pellet/wood stove fireplace insert?

[Highbeam]

Sure, buying a used woodstove with no moving parts is going to be cheap. I have also found used pellet stoves for a few hundered too but the technology has really improved on both in the last several years. Yes, even the woodstove technology has improved to meet emmision standards to provide a more efficient and cleaner burn with things like airwashed glass to prevent tar from setting up on the glass.

Comparing new to new and good to good, a woodstove is going to be somewhat cheaper than a pellet stove. After all the jive a woodstove is still a metal box and the pellet stove is relatively complex.

 

[Sigarms]

Ultimately what I think I'm going to need is somthing with a blower on it to try to get some of that hot air into the kitchen (two doorways into the living room about 28' away from the fireplace).

Somthing that still need to look at is the supply and retun ductwork and the CFM's per room and what type zoning I may want to do to "work with" the stove.

Case in point, HVAC t-stat is in the living room. Have one supply in office, 4 in the kicthen and five in the living room.

Throw a stove in the living room, very cold day outside, t-stat reaches temp due to the extra heat supplied by stove and you may have some heating issues in the office and kitchen.

I don't know this for a fact, but somthing I may have to be aware of. Since I never used a stove for heat, not sure how it will affect non directional airflow space.

thks again

 

[5030]

</font><font color="blue" class="small">( Ultimately what I think I'm going to need is somthing with a blower on it to try to get some of that hot air into the kitchen (two doorways into the living room about 28' away from the fireplace).

Somthing that still need to look at is the supply and retun ductwork and the CFM's per room and what type zoning I may want to do to "work with" the stove.

Case in point, HVAC t-stat is in the living room. Have one supply in office, 4 in the kicthen and five in the living room.

Throw a stove in the living room, very cold day outside, t-stat reaches temp due to the extra heat supplied by stove and you may have some heating issues in the office and kitchen.)</font>

You want a woodstove or a pellet stove or a central biofuel burning furnace.????

You are making it way to complicated. You set the threshold of your present system to a backup level (I keep mine at 60 degrees) and adjust your biofeul stove to a comfortable temperature, say 70 degrees.

Ductwork plays no part whatsoever in a freestanding unit or insert. Make it that complex and it will be spring before you get going, not that you can get a stove now. I understand that about everyone is sold out around here. Pellet fuel is almost gone too. I have about 750 bushels of corn in the tanks yet , 4 pallets of pellets in the barnand 750 gallons of propane in my bottles.

You might just have to wait until next year and grin and bear it this winter or should I say "grin and pay it" /forums/images/graemlins/smirk.gif

 

[Sigarms]

Realize that ductwork does not play a part in the stove you pick.

But, am I wrong in assuming (I know about that word) that with the t-stat (for my HVAC sytem) only 15' away from where this pellet/wood stove is going, that it may not affect my temperature in the office or kitchen?

Per my example, it's 15 degrees outside. Have a pellet stove "going full tilt" for heating. Heat from the stove isn't making it into the kitchen of office (I don't know this for a fact as of yet, but it may be possible). T-stat for HVAC is set at 60 degrees (per what you mentioned). Kitchen still is not warm, so I have to turn on the LP furnace "way up" to get the kicthen "comfortable".

What I was thinking was zone the living room independent from the kitchen and office space.

Remember, I'm in N.C, winters although may be cold for short periods of time, I'm out running in shorts and a t-shirt by March.

And yes, somtimes when it comes to HVAC I can tend to make things complicated /forums/images/graemlins/blush.gif

 

[Dozernut]

You could just put in a pellet furnace. Pellet Furnace

 

[Sigarms]

I'm lucky that I have a mechanical room down in the basment that I might be able to look at that option, most everything down here is horizontal application either in a crawl space or attic, but...

Will be replacing that system with a 14 SEER heat pump in the near future (probably next year) and use a furnace for back up heat instead of strip heat (AKA duel fuel system).

This is yet another step I'm taking to decrease my use of propane.

Even if I didn't switch to a heat pump, would not be sure of using that brand with the A/C system (height requirement issues for one thing) which I will need to use in the summer (it does get really hot here, for long periods of time).

 

[5030]

Harman makes nice stoves, pellet, corn and coal and I like their pellet furnace, but I would be willing to bet that all their stoves are pricey. I see that they don't sell direct, but rather through dealers. That is a good thing and a bad thing. Good is that you'd presume the dealer is a qualified heating contractor and is versed in the installation of bio mass fueled appliances. Bad, due to the fact that he gets his markup or whatever the market will bear and right now with escalating energy prices, it's a sellers market so expect to pay a premium price. About a year ago, right before we had our home remodeled or I should probably say gutted and started over, I priced Harman's and a few other brands to replace my 10+ year old Englander pellet/corn unit that I bought from the defunct Quality Farm and Fleet but when I compared output and features, the only feature I didn't have was automatic iginition which I'm not really concerned about as I run the stove from a wall thermostat and I shut it down once every 2 weeks to vacuum out the ash, clean the heat exchangers and open the cleanout on the vent pipe to get the fly ash out.

A little note here. I use a shop vacuum to clean the stove out. I let the stove sit for at least a day and get COLD. (during this time I have my central furnace take over). I always use a DRYWALL bag in the shop vac as the fly ash and the ashes themselves are very fine, almost like talcum powder and a regular bag and filter will not work.

I paid $1200.00 over 12 years ago for my Englander (and they still sell the same model today but with auto ignition) and while I though that was quite a bit of money and of course back then pellet-pellet/corn stoves were an oddity, I haven't had any trouble with the Englander other than normal wear and tear on motors and the like. I've replaced 1 induced draft motor assembly and 1 auger drive motor for a cost of about $200.00. The induced draft assembly takes a lot of abuse as it runs in the combustion exhaust gas flow and the auger drive motor locked a bearing which I replaced and now have a spare or did until last night when my neighbor who also has an Englander camne over and got my spare as his locked. I'll be putting a new bearing in his.

All the bearings in the main feed assembly have grease fittings and the convection blowers can be lubricated too. What a concept in today's run it untill it burns up, no grease technology.

I like the Harman but I imagine I'll run the Englander for a while yet.

 

[5030]

Well sir, I assume that living in N. Carolina you have central air? I also assume that you have a "blower only" setting on your thermostat? I do. I have, on more than one ocassion, to equalize the temperatures in adjoining rooms (as I have the same problem at times), energized the blower only setting on my thermostat.

I find that in our old but redone and well insulated farmhouse that the living room runs about 10 degrees warmer than the laundry, 1/2 bath at the opposite end of the house unless we have a real strong wind blowing from the west to the east and then I have to go to "blower only" to maintain a comfortable temperature in the west end of the house. Our upstairs is heated by convection through a door tha stays open to the staiwell. We live in on the first floor, the upstairs is my wife's sewing room and our library. Our bedroom is off the main room but we keep the doors closed as I like to sleep cooler anyway.

We have probably paid for the pellet stove 20 times over. I know that it takes about 600 gallons per heating season of propane to keep my standby genset and my shop heated as well as the house when the stove is off. I own the property next door and my renters use over 1000 gallons per heating season and both houses are similar. They aren't heating a shop or running a standby genset. I love the pellet stove and so does my wife.

One thing I might note is that the new stoves claim they will run in a power outage. My stove draws so little amperage that I could run it from a 1200 watt inverter and a 12 volt marine battery.

 

[Sigarms]

You mentioned somthing I overlooked that should of been very obvious, just run the blower for the first level to circulate the warm air produced by the pellet stove.

Ok, I feel like an idiot for not even thinking of that /forums/images/graemlins/blush.gif

 

[5030]

Never feel like an idiot. That's what this forum is about. To garner knowledge from other peoples experiences and then make informed choices. /forums/images/graemlins/grin.gif