Heating Budget

[jyoutz]

One never knows how their culture will change. On the East Coast, home heating oil USTs became a nightmare: A National Nightmare in the 90's. Though in the 40's to 50's this was what everyone did. They dug a hole, but in a tank, and ran an oil furnace. Then, oil got expensive, and people switched over to Natural Gas - the new clean energy. And all those old tanks had to be decommissioned. Which was also expensive. So after that conversion, we now have a new conversion and natural gas is now the evil heating source, rather expensive, and we should all switch to electric. There is a pattern here.

The pattern is that things change over several decades. Nothing stays the same.

 

[deserteagle71]

I was in that situation for years. My solution: wood pellet stove for heating, propane for water heater and kitchen stove.

That's exactly how I do it these days. Was burning wood for heat but but too difficult to get firewood now.

 

[jyoutz]

I remember seeing one in a rural restaurant years back; it was throwing out great heat.

Back when corn stoves had been out for a bit, I was having a chat with a stove dealer. His point (re. staying away from corn, business-wise) was that the capital required (at least at that time) to pelletize wood was fairly high - so nobody just dabbled in doing wood pellets.

Corn - he said he could see somebody cobbling together some sort of corn-dryer on a farm, and selling low cost corn fuel.... get the moisture wrong, and the stove-dealer gets stuck explaining to a customer why they have corn-syrup lined chimneys.

I don't know enough about combusting corn to know exactly how critical the moisture is, but I understood his reasoning.....

Rgds, D.

I believe that a corn stove is the same thing as a wood pellet stove. You can burn either fuel in a pellet stove.

 

[Jstpssng]

I believe that a corn burning stove is built differently to accommodate the sugar in the fuel. You can burn pellets in a corn stove, but shouldn't burn corn in a stove not designed for it.

 

[Rustyiron]

I only burn my corn a little bit, just for flavor. Other than that I like my corn from a bottle.

 

[ponytug]

I believe that a corn burning stove is built differently to accommodate the sugar in the fuel. You can burn pellets in a corn stove, but shouldn't burn corn in a stove not designed for it.

You hot the nail on the head. Corn stoves have a lot more stainless in them, especially the flue, to handle the water and acids from corn. So they can burn either corn or pellets. If you put corn into a stove/flue that wasn't built for corn, it won't last long.

All the best,

Peter

 

[3930dave]

Texas also had natural gas shortages due to shallow uninsulated pipelines freezing where they entered the power plants.

As much as I usually pay attention to engineering details, I have to hang out in a thread like this to be reminded of certain things that are done by default in a Nordic environment.....

Rgds, D.

 

[3930dave]

I'd have settled for being wrong.....

https://globalnews.ca/news/8259465/furnace-oil-propane-natural-gas-prices-canada/

Rgds, D.

 

[DaveinValdez]

I have a pellet stove coming and am replacing the wood stove. 120-pound hopper and 3 day burn time is a plus. Also at 70, the firewood is getting heavier. I am making a shelf/pallet "quick attack" for the tractor to haul bags of pellets to the porch. That way I can set 20 bags at a time on the porch. I made two 60-pound capacity storage containers on casters to move the pellets into the house. Our heating oil just dropped from $3.48 to $3.25 which is great. Diesel is still up at $3.90. Our hydroelectric plant had to stop in mid-October, and we now generate on diesel. My electric bill doubled from last year.

 

[3930dave]

Ouch on the electric bill...... is your hydro plant coming back online any time soon ? We you say "we now generate on diesel", is that just you, or the whole region ?

A buddy at work switched over to pellets in recent years (from firewood), really prefers it, and is about 20 years younger than you Dave.

Rgds, D.