Pellet stoves...whats your experience?

[Tim Morton]

OK..the last two nights with temps in the low 30's have opend the discussion again in the house to buying a pellet stove. HD has one called an englander for 1500 minus a 10% coupon I have. I can buy that tonight and have a month or two to get it installed. OR..I can try and call someone in to sell me a better unit and the cost will likely be almost triple that before i am done. Does anyone have the HD model and is it worth looking at. My install prefered location will cause me to have to run pipe up into a acrawl space and over abotu 15 feet to get to an exterior wall.

[bob gugerty]

Hello Tim,
I have two pellet stoves one is a Harman Invincible rs about eight years old very good work horse very dependible.
The other is a Jamestown babybear smaller but very good. it is five years old.

The Jamestown has an auto fire feature that it can shut down all the way to cold steel and self start to the desaried temp all done by a wall thermostat
This feature saves pellets

I do not know about the HD model

the piping for pellet stoves is double walled. very easy to clean.

a good person to talk to about stoves is Rick at Vermont Pellet Stoves He'll give you your answers and no pressure sales

hope this helps
bob

[Tim Morton]

Thanks Bob...I have a feeling the HD stove is not nearly as nice as the Harmon or others. I do have a harmon dealer up in londonderry VT I am going to call today. I will also call rick.
thanks!!

[Steve Ash]

Tim, 2 of my friends have pellet stoves and love them. They do a great job of heating their homes. I am about to purchase a corn stove which has been estimated to cut my heating costs by 1500.00 per year. The added bonus to that is I grow corn and soybeans so I can use my own product to heat my home.

[Tim Morton]

OK ..so how perfect is this? She talks to her maintenance man at work who told her that the HD stove was not very good (this I knew but knew if "I" told her that she would poo-poo it).. he suggested spending a little more and getting the Harmon P68...so I think that is what we are going to do. I talked to the dealer here and he said no problems with us installing it ourselves. He would give us all the help we needed. Pellets are $239 a ton which is high, but alot cheaper than oil.:D

[bob gugerty]

Tim,
I like the Harmon it has a large ash hopper so the time between cleans is about ten days I think the newer ones have an even larger hopper. the side panels remove to get to the inside easy for the major cleans (about 1 or 2 times a year)
The price of pellets has gone up five years or so ago I was getting them for $65 a ton I just got 3 tons two weeks ago
The corn stoves look good too. I would think about one if I was in the market to get a new stove.

[John Shuk]

Tim,
I have a Harmon Accentra. It is a very nice stove and keeps my house (2800 sq. ft) about 73- 74 degrees. Buying pellets this year could be tough so act right away. I just ordered 3 tons and should use about 2 1/2 for the season.
I'm paying $275 a ton. Even if the cost is similar to oil (which I don't find it is) the house is much warmer.

[Dennis Peacock]

Go with as good a stove as you can afford. It's your "home" that you are putting one in. That's the reason why I went with a well known name brand soapstone stove and so far....all my firewood has been free. As of right now, I have more trees to go get than I have time to go and cut....and these are already laying on the ground. I just LOVE free. ;) :D

[Thomas Prondzinski]

Tim
I put in a Harman PC-45 corn stove last year.It has worked out great for me. We only used the furnace in the house a couple of times,when it was below zero.I spent 400.00 on corn,250 bushels. Also the PC-45 can be switched over to burn pellets.

Tom

[Bob Weisner]

$275.00 A TON???????:eek: :eek: :eek: :eek: I am glad the pellet manufacturing plant is only 15 minutes away from me!!

[Frank Fusco]

My only experience with pellet/corn stoves is seeing them in stores and noting the high prices. But the very concept begs the question: Why?
As pointed out, unless you are a Steve Ash, they are about just as costly to operate as oil. Firewood can be purchased quite reasonably and if you live in the right area and still have a functional back, the wood can be had nearly free. BTW, I just bought a back-up stove for our all-electric house. It is an unvented propane heater. Nice looking stove, sorta Ben Franklin style. Came from Northern Tool. With shipping under $400.00. Local stores want $1000.00 to $1400.00 for similar plus $400.00 to $600.00 for a fake log set. Mine came with the logs. Installation is a small hassle but a one time thing.

[Tim Morton]

My only experience with pellet/corn stoves is seeing them in stores and noting the high prices. But the very concept begs the question: Why?
As pointed out, unless you are a Steve Ash, they are about just as costly to operate as oil. Firewood can be purchased quite reasonably and if you live in the right area and still have a functional back, the wood can be had nearly free. BTW, I just bought a back-up stove for our all-electric house. It is an unvented propane heater. Nice looking stove, sorta Ben Franklin style. Came from Northern Tool. With shipping under $400.00. Local stores want $1000.00 to $1400.00 for similar plus $400.00 to $600.00 for a fake log set. Mine came with the logs. Installation is a small hassle but a one time thing.

WHY? Number one reason for me is to get off the oil grid!!!!

[Rob Bourgeois]

WHY? Number one reason for me is to get off the oil grid!!!!

Gotta wonder...how much oil is used to produce a pellet and bring it to your house.

I know it costs more oil to make a paper cup than it does to make a plastic one so which one is truly a renewable resource. I woudlnt be shocked if it took almost as much oil to make the pellets as it does to just burn oil to begin with. Just because you put a BMW hood ornament on a VW doesnt make it any better...

/not saying you are wrong just showing a different way of looking at the "oil grid"

[Tim Morton]

Gotta wonder...how much oil is used to produce a pellet and bring it to your house.

I know it costs more oil to make a paper cup than it does to make a plastic one so which one is truly a renewable resource. I woudlnt be shocked if it took almost as much oil to make the pellets as it does to just burn oil to begin with. Just because you put a BMW hood ornament on a VW doesnt make it any better...

/not saying you are wrong just showing a different way of looking at the "oil grid"
I cannot imagine it would take 2000 gallons of oil at $3 a gallon to produce 3 tons of pellets to be sold for $750. But maybe:D

[bob gugerty]

Safety (no chimmey fires), more Efficient then my oil fired boiler

[Tim Morton]

OK this weekend the stove was delivered and I installed it yesterday...while typing this it is toasty warm in here.:)

[Art Mulder]

Looks good, Tim. I can't even see the exhaust/combustion-air vent, so it sure is well hidden back there in the corner.

[Al Willits]

Free wood Dennis??? :D

Used to have a little poster that said how free, free wood was.
Some of the hidden costs were, chain saws, blades, gas and oil for chain saw, splitter, gas and oil for splitter, truck to haul wood, gas and oil for truck, weekends lost due to cutting and splitting, plus stacking, time lost feeding stove, then removing ash, time lost for running chain saw across leg, dust in house, bugs in house, wife complaining about bugs, plus a few more I forgot..... I'd have to add at my age, it'd be all them pulled muscles and strained back too....:D

Al .....who just pays his gas bill now and spends weekends in the garage...cleaning..:)

ps...yes, I know if your young and spry, it's probably worth it, just teasing.:)

[Bart Leetch]

I have a question about pellet stoves too.

How do they work when the electricity is off as in right after a storm has knocked it out which usually happens if it is going to during the cold time of the year?

It's my understanding that with a propane stove it works through a regulator to regulate the propane flow & that the regulator is mechanical not electrical. Does this mean that you will have heat when you have no electricity as long as your propane tank has propane in it?

I speak of propane because many places in the country do not have natural gas but could have a propane tank set outside & a propane stove inside.

[Al Willits]

Yes, we have lots of homes on proprane in the outer reaches here in Minn where nat hasn't been run yet, and they have a tank out side with a gas furnace converted to propane.
Any of these that run a 24volt controlling system (thermostat) or a fan for disturbution will probably not run with out power.
There are some space heaters that even with a blower will run without power (powerpile system) but we don't see many of them anymore, fireplace gas inserts can be run with out power in some cases, depending on whether they need a blower or not.

Propane does not vaporize at about -49 so those of us in the great north country have to deal with that, the rest aren't quite so lucky...

Al

[Brent Dowell]

Well,

In my new place, we have a pellet stove that I'm looking forward to using. It does use electricity for the feed mechanism, and from what I've read, it uses relatively small amounts of AC.

What I've seen recommend is to use a computer type UPS (Uninteruptable Power Supply) to provide power to the stove. For short term outages, it would continue to keep the stove running, otherwise the stove just goes out.

So as long as the power is out for only an hour or two, you'd be fine. Longer outages, well, guess the house would go cold, or you fire up a generator, or whatever...