Help selecting a pellet stove.

[Egon]

</font><font color="blue" class="small">( Cost to produce vs. market cost is a problem for the producer and not the consumer, right?
)</font>

When the Farmers outlay exceeds his income and loans come due it may become everyones problem!

Egon

 

[To20Chris]

I was addressing the idea of corn replacing oil in general. On an idividual basis, whatever works. For instance, if we overproduce corn in a particular region, the price will be low, and probably some of it will end up going to waste. Waste material has already had the energy invested in it's production, so using it is essentially free. But you cannot scale that up to everyone.

I'm heating with wood, because I have it and it is "free", other than my labor, but we could not heat everyone's home that way.

 

[Highbeam]

If the farmer can't stay afloat he will stop growing, supply will go down, cost will go up, and farmers will grow it again. Being a farmer is not risk free and I believe this cycle has occured over and over through time. I only took one economics class so I may have something wrong.

If I burned corn and corn became really expensive then I would be on the market for another fuel. I will choose the cheapest one and see if the cost savings justify the switch. The livelihood of the producers is only important if I need the fuel cost to be stable for a long time.

This corn looks to qualify for the current cheapest fuel.

 

[BrentB]

Is there any odor when burning corn or pellets?

 

[5030]

Brent:

Premium Pellet fuel is made from hardwood sawdust like oak and hickory so it smells like an oak fire burning. Corn smells, well, like corn burning, kind of a sweet smell. When you mix the two like I do, it smells more like oak than the sweet smell. You don't get any smoke, or very little. Most Pellet/Corn/Biofuel stoves are around 85% efficient.

The only thing you get is a fine ash in the stovepipe and in the stove itself. Corn will make a few clinkers. I let my stove go out about every 2 weeks and then I vacuum it out with my shop vac with a drywall bag inside. I clean the stovepipe every 3 months with the vacuum and I take it apart every spring and run a scotchbrite pad through the pipes. The pipes interlock together so you can take them apart. You must use pellet vent pipe. It's double wall, galvanized steel on the outside with a stainless liner inside seperated by an air gap.

 

[MarkStewart]

Hi, Does anyone know what the difference is between a corn burning pellet stove and one that just burns wood pellets? I've burned cherry pits in mine mixed with wood
pellets and it seemed to work ok.

 

[5030]

The difference is in the burn pot and the vent pipe. Corn burners require a different vent pipe than corn/pellet burners (the one's specifically designed to burn both) have a different burn pot arrangement with an agitator to clear the pot of clinkers.

I tried cherry pits sometime ago. They seem to burn too fast though they do produce a lot of heat.

I was up to the TSC store yesterday. Pellets and stoves were flying off the shelf. I had to remind them that I had 3 pallets of pellets pre-paid.....not to sell themselves short or I would be very unhappy. /forums/images/graemlins/confused.gif

 

[heehaw]

so where do you get cherry pits?? i've never heard of that one??
heehaw

 

[Highbeam]

The maraschino cherry factory or some other cannery I would think. There's got to be a machine somewhere pushing pits out of fruit and the pile needs to be dried. I bet that makes a cool smell when burning though.

 

[MarkStewart]

They had 40lb bags at TSC, probablysold out by now though. /forums/images/graemlins/frown.gif Thanks for the info on the corn stoves.
Everywhere I've looked in the Northeast seems to be sold out, or when they do get a shipment of pellets they are sold out the same day...