Pellet Stoves!

[teeravis1]

Hey Everyone -
I am looking for all the information I can get from anybody regarding pellet stoves. From your personal experience with them, a friends experience that you are aware of, facts you have stumbled across, or just an opinion you wish to voice. I've done some research and it seems from what I have seen that Quadrafire and Harmon are the pellet stove top choices, is that correct? How big of home do you heat, what geographic location do you live in, how many bags of pellets do you go through? From what I have read so far and from what I have heard from the few people I know with them is that you will cut your heating cost in half or better in winter in comparison with propane? All input is appreciated. Thanks - Trav

[roho627]

hey TEE, go to search & enter pellet stoves & there are bunches of posts on them....Some may be out of date but I bet YOU can get lots of info...roho

[teeravis1]

I did find some threads on pellet stoves with a search, but not quite the type of info I was looking for. Maybe I did not search quite right? Could anyone with a pellet stove tell me what kind they have, if it has saved you money, and the pros and cons of the stove you have. - Thanks Again!

[ericinok]

We have two Harman's in our home. One in the main area and another in a separate den over the garage. We use it almost exclusively in the house during winter. It flat puts out the heat, and blows it out very well. We don't turn our electric heat on at all, and save lots of $$$ by doing this. The stove will go through a 40 lb. bag of pellets after about 10-12 hours of constant use. A bag of pellets is $3-5, less at the right time and place.

I highly recommend them. I know they are expensive, but they will pay for themselves pretty quick. We didn't have to buy ours, as they came already in the house. I knew very little about them, but now I'm a big fan. They are pretty quiet, depending on how high you have the blower running, and are very clean burning. You can run it almost all winter and still have very little ashes to throw out. I emptied mine last week, and it was only half full (or half empty?).

We rarely use the other stove in the separate den (approx. 850 square feet) , simply because it heats the room up so fast that it gets too hot. I'm thinking about moving this one out of the den and put in a regular wood stove and move the pellet stove into our sunroom to get more use out of it.

[Pat]

Something to consider is if a prospective pellet stove will operate well with corn as fuel. You can grow your own corn (pellets are harder to come by DIY.)

Corn prices are up and will be going up even more but some day when reason overcomes politics (yes it is possible) and we fund other alternative fuel production which has much better energy yield than ethanol from corn then commercially procured corn can once again be a very viable fuel for a pellet stove.

Pat

[wiseheat]

How is your stove search coming? Saw this post and thought I would reply. I have a new website where I'm allowing owners of stoves to post reviews of them. I have a few stoves in the site now but anyone is welcome to visit and post.

Thanks,

Tim

[midwilshire]

I'd like to burn grass pellets. I've got more hay than animals to eat it, and I can live with the extra ash.

I wonder if anyone has come across a reasonably priced grass pelletizer? All pelletizers I've found online cost many many thousands of dollars, which rules out individual use. Ideally, I'd like one that could replace a bailer.

[Pat]

A machine for pelletizing scrap paper would be nice. You could subscribe to an enormous collection of junk mail sources and get free fuel. Maybe a modified auger would allow feeding shredded paper into a pellet stove.

Pat

[egon]

aah - a very large blender with very wet paper and water blended to liquid type consistency and then run through a press to remove water, a pellet producing press and then air dry. [img]/forums/images/icons/grin.gif[/img]

Egon [img]/forums/images/icons/grin.gif[/img]

[Pat]

Too much work, I think it might be easier to work out a way to feed shredded paper through the stove.

Pat