Anyone have a pellet stove or insert? If so, would you share your experience with them please? I am looking at the insert for the fire place from the Harman Iron Works, the Accentra model (http://www.harmanstoves.com/). Thanks!
Anyone have a pellet stove or insert? If so, would you share your experience with them please? I am looking at the insert for the fire place from the Harman Iron Works, the Accentra model (http://www.harmanstoves.com/). Thanks!
I used to use a wood burning fireplace insert as a heat supplement. We were very happy with it. Ours was made by Lopi. The unit fuctioned great and looked good in the firebox. Either wood or pellet will greatly (75%+) increase the efficency of your fireplace. A good friend has had luck with the whitfield brand of pellet stoves. He's bought 2 of them.
Harmans has a very good reputation, and as a matter of fact I'm using their "magnum stoker" coal stove as my supplement on the new house.
I don't think you'll go wrong by their product. Good luck...........J
Thanks for the reply! I have done a little checking and found that Harman is a very reputable company, an industry leader and made in the USA. They make a 110,000 BTU pellet furnace that is intriquing, might have to consider it if we ever build new.
These pellet burners are amazing, all you have to do is set the temp and keep it full of pellets, it will do the rest. A ton of pellets will produce a shoe box full of ashes. We are getting older, cutting and splitting wood is not as fun as it used to be. This pellet burner looks like it will work nicely!
Glad I could offer a little insight. Stay Warm!! [img]/forums/images/icons/laugh.gif[/img] ......J
I switched from wood burn to pellets a year ago and have no regrets.
Mine is a free-standing Jamestown that I purchased on eBay for about half the cost of a new one. The seller was local and shipping was not required.
However installation can cost several hundred bucks if you have the dealer or an installer do it. The double wall flue section are expensive and with your fireplace installation there will be other issues.
I find that the operating cost is about the same as firewood (if I were to purchase it by the cord). I'm getting to old (68) to "buck logs" haul and split it for myself. Don't mean to say that I can't do it, but I find there are other things I would rather be doing than "The Quest for Fire".
I purchase my pellets from the hardware store when it is on sale. I think I paid about $125/ton for it last winter. As it turned out I used about $200 worth of pellets during last winter, but I only heat about half my house and frequently use the heat pump on warmer days where the pellet stove would be overkill.
The pellet stove is much muck cleaner to operate and the pellets are much easier to store and handle. One bag of pellets is 40lbs and fills the hopper. During the milder months of fall and spring, a bag will last for 4 days of intermitent use and on the colder winter days, I will use about 3/4 of a bag.
Temperature control is much easier than wood and therefore you will avoid overheating, etc. My stove doesn't have automatic ignition, being an older model but I can have it burning much faster than a wood stove. (I soak a cup full of pellets with kerosene for a starter fire).
The circulating fan distributes the heat much better throughout the 5 rooms of the house that I heat and if I want to heat the remaining rooms, I just turn on the fan in my heat pump heating/cooling system.
By the way. I might note that I seldom heat over night and sleep with an electric blanket. The main reason I do this is because the stove still puts out too much heat for sleeping even when set at the lowest setting. A more modern stove, with auto ignition, would be capable of maintaining low heat over night.
I hope you enjoy your pellet experience as much as I have.
Steve
"A good traveller has no fixed plans and is not intent on arriving" Lao Tzu
Steve
Thanks for your informative response! We decided to go with a free standing pellet stove because as you stated there were other issues with a fire place insert. The stove we got has the auto ignition and the new temperature control, set it and forget it. Even if you pay $175 a ton, the pellets are $500 cheaper a year than propane and that is if the price of propane does not go up. We used to heat with wood so the new stove will go where the old wood burner used to be.
I think one of these pellet stoves would be great to heat my wood shop. Since they are air tight and draw outside air for combustion, they should not be a hazard like a gas stove would be. When the budget recovers I will look into this. Thanks again!
I'm glad I could help and pretty sure that you will be happy with your free standing pellet stove.
I have noticed that Harbor Frieght has been selling a house and a shop model pellet stove. They are exactly the same style/capacity as those sold at Home Depot, except a lot cheaper. Right now the house model is ~$1300 or so for either model.
The shop model has a very large pellet hopper and a much higher btu rating.
Both of these stove models have automatic ignition and temp. controls.
I plan to get the shop model when I finish my work shop.
(One final note that comes to mind, since installing the pellet stove, I no longer have a place to burn paper trash and especially my old credit card paper work and sensative information. However I just picked up a neat paper shredder at a garage sale for $4. Much neater solution and can be used year round. (Burn barrels are not allowed during the dry summer months))
Steve
"A good traveller has no fixed plans and is not intent on arriving" Lao Tzu
We opted not to go w/ the pellet stove due to the frequent power outages - no power, no pellets being fed into the system as I understand it. It could get kind of chilly after a few hours or days w/o electricity. Just a thought.
Your right about no power no heat. However they draw very little amps and we use a 5000 watt generator for power outages. This handles the stove, a few lights and the fridge just fine. I am not thrilled with propane or the supplier. We were on the keep filled list, but ran out of propane at 1:00 am when it was -10 degrees. We called our delivery man and he finally showed up at 6:00 am. It got a might chilly in the house in that five hour span. With the climbing price of propane and getting older, pellet stoves looked a good way to go. So far we are are very satisfied with ours. We can stock pile our pellets and buy a whole heating season at once if we wish. We buy by the ton on a pallet, so it makes it easy to unload from my truck with the tractor. They are not for eveyone but having heated with wood it sure is a lot easier and cleaner.
If little power is needed the stove may be run with batteries and an inverter or just converted to 12 volt power requirements. This way the generator does not have to run all the time.
Egon
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