Improving a Pellet Stove

[jaydee325]

I'm going to say right up front, I don't have experience with any pellet stove.

I only want to add a word of caution. A co-worker of mine started experimenting adding corn to his pellet burner to gain cost efficient heat. He used some internet guidance to give some things a try. Ended up almost burning his house down and ruining a several thousand dollar heater.

Just be careful, while I've never met any one of you, I'd really hate to see a similar circumstance or worse posted here.

 

[Oaktree]

I only want to add a word of caution. A co-worker of mine started experimenting adding corn to his pellet burner to gain cost efficient heat. He used some internet guidance to give some things a try. Ended up almost burning his house down and ruining a several thousand dollar heater.

Curiously, what happened?

 

[ruffdog]

A neighbor of mine heats with corn. He has a pellet type burner in the kitchen and a large corn burning boiler system in the basement. He gets a gravity wagon full of corn for payment of helping the farmer during harvest time and he stores it in the barn. The basement hopper can be filled from the back yard through a pcv tube. I think a person should use whatever fuel is locally available and cheap.

 

[ruffdog]

Also....some of the older pellet/corn stoves have an issue with fumes once the door gasket gets old. Check online for warnings and recalls. Have a co2 detector too.

 

[jaydee325]

My recollection is that he did not use actual heating grade corn. It had excessive moisture. It clumped in the feed assembly and somehow the fire backed up into there and burned through the area not designed to have fire in it. That caught the building on fire. Fortunately, he was able to control the fire until the fire department arrived. Building was saved, although with some smoke damage. Fire department destroyed the heater in the progress though.

Curiously, what happened?

 

[CalG]

I could cut and split enough firewood for my house in 2 days. How long would it take to produce a 5-7 cord equivalent of corn? Plus I can store firewood indefinitely.

I don't know, a year's worth of stove heat? 2, maybe three minutes..
YouTube

At 200 bushels the acre, and 3 mph, corn is picked up quickly.

My neighbor burned corn for a couple years in his pellet stove. The smell made me hungry for pop corn ;-)

 

[5030]

So long as field shelled corn is magnetically cleaned (so as not to have any metal in it and at 15% RM or below, it's fine. Pellets here are $214.00 per ton and I'm getting free field corn this year (below 15%) so it will be a nice warm year in this house. Both propane tanks are full (80) percent and I have a 500 buck credit as well. Life is good in SE Michigan.

 

[Diggin It]

I don't know, a year's worth of stove heat? 2, maybe three minutes..

At 200 bushels the acre, and 3 mph, corn is picked up quickly.

You're talking about gathering and storing. Corn takes months to get to that point. The woods are already full of dead or dying trees to gather. So planting and growing corn before you can gather it vs. gathering and splitting wood that's already there. Plus, the machines necessary to plant and gather corn cost a wee bit more than a chainsaw and splitter.

 

[5030]

Why corn is 4 bucks+ a bushel at the co-op. You have inputs (fertilizer), planting, harvest, transportation the the co-op and dry down cost corn has to be 15% or less RM to burn. You cannot just 'plant' some and roast it later on. A combine alone is Anywhere from 100 grand (used) to over 250 grand new. That is a heck of a lot of wood.

If I had a woodlot, I'd use wood myself. I don't. With propane at what it is, compared to corn, it's a no go anyway. Wood pellets on the other hand at 200-225 a ton are viable against propane but still only for supplemental heat in this house. I like having a backup heat source.

Other issue with corn is storage. I have 2 1000 bushel grain tanks but most people don't. I feed corn to my cattle anyway, corn, supplements and DDG.

 

[CalG]

You're talking about gathering and storing. Corn takes months to get to that point. The woods are already full of dead or dying trees to gather. So planting and growing corn before you can gather it vs. gathering and splitting wood that's already there. Plus, the machines necessary to plant and gather corn cost a wee bit more than a chainsaw and splitter.

You just asked how long, and prefaced the question with "cut and split". How long did it take to grow those trees ? How long did it take for them to die? And if you feel gathering "dead wood" is easy, you may be mistaken.

Does the forester's term "Widowmaker" mean anything to you?

Plus the video was meant to be humor. corn is big business, home heating fire wood is not. 'Cottage industry.

The load of logs I'm cutting on cost $800. Black birch (pretty fair heat content) It will be gone the end of next winter. Then I'll get another load. I can't bring it in for that much $.