Attn: wood pellet stove owners. What's your stove like? Decent, a pain in the arse, excellent? **UPDATE**

[Jeff7]

Update, 11-16-03
We went ahead and bought a pellet stove, the venting kits, and 2 tons of pellets; just had it installed, and it's been burning pellets for maybe 2-3 hours. The house smells awful now because the stove is baking off the paints and oils - just accompanying its first burn. It would be nice if stove makers could bake the things in a kiln or something before shipping them. I guess if I'd thought of this ahead of time, I'd have just stuck the stove outside and let it burn out there for a few hours first. But hey, it's working. We used fire-starter gel to get it going. That stuff is really awesome - fairly flammable. But a gel. I guess I just like it because of the flammable part.
It seems to have finished "baking" the finish, so now we just get to leave the house air out for a day or two. Then hopefully, it'll be a winter of cheap heat.
This is the stove purchased.


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Had another thread, and I'm focusing in on a pellet stove - I really like the environmental benefits vs propane.
The main problem right now with the pellet stove is that it needs electricity to function; we need something that will work in a power outage, possibly a day or more. So that's one thing that propane has going for it - fanless design. There are backup supplies available, but I don't know their cost. Maybe I'll have to try building my own backup supply.
Anyway, what's maintenance of a pellet stove like? The sites I've visited say that it needs daily attention for things like checking air conduits, filling it, etc. Does it need that just once a day then, and it's good to go until the next day? Constant "checkups" aren't a possibility; going to it if there's an emergency, yes, but not more than one additional trip to it a day.

Anyone here tried gas and pellet? How do they compare/contrast?
Thank you in advance.


Oh yeah, I don't need something fancy, like one of those $1300+ dealies I've seen. Unless it looks like Anna Nicole Smith, or Carrot-top, it'll do just fine. We need something that will burn wood pellets, and produce heat. A dull-gray box would do just fine.

 

[mattgyver]

A friend of mine has one of these. I helped him install it a couple of months ago. He hasn't run it for a long period of time yet, just long enough to test it. It puts out a LOT of heat, considering that only a small amount of pellets is burning at any one time. It has a 40lb hopper; I would have to imagine that one hopperfull would last a couple of days. Like I said, it burns fairly slowly. I read the directions and it said it would shut itself off completely if there was a power outage of more than a few minutes. These seem like very efficient and capable heaters. But it won't work during a power outage because the two blower motors MUST run for the unit to function. FYI--if you get one, set it up and let it run outdoors for an hour or so to let the "new" burn off. It smells terrible! I'll let you know if I hear anything else about it from my friend. Hope this helps!

 

[arcas]

I've thought about getting one of these to suppliment my natural gas furnaces this winter since gas is going to be so expensive. The pellet stoves I've seen were rated around 30,000-35,000 BTU whereas each of my gas furnaces is 100,000 BTU so I doubt the pellet stove would go very far towards heating my house. Anyway, assuming each 40lb bag of pellets costs around $4 and lasts 2 days, that's $60/month in pellets. Figure the electricity usage (for the fans and for the screw drive that feeds pellets to the fire) is negligable. $60/month is not bad if it's enough to heat your house.

In my case, I just couldn't justify the cost of installing a pellet stove. If natural gas prices go up any further, I'll be tempted to switch to high efficiency heat pumps, though.

 

[mattgyver]

The one I saw was rated at 50,000 BTU, I think. I believe it said it could heat 1,500 sf. My friend has it in his basement, and said he was going to experiement to see if it would heat his entire house. He has an air-return in the basement that also serves the first floor, so its at least plausible, especially since he super-insulated his house (it's brand new; about 3000sf). Those stoves put out a serious amount of heat.

 

[RU482]

I always wondered about corn burning stoves...living in Iowa and all

As far as wood pellet stoves are concerned...I thought about starting a tree plantation (hybrid poplars) to produce wood pellets, pallets, and such. It would probably take a shitload of land, though. Those trees grow fast as hell

As far as efficiency goes, I really miss my air-to-air heat pump. We had 2300 sq ft and an all electric house. Our utilities were never more than $140/mo (in Indiana, the cheapest place in the US to live I swear)

When I build new, I'm going to go with a GeoThermal heat pump

 

[helijamal]

I have a pellet stove in my trailer. It is a quadrafire. Awesome little stove. It heats my place by itself with the aid of a fan in the hallway.(even in -30 degrees weather)

You can get pellet stoves that are 12 volt that have converters to 110v. I know that you can hook up a deep cycle battery when the power goes out but i dont know if it can be set up to automatically switch over to 12 volt in the event of a power failure.

I am a little biased on pellets though as i work in a pellet manufacturing plant and have done for the last 8 years. I have seen the benefits of pellet heat first hand.

Maintenance on the stoves themselves vary depending on the stove. I clean out the burn pot every other day and empty the ashpan once a week(small ashpan) and clean the door glass at the same time.

Problems i could see if you weren`t around daily are that you may have a clinker build up in your burn pot(depends on the quality of pellets) which doesnt allow your stove to start if you have an auto start with a remote thermostat. The other thing is depending on your stove, you might have to fill your stove with pellets daily. I have to fill my stove everyday as mine has a small hopper(35lbs roughly).

one last thing about stoves is that the only time you have smoke coming out of the chimney is when it starts up. after that, all i see from my chimney is heat. This of course is dependent on proper installation of your stove and venting.

 

[Technonut]

I have been heating my entire home with the earlier version of This Whitfield Pellet Stove for over 3 years. (I have a 3 BR / 2 1/2 bath / 2 level home + a full basement. The basement is not heated)

I live in central Virginia, and it takes 3 tons of pellets to heat for the entire winter season. I purchase them ahead of time, and store them in my basement. The stove keeps my downstairs living area, upstairs bedrooms, and office comfortable.

I clean the stove twice a week using a fireplace vacuum cleaner that makes it an easy task. I also wipe the glass windows clean. My stove has a direct vent through the wall, so I need to clean the exhaust pipe about once a month. The stove is very safe... The sides and top remain cool to the touch when in use.

I do have an Inverter/ battery back-up system that will power my entire home for close to 3 days in the event of power loss. After the batteries drain, my propane generator kicks on and recharges the battery bank automatically.....

 

[Jeff7]

Bump for an update! Thank you all for your input on this. Hopefully this thing will prove to be trouble free.