Pellet stove advice needed.

[Highbeam]

Charles, it gets better. A new propane furnace is required to be 80% efficient as yours seems to be. However, there is a huge duct loss that can be as high as 30% where heat is lost through leaky or poorly insulated ductwork. The heated air coming out of most gas furnaces is 200-300 degrees but when it gets to the vent outlet in your living space it has lost a considerable amount of heat to either the attic or the crawlspace.

The space heater has no duct losses so each produced btu from the pellets actually gets you more.

Enviro makes a really cool stove called the Omega which holds lots of pellets, is very flexible in fuel types (always goood not to be a picky eater) and just looks nice.

I am keeping an eye out for a pellet stove in addition to my woodstove for the sake of automatic heat should I become injured, sick, lazy,or just run out of cordwood. Thermostatic is good.

 

[RonMar]

Another big plus I didn't mention, is that there is almost no mess now and only a fraction of the manual labor, even considering I pickup my own pellets a ton at a time and manually offload the fifty 40# bags into my storage area. I so far have used about 2 tons a year.

 

[dubba]

Anyone have a Breckwell stove ?

I had a breckwell P2700FS (I think) used it for 3 years. The igniter burned out in one year, the pellet feed motor in 2 years, & one of the glass windows cracked from running it too hot.

The pellet feed motor was easily fixed by a trip to the RC hobby shop to get a metal bushing instead of a plastic one. the igniter costs $90.00 (never fixed) & the glass was $55.00 (never fixed either).

The things I disliked about the stove-

according to the manual it could not be run on #5 for extended periods of time. They were right. The stove was the happiest running on #3. This was about 1/2 output. I needed it all.

Pellet selection was crucial. Different pellets would require cleaning the burnpot every day. At the most I could go 3 days without shutting down stove & cleaning.

The air control on the side of the stove perplexed my wife. She could never figure it out. It is crucial to set this correctly to avoid wasting pellets.

The glass door with three pieces was fragile at best, especially after 3 years.

I replaced the stove with a harmann P68. It has been running on high burn eating pellets like an unsatiable chicken for the last 2 weeks. The house is warm, the wife is happy, & I've only cleaned it once since we got it 2 months ago. total use this year so far 1.5 tons. Bol Dubba

 

[Steve_Miller]

How do you heat the whole house with a pellet stove? Is there duct work to distribute the heat around? If not does it become overly hot in one area and cooler in others? Curious as to the savings versus uneven heats.

Steve

 

[RonMar]

How do you heat the whole house with a pellet stove? Is there duct work to distribute the heat around? If not does it become overly hot in one area and cooler in others? Curious as to the savings versus uneven heats.

Steve

How do you heat the whole house with a regular woodstove? A pellet stove delivers it's heat into the room in which it is installed, just like a woodstove.

In my case, I added a roof duct into the attic and a blower and insulated ductwork to the other end of the house. I did this back when I had the woodstove and still use it with the pellet to move warm air from the living room to the other end of the house for even heating. The bedrooms and bath have always had individual electric baseboard or forced air heaters.

 

[charlz]

How do you heat the whole house with a pellet stove? Is there duct work to distribute the heat around? If not does it become overly hot in one area and cooler in others? Curious as to the savings versus uneven heats.

Steve

My pellet stove is in the living room which is open to both floors. Getting heat upstairs isn't really an issue. Getting heat to the back rooms on the first floor is a bit more of a challenge... I use a stand up fan to move air back into those areas. Every room has ceiling fans which helps eliminate cold spots. I run the ceiling fan in the living room in the 'summer' direction which pushes some of the hot air straight back down. This is comfortable if the stove is running 24x7 which it is in the coldest parts of winter. When it is really cold I run the propane on top of the pellet stove. When it is that cold is when you really start to notice cold spots in the first floor rooms, near windows etc.

The only place I really hear it from the wife is the cold tile bathroom floor. I just found out you can get sub-floor electric heat mats, you put them under the floor and then the insulation goes below them. I may do that if it seems economical.

Charles

 

[Red55]

Charles- I've installed a few of those electric matts under the tile floors in friends houses and they abolutely love them nothing like a warm floor after a shower. Both the big box stores carry them and the most expensive part is the thermstat, A separate circuit is usually required or highly recommended as well as a secondary floor sensor in case the first sensor craps out. On my brother's addition we ran hydronic radiant heat and that is super comfortable as well.

On my cheap englander stove I find the highest efficiency and lowest ash build-up on the lower settings (1-3). I used copper tubing (1 1/2) for the outside air was not impressed with their flex tubing. Had Lowes deliver 4 tons for $60 no unloading and less gas money than if I went to pick it up myself (at 1 ton a trip). I installed it in the dining room really glad I did the background noise would drive me crazy. Did I mention my gas bill? Last month it was $35. I use about 4 tons for the season -Ed

 

[Marster]

I've been considering buying a pellet stove to off set if not eliminate the need for oil. My home is 1,456 sqft with extra insulation. I really like the looks of a Thelin Paulor (sp?) stove. Has anyone had any experience or knownledge of these stoves?

Harmon is the poplure stove here (N.E. Pa.) has above ratings. Breckwell appears to have blower problems but is still highly recommended.

Does anyone know any trustworthy installers in the York/Harrisburg area? Or should installaion be performed from the place of purchase? Does it effect the warrently?

Is a permit required for installation?

Any help would be appreciated

 

[Highbeam]

I really like the unique looks of the thelin stoves. They have some uniques design elements too that put it in the category of bizarre and the stoves are quite pricey. They just look so dang nice.

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Here you'll find a forum with lots of great people and reviews of pellet stoves including the Thelins in their pellet "room". Lots of installed photos too.

A permit is required for installation in most every jurisdiction. Your insurance company will need to know. It is not unlike installing a new wood stove.

The little tiny Thelin almost looks like a stove you'd see on a boat. Nautical brasswork and scale.

 

[RonMar]

I've been considering buying a pellet stove to off set if not eliminate the need for oil. My home is 1,456 sqft with extra insulation. I really like the looks of a Thelin Paulor (sp?) stove. Has anyone had any experience or knownledge of these stoves?

Harmon is the poplure stove here (N.E. Pa.) has above ratings. Breckwell appears to have blower problems but is still highly recommended.

Does anyone know any trustworthy installers in the York/Harrisburg area? Or should installaion be performed from the place of purchase? Does it effect the warrently?

Is a permit required for installation?

Any help would be appreciated

The Thelin's look interesting. The flyer for the Gnome pelet model show a power consumption of just 27 Watts. That is incredibly low, and leads me to believe that they do not use convection or combustion blowers. 27 Watts sounds like just enough to run the auger motor. 27 Watts is also not enough to power an auto ignition circuit, so it may be a manual light stove. None of the documentation I have read can confirm this or not though. My stove consumes about 300-400 Watts running plus another 700W for the heating element when lighting off. Without blowers, The Thelin probably need a certain ammount of vertical flue to establish a proper draft(good to have anyway). The upright design lends itself to free flowing convectio heat exchanger tubes, but the heatex efficiency, 69%, looked a little low from some I have researched, which would tend to support the non-forced air heatexchanger. the upright design also makes adding a pipe to draw in outside air for combustion thru the floor not so tidy. It may draw in it's combustion air thru the outer lining of the flue pipe though for astetics. If it draws its combustion air from the room, I would not reccomend it... A lot of this is guesswork, they were out of my price range and I wasn't looking for that look so didn't run down the particulars.