Does anyone use Wood or Pellet Stove for Heating?

[thecoalman]

Originally Posted by Chad2002

The downside to coal was I found it a pain in the back side to get the fire started...esp when you're shivering in front of a stove at 6am in hopes of not freezing to death in the shower before going to school. Both are like having a dependent, b/c you cant travel or go away for the weekend if you're only heat source is wood/coal. Frozen pipes are a nightmare homecoming.

Lighting it for people that are new to it can be a little bit of problem but for the most part its not an issue because you generally only light a stove/stoker once year. Having said that once you get the hang of its not that hard at all. A company called Coal-Trol which produces digital thermostats for more efficient use of the coal on stokers has come up with an auto ignition system that should arrive sometime this late summer or fall.

As far as the burn time that would only be true of hand fired stoves which would be like a wood stove, the benefit with them is they don't need any electricity to operate and as I mentioned previously will burn a minimum of about 12 hours and can go past the 24 hour mark if turn then down a lot. Typically you're going to get a 4 or 5 hour burn time on a wood stove.

If you had a really large home or business you could even take that one step further, in places like that they'll auger the ash right out side into a container, truck etc.

The stokers on the other hand are just like pellet stoves, actually its the other way around as stokers have been in existence for better than half a century if not longer. Those are only limited by the amount of coal you can get into tthe hooper and the volume of ash they will hold. Typically there is enough room for 2 days on the coldest days but you shouldn't have problem getting a weekend out of one if you wanted to take off.

If you really wanted too and had a high basement you could do what one of my customers did. His entire bin was the coal hopper, he never had to touch a piece of it. He had a 12 foot basement and the hopper could hold about 10 ton which was enough for a year, he had a EFM auger fed stoker and the auger went to the bottom of the hopper. He also built it up on few courses of block which enlarged the area for the ash. In his case he could go probably go 2 weeks without bothering with it and was only limited by the amount of room for the ash.

For anyone thinking "Dark Ages" when they think of coal here's a picture of out furace, as you can see it looks like typical furnace. Hardly tell its more that 25 years old. Another 25 and we may have to convert... lol

[LIMAMA4]

We bought our pellet stove about 3 years ago. We love it! Yes, the initial cost is high but we have saved thousands in oil. It has certainly paid for itself and then some. We bought it from a place called Rella Coal. It is a family-owned business out in Suffolk County and we have had nothing but great dealings with them. We have our stove in a corner of our livingroom and it heats the whole first and second floor of our cape. It's really wonderful. We keep our supply of pellets in our garage and put a few bags down in the basement in case of a big storm. As far as the electricity goes, it does not use much, it only needs a fan to run to push the heat. We do have a generator in the event power should go out. I have to say that it has been one of best investments that we have made.

[Summering]

I have to say that the years we owned a pellet stove we LOVED it too.
The heat is warm and wonderful. We had it running all the time after moving in to our ceramic electric heat. That type of heat, in the lofty home, costs us 400 to 450 per month in the winters! I was so glad to cut that bill down.........and have such a nice warm home.