Do we need TWO pellet stoves? (pros and cons, manufactured, design)

[Maineah]

Originally Posted by jim65970

Hello...how Much Are Pellets ??? Also Can You Burn Wood In The Stove As Well ?....
Thanks
Jim

They're about $250.00 a ton now. No you can't burn regular wood in the stove either. We looked into buying a pellet stove and became convinced the pellet availability is shaky. There are bellet boilers from Bosch being installed now by a company called Maine Energy Systems. These boilers use a lot of pellets. There have been a fairly large number of these units sold already and they are being installed now. When they all come on line pellets are going to be hard to find and the price is going to go up accordingly. In fact they sell you a 4 ton bin with the system. Naturally the price break on the bulk pellets is six tons.. They're already contracting with Canadian pellet makers for shipment of bulk pellets to Maine.
You also have to be careful with the pellets. They have to be kept dry. If you get a bout of high humidity or water in the basement you'll have 4 tons of wet sawdust to get rid of before you can refill your pellet bin for another grand! No thanks!
You can get firewood anywhere so we decided to go with a regular wood stove.

[jim65970]

Originally Posted by Maineah

They're about $250.00 a ton now. No you can't burn regular wood in the stove either. We looked into buying a pellet stove and became convinced the pellet availability is shaky. There are bellet boilers from Bosch being installed now by a company called Maine Energy Systems. These boilers use a lot of pellets. There have been a fairly large number of these units sold already and they are being installed now. When they all come on line pellets are going to be hard to find and the price is going to go up accordingly. In fact they sell you a 4 ton bin with the system. Naturally the price break on the bulk pellets is six tons.. They're already contracting with Canadian pellet makers for shipment of bulk pellets to Maine.
You also have to be careful with the pellets. They have to be kept dry. If you get a bout of high humidity or water in the basement you'll have 4 tons of wet sawdust to get rid of before you can refill your pellet bin for another grand! No thanks!
You can get firewood anywhere so we decided to go with a regular wood stove.

THANKS MAINEAH....so what is the big allure with pellets....is it cheaper than wood ? cleaner burning ?......or is it just one of those things where there is an alternative
thanks
jim

[Maineah]

Originally Posted by jim65970

THANKS MAINEAH....so what is the big allure with pellets....is it cheaper than wood ? cleaner burning ?......or is it just one of those things where there is an alternative
thanks
jim

Pellets burn hotter and cleaner than wood, mostly due to the fact they have an electric blower forcing air into the combustion chamber(something you also need to consider if your power goes out) Many of them can be direct vented like a Monitor heater without a chimney. Like anything else I have heard people rave about them and others have hauled them out after one season.
Firewood has been around a very long time. Though bulky, sometimes smokey,and more labor intensive than pellets,the dependability factor of wood is hard to beat. Speaking of which I have to go work on the wood pile for a while!

[Submariner]

Originally Posted by jim65970

THANKS MAINEAH....so what is the big allure with pellets....is it cheaper than wood ? cleaner burning ?......or is it just one of those things where there is an alternative
thanks
jim

Pellets are convenient. The stove runs from a thermostat.

Per ton wood is cheaper as wood does not require factory processing. Wood pellets require hitech processing, and shipping.

Peat is also cheaper, and woodchips are cheaper; than pellets.

Hot and fast burning woods put out more heat. Whereas slow cooler burning woods put out less heat slower. So burning wood you have more control over how quickly it burns and puts out its heat.

A lot of pellets are made from wood byproducts and other biomass byproducts. One company in Ct makes pellets from leaves, they contract with the municipal street sweepers and landscapers, to buy all lawn clippings and leaves. I have a dear friend who is a landscaper in New London Ct, all of his clippings and leaves are collected and sold for pellet ingredients.

Pellets might be cleaner, but it depends on what kind of stove your looking at. In theory an old style wood stove might produce flammable fumes in it's smoke, and thus be 'dirtier'. However any stove with a catalytic converter, or a modern stove with a secondary combustion chamber; will burn all of those fumes. Making those stoves much cleaner burning.

[maureengld]

Buy a pot belly stove at aubachon hardware on $279.99 burns wood and coal. Coal is dust free and bagged...warmest heat 200k btu's...u won't want another one as u won't need a 2nd stove

[Elcarim]

Originally Posted by maureengld

Buy a pot belly stove at aubachon hardware on $279.99 burns wood and coal. Coal is dust free and bagged...warmest heat 200k btu's...u won't want another one as u won't need a 2nd stove

Oh! There you go answering my question I just posed in another thread. Thanks!!

[wnalley]

I don't live in Maine, I live in Michigan. We are in the process of putting in a new Pellet Furnace and are wondering...Does anyone know what the approximate amount of pellets we would be burning in our 3000sq ft home?

Keeping the furnace on the lowest setting...

[foxywench]

im in ct, but we have a 2500 sqft house and have 2 harmans 1 upstairs and 1 downstairs...9we actually have a 3rd that heats my apt but my room is only 500sq ft and its on a thermostat the thing barely ever has to turn on lol)
and we LOVE them!

we just had the one upstairs the first year and it was great, heated the upstairs with no problems whatsoever...
but we got sick of not being able to use the downstairs without turning on the electric baseboard, for the cost of running the electric just for downstairs was about the cost of a smaller harman, so in whent one. we find we dont realy use extra pellets as we leave the downstairs open now and the heat rises too meaning the ustairs pellet stove doesnt need to work as hard.

we go through 1 1/2-2 ton of pellets per season but we always buy and have extra just in case, we always buy in the off season too...keep the pellets dry and they will store indefinatly but if they get wet they are useless...
we LOVE them theyve cut our origional heating bill into 1/4 of what it was with eletric (and still use the electric for cooking and water) and we love that there thermoastatically controled.

we also have backup kits with 2 large car batteries per stove, if the power goes out each battery will last about 3 hours...

clean up is a sinch, scrape the pot a couple times a day, they burn very efficiently and we only have to empty the ash pan mabe once every 2 weeks. and they get a good clean out/dusting/glass cleaning every other weekend.

we also love them because a bag lasts EASILY 24 hours even on realy cold days so no need to worry about getting up in the middle of the night to refill the stove which seems to be a problem with traditional wood burners, having to check on it and refill it frequently...no need with pellets, dump a bag in, set the temp and relax...no need to get up in the middle of the night or rush home to make sure things are still lit and burning.

wnalley, id probably get a minimum of 4 ton in and store them, i doubt youd go through that much with it set on low if your house is well insulated, BUT its always best to be safe. if its also heating water for you too youll use a little more than just heating the home.

we love ours and alot of friends have switched from wood burners and electric baseboard to pellet stoves after being in our house over winter lol.

[Zymer]

Originally Posted by wnalley

I don't live in Maine, I live in Michigan. We are in the process of putting in a new Pellet Furnace and are wondering...Does anyone know what the approximate amount of pellets we would be burning in our 3000sq ft home?

Keeping the furnace on the lowest setting...

Do you mean the big, industrial-looking type of unit that goes in the basement? I think most of us here use the smaller stoves that are installed in the living areas...and I'm not sure if the two types have similar fuel consumption or not.

I also don't know how cold the winters are in Michigan, I'm guessing they might be similar to Maine? Here near Bangor the last 3 winters we've been having a few weeks of sub-zero, the coldest was a couple(?) of years ago when it hit -25 in my little valley...and stayed there for 3 weeks.

The previous reply told you about CT, which is a few hundred miles south of here. I don't have my pellet stove installed here yet, but when I used it 200 miles south of here (where the temp rarely hit sub-zero) I went through 2 tons a year to heat a poorly insulated 1100 sq. ft. house, in combination with a wood-fired kitchen range (not strictly necessary, but I like a wood fire and I liked cooking on it)...it was the smallest pellet stove I could get and it usually stayed on the lowest setting which was still too much most of the time- we stayed pretty warm. Eventually I installed a thermostat control for it but that didn't change things much, I just didn't need to manually change the settings on colder days. Some of the newer stoves can turn themselves completely off and back on, which can reduce fuel consumption and make them more convenient, mine runs all the time (on at least a low setting) unless I manually shut it down and start it up.

Heating oil companies that do automatic deliveries often use a calculation based on "heating-degree days" to determine when they should deliver fuel to their customers. This sort of calculation for your area may assist you in figuring out how much fuel you might expect to use, based on your temps, house size and BTU rating of your pellet furnace.

I would have to guess that 4 tons would not be a completely unreasonable starting point. it could be more or less depending on how cold your winters tend to be, how well-insulated your house is...and how warm you like to be (I like to be at about 80 degrees, my wife doesn't like it quite so warm).

[foxywench]

most of the harmans now at least have shot off/start ups, all 3 of ours turn themselves off completly when the temps get high enough to hit the thermostat off...
but i dont know if thats just a feature of the harman stoves or if other brands have it too...
our oldest pellet stove is over 8 years old now and runs like new.