Off Topic -Pellet Stoves

[Mark Page]

Had a Vermont Castings wood burning insert installed when our house was built. It's never worked properly and we are going to go with a pellet stove.
Has anyone had experience with them good or bad?

 

[BMod]

Pick a good name brand, stay away from big box stoves if possible. They all have querks, and have electrical parts in the them be it blowers, and sensors and such, that can go bad. That said, I have a 11 year old quadrafire castile stove burning shelled corn. I only had to failures, and both were last season. I had the convection fan died, and the brain box had a triac go bad. blow was $125, and triacs (I replaced them all) were about $10. A good site on the net to ask questions on is Hearth.com | Wood Stoves, Fireplace, Pellet Stoves, Gas Stoves and More - Forums! Lots of folks with different stoves, with good advice........

 

[Whatswrong]

A few years back I spent many hours researching pelley/grain stove Quadrafire was the one I concluded to be the best although I never bought one they are a little more pricy but appear very well made.I ended up buying an EPA energy efficient wood stove for many dollars less and when I keep it burning whenever I am at home I can cut my fuel consumption by 2/3.

 

[Johndeere3720]

We got 2 pellet stoves in my Dad's house and 1 doesn't work. The other heats the whole house. However the one we are using to heat the house got bad pellets in the auger and locked it up. Eventually the fire made its way into the hopper and set 40 lbs of pellets on fire in the house. We fortunately got the fire out before any serious damage was done. The next day I spent several hours behind the stove, pulled off the motor, pulled the auger out, cleaned the auger and the shaft, and put it all back together. We learned our lesson on why you don't buy cheap pellets and it is running great again. :thumbsup: Buy a name brand, you will have a better experience vs. big box stoves. :thumbsup:

 

[Egon]

When using pellets such as corn [animal food] would it not be more efficent to process them through an animal and then burn the efflent?

 

[Craig Clayton]

I have been sitting on the fence for several years about purchasing a pellet stove. I have read and looked at every model . I even went and bothered a local dealer. The problem I have is the cost of the pellets / BTU 's/ dollars. I heat with electric and I am in an energy efficient house. When I do the comparsion charts the pay back is not as fast as I would like. Plus a pellet stove is still a combustable device in the house.
I would really like to install an outdoor EPA II outdoor wood furnace and keep the flame outside.
The one thing I found is if you install a mulitfuel pellet stove you can burn the cheaper grades of wood pellets. In talking to sellers of pellets they do have a problem with quality control from the manufactures of pellets.

Craig Clayton

 

[Whatswrong]

When using pellets such as corn [animal food] would it not be more efficent to process them through an animal and then burn the efflent?

100 years ago they burned manure but I'm not sure of how many BTU's that has ,maybe you could just eat enough pork and beef to keep warm.

 

[whistlepig]

We have one of the older Whitfield pellet stoves that came with our house. We have not had any problems with it. We use it for back up emergency heat and it is ideal for that. It doesn't draw much electricity and the portable generator runs it easily. The bags of wood pellets can be stored for years. Ours doesn't have the automatic ignitor controlled by a thermostat. It's either on or off. The soot has to be cleaned out of the firebox every 24 hours of burn time which takes about 15 minutes to do. There are very clean burning with little soot if you use premium pellets. We really like ours.

 

[Egon]

I was think back to the Open Prairies with no trees.

Burning chips!

 

[Mark Page]

I did a work sheet on various fuels. Electricity was the worst followed by oil. Cordwood @ $200 per was the best and only saved $132 per season over pellets.