A roaring fire or a warm hearth are ambience-setting cliches for many homeowners. But for some, wood stoves heat their homes during the winter.

Temperatures this winter are expected to be milder and snow less abundant than recent years, according to meteorologists in Pittsburgh, but those above-average temperatures still equate to being cold. The coldest month is expected to be February, which is predicted to average 29.7 degrees, which is below normal.

And with cold weather nearly here, furnaces of all types are being fired up across Butler County.

While the most common heating source remains natural gas, the seemingly old-time method of wood burning remains viable with technological advances that advocates say make them a more efficient choice for homeowners than ever before.

Heating a home with wood isn’t what it used to be, said Adam Martin of Martin’s Sales and Service, a Center Township business that deals in indoor wood-burning stoves and fireplaces.

“People are always looking for alternative heat sources with the price of (fuel) these days,” Martin said. “Years ago you were lucky to be 50 percent efficient and get four hours of burn time. Today we have stoves that will burn for 17 consecutive hours.”

He said most wood stoves today burn at efficiency rates of 75 percent or better, meaning they actually re-burn combustion air and eliminate soot.

“They’re very green now, which is important,” Martin said. “The EPA is getting stricter and stricter, but the wood stoves have come such a long way.”

In addition to wood stoves, another form of heating is with pellet stoves, which are popular, according to Pat Green, the operations manager for Trader Horn.

The company’s hardwood pellets are “something we sell out of every year,” he said. “They burn longer and are far more efficient” than other kinds of pellet fuel.

Supplying the fuel for wood burning stoves can be a business venture as well. Cord wood — split and seasoned wood ready for use in a furnace, stove or fireplace — can sell for anywhere from $185 to $250.

A cord is a firewood stacked four feet high, eight feet long and four feet deep. One cord of seasoned hardwood equates to about 159 gallons of fuel oil.

Bob Stirling of Stirling Landscaping said his business’ tree removal and trimming service generates a wide variety of logs, which are usually sold whole to wood burning customers.

“Surprisingly there’s a lot of people who do their own splitting and cutting,” Stirling said.

He sells about 30 dump truck loads of wood — about 60 cords — each year.

Stirling said hardwoods are more popular because they burn longer, with woods like ash plentiful because of struggles to eradicate the Emerald Ash borer, an insect notorious for decimating Pennsylvania’s ash trees.

Mark Fleming of Fleming Tire and Auto, who also sells cord wood, said it’s difficult to quantify just how popular wood-burning furnaces and stoves are.

“Some people burn for recreation, or only burn occasionally when it comes to indoor (stoves),” Fleming said.

Fleming said dedicated wood burners usually cut their own fuel throughout the year, and only buy wood when they’re in a pinch. He estimated that it takes about 12 cords of wood to heat a single family home each year.

“They only call us if they can’t bring enough in on their own,” Fleming said.

U.S. Census estimates on houses using wood heat for municipalities in the county are not too reliable with margins of error as high as 100 percent.

In general, the census findings point to the furnaces as being more popular in rural areas in population centers like Butler, which has an estimated 25 homes out of nearly 6,000 heated by wood, and Cranberry Township, which has an estimated 32 homes heated by wood out of more than 10,000.

Even in municipalities where wood burning appears most popular — about 10 percent of homes in Clay Township are heated with wood — it remains a less popular practice compared to other heating methods. Four times as many Clay Township homes are heated with fuel oil than with wood.

Wood stoves also are less popular as home heating sources than electricity and bottled or tank gas.

In Forward Township, 11 percent of the township’s 984 homes are heated by wood, but fuel oil, electricity and utility gas remain far more popular.

In Marion Township more than 15 percent of the municipality’s 470 homes are heated by wood. That is the third most popular method behind fuel oil and utility gas.

In Saxonburg, Slippery Rock and Zelienople, wood-heated homes are virtually non-existent.