater method, so I don't have to rely on electric heat....or gas. I prefer gas to electric, for financial reasons as well as speed in heating, but I read that the candle method was the cheapest way to heat a small room and it has been working for me for the past 2 winters. It gives me only about 4 hours of warmth, but it can be stretched to 8, if I go votive rather than tea candles. I just made improvements on my bathroom heater method today, in fact.