TIMMY22

any grain store. just ask for "whole corn in 50#"

Patrick Campbell

Can someone school me a little on pellet stoves?

I have been looking up alternative heating methods recently and haven't really come up with one I like.

What to note is that we have a Trane XR80 that has heating vents on the CEILING, so getting that air DOWN is difficult, and probably reducing the efficiency significantly.

The overall idea is to:
A) Heat our 1st floor living area to higher temperature at the same cost (I think this is realistic)
B) Reduce carbon footprint and "ambiance" aspect a plus (like sitting in front of a nice cast iron stove with a fire vs sitting in front of a big ugly plastic looking burner you get the idea).

Have gone through super efficient kero and gas heaters (like Toyo and Rinnai and Monitor) and kero is way too expensive ($4-5/gallon), gas is OK but the burners are much more expensive, and they are ugly.

We are paying $1.45 per therm of natural gas here, so $1.45 per 100,000 BTU. I came up with approximately the same price per 100,000 BTU, assuming 12 cents per lb of pellets ($240 per ton???) and 8000 BTU per lb. Is this right?

What sort of stove would be good for a very small (850 sq ft. ) house and, is it true that you can vent these stoves horizontally???

If the price is still the same as gas but the stove adds atmosphere and heats more efficiently I would still be for it, depending on initial cost of stove and installation.

I just spoke with someone locally who said:

Harman Pro 38 Plus - $1959 black door plus $770 for installation (sounds too much to me) + pipe
$299 per ton of pellets (not sure what kind that is or if it matters...)

They were trying to talk about the larger stoves, but my house is 850 sq ft. so I am not sure why we need a stove to heat 2000 when this one is "rated" for 1200 ft. ft.

12valve@heart

or you can do it this way

https://www.dieseltruckresource.com/...highlight=corn

chipmonk

i've always bought my wood stoves with the idea that bigger is better. the only time that i didn't follow this philosophy, i bought a stove that was rated for the size i needed to heat, only to realize that i needed to keep the stove ripping to get enough heat out of it. with a big wood stove, you can always choke down the flame or load less wood to adjust your heat lower, while you have a stove big enough to crank out big btu's on cold days and to have a long burn overnight. i think this philosophy would be the same for a pellet stove- go a little bigger than you think you'll need. btw can you tell i'm trying to convince you to go with a wood stove?

Patrick Campbell

This makes sense. I wouldn't get a stove "rated" for 850 sq. ft because it'd have to be on full blast all the time. I'm looking at an Enviro Evolution that is rated to about 1800 sq ft. I think that'd be ok fora 850 sq. ft house.

The problem I was thinking about a wood stove is that based on the location of the stove we'd need to vent OUT not UP which I am not sure why but the pellet stoves seem to be able to do that... But I will look into that also. Also noting now that the cost of a wood burning stove is about HALF(!) that of a pellet burner.

With a wood burning stove can you just toss any old wood in there assuming it is dry???

skynyrd

my parents have been using a whitfield pellet stove for about the last 15-20 years same stove and the thing still heats the entire house. i have thought about mixing corn with the pellets but i know that with the way the weather has been here in maryland this year it would run out of the house on level one.

just to let you guys know the older pellet stoves tend to heat better than the newer ones

duddin10

My parents have one and they use "Pennington" brand pellets. A local Wal-mart started selling them so they buy 40# bags for $3.87 each. My dad loves it and wants to put one in the porch they just had finished into a den.

chipmonk

absolutely. you can throw any dry wood in it from perfectly split hardwood to bundles of slash from your property, that people without a wood stove have to bag up and haul away. if a storm knocks down a tree at your place, you just got yourself some free heat.

DuaneWKKC

While a wood burning stove is cheaper, the exhaust system is MUCH more expensive and the most likely thing to require maintanence. Also, many insurance companies frown heavily (read expensive or simply you must remove) on wood stoves. This does not seam to be much of an issue with the pellet type stoves. If you are looking at pellet type stoves, my suggestion would be to NOT limit yourself to one fuel type. Check out bio-mass type stoves. This not only allows you to pick the cheapest fuel source, but also alows you to use whats available should you run out of fuel.

I am not in your area so this is NOT a sales pitch as I could not sell you a stove, but my wife and I are dealers for American Energy Systems (AES) stoves. We heat our 2.1K sq ft home with the countryside 3500 model. If it is not windy I can keep the house above 70 even when it is near zero without running the propain. I burn corn, do not grow it, but buy from neighbor farmers or from the local grainery (sp?). While the cost to heat has doubled with corn in the last two years, so has the price of propain. At the current prices of propain, we would be spending around $2,600 to heat for the winter, we have not spent over $850 on heat since we installed the stove, and that was last year at $3.96 per bushel. I only paid $3.21 for corn this year, so my expenses have gone down. If on propain, it takes about 5 gallons to get the same heat you can get from 1 bushel of corn. If heating with Oil, the exchange is about 3 gals to the bushel. Corn has lots room in the price before it becomes unfavorable to burn.

The reason that you can 'direct vent' a pellet type stove is that they use a convection air blower, not natural draft. "MOST" pellet stoves can handle some mix of corn, but the newer stoves have enough sensors that if you get the mix to high, the stove will shut down on high heat, so you have to be carefull how much corn you blend in.

There are several good brands of stoves, I prefere the AES Countryside because its a proven stove ( 20+ years). Harmen makes a good stove, but they require a setup change to switch between some fuels. Bixby is also a nice stove, but are very expensive. Do some searching and then you need to figure out which features are important to you. Stove are like cars, the more features the more expensive.

You can PM me if you have any questions, but I am on nights this week so will be late when I read them.

Good luck with your decision.

DuaneW.

twhiteside

We have a Countryside Stove that we use to heat our house in addition to our "Heat Pump". We have had it for 6-7 years and it has done a great job.

In Maryland, the price of corn is actually a LOT higher than last year. For storage reasons, we buy it in 50lb bags from farmers in the area. Last year we were paying $3.50 per 50lb bag. This year is a different story.... The one place we have alway gone to is now charging $5.75 per bag. After calling around, I have found it a place we can get it that is $4.50 per bag.

When burning corn - (or any grain for that matter) keep in mind that you need a lower moisture content (perferably 12% or below) and clean of cobs, dust that will clog the auger.

Tom

chipmonk

my insurance company has never asked me (or anyone else i know) whether i have a wood stove or not. as for maintenance, the only care a wood stove takes is cleaning the stove pipe if and when it accumulates enough creosote. many people go through years of burning good dry wood without their stove pipe requiring cleaning. when that time comes, you can clean it yourself for $0 or pay about $75-$100 for a professional cleaning. most people i know who run a pellet stove have had to fix or replace something on it, and sometimes find out that a part is difficult to get because their stove has been replaced with a newer model. pellet stoves are much more expensive to purchase and the pellets are now quite expensive as well. don't even get me started about having to buy pellets by the ton in the summer, and finding a place to store them. unless you simply don't like having to start and maintain a real fire, and take a little time to learn how to run your stove right, there is no good reason to choose a pellet stove over wood (unless you pay almost nothing for pellets or corn). jmo.

DuaneWKKC

Chipmonk,

Please, don't misunderstand me. I have nothing against wood stoves, to me there is nothing like the smell of a good wood fire. Sounds weird, but I will stop and enjoy the smell of a good fire. I am sure we are not the only people in the situation we are in. Being transplants to a new area, it was very difficult find wood to cut, and the going rate for wood in our area is around $100 truck load ( NOT A CORD, more of a face cord ). Having been raised on a wood stove, I was looking for an alternative. What I found to be a good alternative was a corn stove that was rated to burn multiple types of fuel, including pellets. An unexpected plus was the reduction in the amount of effort it takes to fire a corn stove in comparison to a wood stove, and also the lack of dirt in the house. Would I recommend a straight pellet stove, nope, but I would not recommend a straight corn stove either. To me you need the option to get the cheapest fuel, and in our area, it is not wood if you have to buy it. If someone has wood available and is able to cut it, I would say stay wood or go wood.

As far as insurance goes, several of the companies in our area are doing spot 'risk' assessments on their policy holders. This sold a stove for me last year. Person was informed that if he completely abides by the Ins company's rules ( annual 'professional' cleaning AND inspection with report sent to ins. company ) his rates would only nearly double, otherwise remove the wood stove or be drooped. I don't believe it was a claim that initiated these actions, but I am second party and only know what person told me. This did not sound unreasonable to me because when grandpa built his house with a wood stove he had to agree to these same terms, I am not sure about the rates though.

As for parts on a stove, you get what you pay for. It seems that the cheaper the stove, the more expensive the parts and the harder to get. I am on my 3rd year heating with the corn stove and I have not spent $200 in parts, so I'm ahead if I have an insurance company that requires me to get a professional cleaning on a wood stove. Not only that, but my heating bill has dropped by approx 2/3 and my expensive corn stove has already paid for itself, so breakdowns now cost profit from the stove, but I'm still dollars ahead. In fact, I use your experiences as a selling point for my stoves, price my parts vs competitors and compare lead time, I win EVERY TIME.

Really what it all boils down to is what works best for you. If I manage to get the 4 season room added onto the back of the house, I will have a small wood stove in it simply because I like them ( that is if the ins company will let me ). Technology in wood stoves in growing in leaps and bounds also, but the cleaner burning stoves cost some jack also. Again, you get what you pay for. Also, a wood stove will heat you many times more than a corn stove... you get heated when you cut the wood, when you move the wood, when you split the wood, and when you stack the wood, I guess when you look at it like that, maybe you do get allot more heat from a wood stove .

It all boils down to I AINT BUYING GAS to heat and its cheaper.

DuaneW.

chipmonk

that is the truth!

Fort Ram

I agree. I moved to Colorado from Texas, so this whole stove issue was new to me. The house we bought had a nice wood stove in the living room. The first winter we bought a cord of hard wood. Since me and my wife worked, we would come home to a very cold house. Then every day it was a chore to carry wood in from the yard (hoped you had enough dry pieces in the garage since outside was under a tarp and snow), build the fire and wait to warm the house up. By the time the house was nice and warm, we were going to bed. Then you get up in the morning to a house that was cooling off. You had to run outside and get more wood to keep the house warm while getting ready for work.

That was a lot of work for someone that was used to central air and heat and all you have to do is turn up the thermastat. We got tire of coming home to a cold house everyday, so then we started using the electric baseboard heaters to supplement. The first full month of doing that we got a $400 electric bill!!!! Wow.

Thats when we looked into a pellet stove. We bought a Harmon XXV. It is awesome. Now you carry a bag in every couple of days, set the thermastat to 72 and let it do it's thing. It adjust the fan, the flame and even turns itself on and off when needed. It heats our whole 3k house. Pellets have gone up over the last couple of years, but so has everything else. I bought 2tons for less than $450 and my electric bills in the winter are only $125. Much better than the price of a cord and the $400 month electric bills.

chipmonk

one of the tricks of heating with wood is to try to get a fire going before you leave your house, load the stove up, and throttle it down so you will still have hot embers when you get home. then, when you get home, you just load it up again and open up both air controls (if your stove has 2) and get it roasting again. it is more work heating with wood, but it gets to be part of your normal routine once the cold weather arrives and is the only heat source that can be had for free (unless you are a corn farmer).