| Author | Message | ||
     Woody1911a1 |
hey guys and gals , facing a brutal heating bill this winter heating with oil . so i've just started looking into a pellet stove insert . the ones i've seen in google searching seem to be around $2-3k . not really in the budget , but neither is a $2k heating bill ! anyone with any experience /usage that could offer advice on brands , upsides/downsides etc would be much appreciated  thanx in advance , Woody | ||
| Johnnylunchbox |
Don't discount wood or coal stoves, although their feasibility depends on where you live and their cost and availability. No doubt a pellet stove is cleaner than the other two, and also easier. However some or most pellet stoves require electricity to power the auger, so if you're in an area that is prone to lose power for days at a time than this may not be the best for you. They do make good heat and are efficient. | ||
| Ratbuell |
Been heating with pellets for 15 years. Awesome. Wood is ok, but you get creosote in the chimney, have to scrub it, the heat is hothotHOT for a little while then it tapers off till you stoke it again and then its hothotHOT for a few more minutes...pellets feed automatically as long as you keep the hopper filled (usually 2 bags does my house for 3 days) and it runs on a regular thermostat. I de-ash the chimney once a month. Maybe. I let the stove cool completely 2x a month so I can vacuum the ash. That's it. As for the power...it uses less than a 60w light bulb. Power outages are no problem. If you have a generator...wire it up so you can plug it into the gennie same time you plug in your fridge and your plasma TV And Home Depot sells pellets, among other specialty stores...so fuel availability is quite good. You can get cheaper, smaller stoves if you just want to *augment*. Put one in the common room, keep everyone warm while they watch TV or whatever and you can knock back the oil consumption by keeping the rest of the house cooler. Also, look into a retrofit to burn waste oil. Do an oil change...heat for a night | ||
| Fahren |
Up theyah on the Nohth Shoh, in Mahblehead, it does get wikkid cold. My bruthah used to be in Salem. Fahkin' brutal. Do you have any access to firewood? It's just lower tech, and with a good stove, should be as efficient as the pellets. John ny's right, though - wood is messier around the stove and in its storage area. You'll get more btu per cubic inch of stored fuel with the pellets, if storage space is at a premium. Either way, though, you'll be way ahead once the unit pays itself off. Where would you be putting it in the house? Basement? Living space? | ||
| Crackhead |
Also check Craigs list for used stoves and inserts. I have yet to understand why they build houses with fire places. My dads free standing wood stove has a mesh door for when he wants to loose heat and watch the fire, but 99.999999% of the time he wants all the heat he can get out of the wood stove. Why is your heating bill high? do you have enough attic insulation? Throw another layer up there, it will pay for it's self in one MA winter. | ||
| Xl1200r |
I looked at this back when I was first starting to looking into redoing my living room. Right now I have a small fireplace which gets used a few times during the winter for ambience, so I have a place to put an insert. If you live in an area where hardwood is plentiful and cheap, a regular wood stove will be the cheapest option on a $/BTU scale - however, as mentioned, it's more work. The stove is dirty, the wood needs to be moved over and over again, split, seasoned, stored, etc. Pellets will be easier, but more expensive - not sure on the difference of either compared to oil. My house used to be oil, but was switched to gas some years before I bought the place and uses hot water baseboards. Couple that with a small house to start with and my bills aren't too bad considering I live in upstate NY and a week where the high doesn't break 0 degrees aren't unheard of. | ||
| Ulyranger |
My take Pellet stove pros; ease of use, especially for those not familiar with bio-mass stoves. Easy to store and move fuel source. Fairly consistent heat. Low maintenance. Venting/flues are generally much easier, safer to install than a wood burner. Pellet cons; expensive initial price for equipment. Fuel source is relatively expensive (this is definitely relative to what you have available, where you live, etc) You are limited to pellets for fuel and they are subject to market availability. Requires power to run. Wood stove pros; cheaper initial cost(even for a top of the line one). Fuel is relatively easier to obtain and less expensive (again, this depends on where you live and have available). The equipment is more simple, straight forward. Fixes such as gaskets and such are generally obtained at the local hardware store. No power needed. Wood cons; more labor intensive (moving fuel around, bulk). More storage area needed for fuel. More care needed in type of fuel burnt and cleaning flue/chimney (cleaner, properly seasoned hardwoods can ease this maintenance though). More experience using and maintaining this equipment is advised. Properly, purpose-built flues and chimneys must be installed/maintained. Coal stove pros; excellent btu output and length of burn time. Ease of fuel movement and storage space required compared to wood. Ease of maintenance, very little ash to deal with and flue maintenance is a breeze. Consistent, long burning heat. No power needed. Coal cons; fuel source(s) can be limited depending on location. More expensive than wood. Can be difficult to start in certain atmospheric conditions, starting a coal burner can humble even the most experienced wood burner at times. Ash/slag disposal may be difficult for some. I have two wood stoves and a coal stove to heat my house and garage. Though my oil burning forced air system is the "primary" built in heat, it rarely turns come winter (burn about 200 gals a year). For me wood is a no brainer because it's free and in some cases people pay me to take it away. I own my woodlot, have my own saws and equipment to split/move it. The coal stove is my primary heater for the family room/living space because of the consistency. But I have a bulk coal supplier about seven miles from my house (I bag my own). I realize not everyone is in my position though and a pellet stove is an excellent choice for the right situation. I would have one if I could produce my own fuel for it......  (Message edited by ulyranger on September 20, 2011) | ||
| Crackhead |
ULYRanger, You forgot the biggest pros of a wood stove, Slap a pot/ pan on top of it and cook some tasty dishes when the power goes out. | ||
| Reepicheep |
What can they make the pellets out of? I'm picturing some of the super aggressive woody weed type shrubs growing, well, like a weed, and being harvested for pellets. Or even other biomass being mixed in to burn (other weeds or alge basically). No idea if it would work, but there is some green stuff out there that grows like nobodies business. | ||
| Hootowl |
Is natural gas not an option in your area? Talk about cheap... | ||
| Cowboy |
I heat and cook with natural gas the total bill for last 12 mos. was only $320.00 | ||
| Fahren |
Yeah, he could lease out his land to some frackin' a-holes, and just heat his house by burning the methane coming out of his kitchen water taps! | ||
| Mr_grumpy |
How far do you want to go? If you want to economically heat your house, the best way is with a heat pump & an underfloor circuit. We installed a low temp geothermal system in the last place. It was giving us 4 for 1 & there's nothing nicer in the winter than walking round on a warm floor. It also gives an even heat throughout (if it's done properly) This house has a woodburner & it's bloody good, but as others have said is messy & lacks control. We looked into a pellet system as a possibility but the availability at the time was variable, & I didn't like the idea of investing that much in a system if I could be held hostage by the fuel supplier. Where we live now it's much more common but still very few options to get pellets. I did hear of folk grouping together to buy a machine to produce the pellets & make further economies that way, so there may be a syndicate you can buy into, or you could create one. | ||
| Cowboy |
I have been hearing about contamition after fracturing some gas sands.if some one here is in that area could you post a schematic of such drilling I would like to look at them.that must be some of the deepest water sands or shallowest gas zones. in the world. Until I see asechmatic I have no idea how this is happening. | ||
| Strokizator |
When I did a remodel about 10 years ago I got rid of the fireplace and installed a soapstone stove. I can heat the house with less than $200 of almond wood. The stove is way more efficient than a fire place. You basically have a 400 degree "rock" sitting in the living room. Stoke it at night, close the damper and it's good to go in the morning. Needs no electricity to run. http://www.woodstove.com/wood-stoves | ||
| Mr_grumpy |
This is what we're using, a Sideros, Stubella Classica. (ours is red though). We'll use about €200-250 of wood for the winter.  | ||
| Orman1649 |
I am in the same boat. My house was built in the early 70s and I have oil heat. I do not have the option for gas unless I want to spend like $50,000 to get a line installed. I have 2 fireplaces in the house, one of them has a wood burning insert with a blower. My parent had pellet stoves growing up. They were nice and pretty convenient since you just dump the pellets in the top, start it up and walk away. You can also burn CORN in some/all pellet stoves. Both fuels are getting rather expensive though. I plan on buying/searching craigslist for another wood burning insert and putting that in the other fireplace. I picked up A LOT of FREEEEEEEEEE wood on craigslist this summer and plan on burning a lot to cut down the $3500/yr heating bill. | ||
| Ratbuell |
Corn burns in SOME pellet stoves. Feed augers and burn pots are different. Get one that will burn both. Pellets are compressed sawmill dust, packed in paraffin wax to make the pellets. The cost spiked what...three seasons ago? when fuel oil went through the roof. But it seems to have leveled out quite a bit since. $250 a ton is about average here; a ton lasts me five weeks. And you can still fry eggs in a pan on top of the pellet stove. Just feed it from a gennie in a power outage and you're livin' large! | ||
| Ulyranger |
Crackhead, yup, well versed in wood stove cookin'. In fact one of my wood burners is an old kitchen wood/coal range & oven. Small fire box but it does a nice job. So not only can I cook my venison & taters, I can bake a cake for desert. Reepicheep; pellets are generally made from wood fiber from chipped and ground trees. There are several grades depending on application (the best stuff is debarked prior to chipping and is good hardwood such as maple, beech, ash, etc). The problem with the pellet market is you are indirectly competing with large industrial power generation plants, the best markets ($) are over seas. When the market is good I've watched timber outfits chip what would otherwise be decent sawlogs, whole tree directly into tractor-trailers bound for port without stopping or shutting down. Corn and other fiber is also used. Not sure shrub species would have the same btu output with the bark to wood ratio compared to tree harvested. Not to mention the logistics in harvesting acres and acres of shrub types to get what you would normally get from several trees. Not saying it isn't possible, or even that it isn't already being done, just that the economics of it would be different. The long and short of it is pellets are not just "pellets". Many different grades for varying btu outputs, efficiency and how clean they burn. There are species of willow being produced just for the bio-mass. Super fast growth rate for fast rotations, almost grown like traditional farm crops. It can be chipped/ground into pellets, broken down for cellulose based biofuel(in other words ethanol that isn't from food), etc. Bio-mass is exciting stuff mang..... | ||
| Just_ziptab |
I love my outdoors wood burning boiler. No baby sitting,just throw wood in it and walk away. Radiant,in slab basement and garage tubing. Main flooring is also radiant heated with a cement tile like thermo mass under the floor covering. You walk on it bare foot and you want to lay down and take a nap. Driveway will be heated too.Three seasons and have never cleaned the smoke stack......as clean as the tail pipe on a car...always! Bonus.......pump runs on 3 amps and I have wired in a converter that makes the boiler circuit stand alone from the house wiring and will run on a bank of 6 pallet jack batteries.  Plastic hose grid work on top of aluminum foil,heat transfer plates and the thermo mass. My other house is heated with a free standing ,antique pot bellied stove. Feed it two or three times a day with a five gallon bucket of wood. Yeah,I go thru a lot of wood.    |
