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KBentley57 · 09-10-2012, 03:08 AM

I know many people with pellet stoves. They all bought them about 6-10 years ago when corn (field corn) was cheap. Instead of using the pellets, they would buy a 50 lb sack of corn at a time to feed in. It actually had a higher energy density per dollar at the time. As corn has shot up over the last few years it's not any cheaper than gas, so they've either returned to pellets or used gas instead.

JJL · 09-10-2012, 02:34 PM

My FIL has one. He did kind of what KBentley is talking about. He got one a number of years ago and ran it on corn. When corn prices got high he swithed to pellets for a while. Last year it got to the point where it really wasn't any cheaper to burn pellets than to run his old furnace, so he finally just replaced his furnace with a new geothermal unit. He says it's quite a bit cheaper to run. As for having it in the basement, it should still heat the whole house pretty well. My FIL's is a ranch with a full basement. It has to be at least as big as yours. It easily heated his whole house even when the temp was below zero.

Veedo · 09-10-2012, 02:52 PM

you guys must have had natural gas available? its 1/3 of the price of propane up here right now, wish i could get it. i did some futzing around on this home heating calculator to come up with some numbers, its pretty neat. wood is by far the cheapest even if my stove efficiency is 50%

http://nepacrossroads.com/fuel-comparison-calculator.php

JJL · 09-10-2012, 03:24 PM

Yeah he has natural gas where he's at. So do I.

**+HopSpunge+** · 09-30-2012, 12:16 AM

Did you wind up gettin one veeto? Just woundering if you did and what kind. I just fired mine up for the first time this year. I love mine. If it had boobs I would marry it.

furloaded · 10-01-2012, 09:18 PM

I have an englander stove that I put in my basement. The exhaust and air intake are right at the outside edge of max distance but I haven't had a problem. I did upsize the intake air from the factory 2 inch to 4 inch intake so my stove wouldn't starve for O2. I bolted a regular heating duct register to the heat exhaust vent and ducted it through a 6 inch pipe into a floor register under our sink in the kitchen. I put a ceiling fan in the kitchen to distribute the air around the house.

I have a 1600 sq ft home with 4 in insulated outside walls. I put new vinyl thermal windows in 2006 and blew in an extra foot of cellulose insulation into the rafters. We leave the furnace set at 64 during the day and 54 at night. In the morning I vacuum out the ashes, refill the hopper and light it. After 10 minutes the blower starts to send the warm air through the register under the sink. At night we turn it off, then propane furnace keeps the house heated. We don't need that much heat when we sleep. The furnace only kicks in during the day when the temperatures dip into the single digits.

I live in central Michigan and using that method we use up 1 ton of pellets per winter at about $200 per ton. I don't remember when we got propane last but it usually is only about a 100 gal top off, and that's per year. We do cook with it as well.

The stove works great but hasn't been trouble free. The auger cokes up and stops turning. Every once in a while the feed gets messed up and starves the burner of pellets. Nothing major. If I'm not at home SWMBO just leaves it alone and the furnace takes over.

I've been very happy with it. It has lowered our heating costs a lot and is easy to use. If you pre-buy the pellets and have a place to store them you can get a ton for $168 plus delivery. I bought 3 years worth.

BTW I'm designing a Beer boiler Barrel that will be run with pellets. Hope it works.

fishsniffer · 10-03-2012, 05:19 PM

I used to heat with wood and now I heat with a pellet stove.

The romanticism of wood was nice and it was "free" but you know what they say, wood heats you twice.

With SWMBO and my schedule it made more sense to heat with a pellet stove. We both worked at the time and we would start a wood fire when we got home. Our house is 1300 sq/ft and we have electric baseboard heaters which we refuse to use due to the cost. By the time the house was warm, it was bed time.

The pellet stove is awesome. Just kick it on and 15 min later it is heating the house. We got a LOPI Yankee Bay insert stove and love it. We burn about a bag of pellets a day during the winter and usually buy two tons of pellets per year at $200/ton. We always have about 1/4 ton left over at the end of the year.

The type of pellets you use will depend on how much maintenance you have to do on your stove. The first year we had the stove I was burning a brand that I can't remember the name. But I would have to clean the stove weekly due to the amount of ash build up. I now burn a locally manufactured pellet called "clean burn" and I clean the stove about once every half a ton. I do a thorough dis assembly, inspection, and cleaning of the stove every ton of pellets burned.

So far the stove has been trouble free. The only replacement parts I have had to buy for it were a gasket it that was required when I took all the blowers apart for the per ton cleaning I do. That kit cost me less than $10.

fishsniffer · 10-03-2012, 05:26 PM

Forgot to add. I got my stove on Craigslist for half of the cost of what it would have been brand new. When I bought it I took it to a fireplace shop to have them give it a once over, and then I installed it myself.

The Major reasons I went with a LOPI stove were reliability after reading reviews and they are a local company.

**DerekJ** · 10-03-2012, 05:52 PM

I heat with wood instead of pellets. However, hearth.com is to the home heating world what homebrewtalk.com is to the home brewing world.

brewingmeister · 10-03-2012, 07:34 PM

Blaawaww... I get shivers every time this thread pops up.

I lived in a house that had a pellet stove a few years ago. It was designed for corn but would burn anything that would fit through the auger. That thing was just awful. Loud, dirty and it would only heat the kitchen/living room, and not that well unless it was cranked way up. Bedrooms were on the ends of the house and were lagering temp or less.

I burned a mix (70-30) of corn and wood pellet with the best results. Too much corn and the clink would build up really quick, too much pellet and the ash was out of control. That thing ate through fuel like a Tasmanian Devil. I tried to embrace it but everything I tried just made me realize this was not the answer. And try I did as propane was the only other heating option.

I actually called it loud & dirty. Dust would come out of the hopper even with the door closed. God forbid if you had to open the firebox to bust some clink or move some ash. Soot and gunk filled the room. It was also running an exhaust/intake fan, auger and the blower. Quiet it was not.