Thinking of buying a pellet stove

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Subject Author Date Thinking of buying a pellet stove Mash 03-09-2008  Re: Thinking of buying a pellet stove Morris Dovey 03-09-2008  Re: Thinking of buying a pellet stove Vaughn Simon 03-09-2008  Re: Thinking of buying a pellet stove Steve Ackman 03-10-2008  Re: Thinking of buying a pellet stove Loren Amelang 03-09-2008  Re: Thinking of buying a pellet stove Steve Ackman 03-09-2008  Re: Thinking of buying a pellet stove Neon John 03-10-2008  Re: Thinking of buying a pellet stove me 03-10-2008  Re: Thinking of buying a pellet stove Steve Ackman 03-10-2008  Re: Thinking of buying a pellet stove Paul M. Eldridg... 03-10-2008  Re: Thinking of buying a pellet stove GeekBoy 03-14-2008  Re: Thinking of buying a pellet stove Paul M. Eldridg... 03-14-2008  Heat Pumps...was Re: Thinking of buying a pellet s... Leonardo 03-28-2008  Re: Heat Pumps...was Re: Thinking of buying a pell... Paul M. Eldridg... 03-28-2008
Posted by Mash on March 9, 2008, 12:43 pm Please log in for more thread options I've never owned a pellet stove and haven't known anybody that has so the answers to these questions will probably be obvious to alot of you...but here goes... We (me, wife, 2 young boys) are thinking of buying our first house, we live is Massachusetts. The house is a big (2300 sq ft) old (1890) house. It's got two floors with the (3) bedrooms all on the 2nd floor. I know that the attic is insulated but I'm not sure about the walls of the house, I'm assuming they are but I'm going to check on that before I make an offer. The house has forced hot air, with oil. I got some info from the local oil company and it seems the guy who used to live there was buying about 860 gallons of oil a year. That's pretty expensive, so I was thinking of buying a pellet stove for supplemental heat. I've been told that if I buy a good stove and put it on the first floor it will heat the entire first floor. Has anybody done this? It would seem that the room the furnace is in would be reeeallly hot, and the other rooms would get progressively colder as you move away? How do you normally deal with that? Can you hook a pellet stove into existing ductwork to more evenly distribute the heat? Has anybody done that? Does using a pellet stove substantially increase the electric bill? I was thinking of putting a stove on the 1st floor and just using the existing forced hot air system to heat the bedrooms upstairs (which will require me to move the thermostat upstairs...but that's not a problem). How do people on this forum generally use and setup their pellet stoves? Thanks Posted by Morris Dovey on March 9, 2008, 1:10 pm Please log in for more thread options Mash wrote: > > I've never owned a pellet stove and haven't known anybody that has so > the answers to these questions will probably be obvious to alot of > you...but here goes... > > We (me, wife, 2 young boys) are thinking of buying our first house, we > live is Massachusetts. The house is a big (2300 sq ft) old (1890) > house. It's got two floors with the (3) bedrooms all on the 2nd floor. > I know that the attic is insulated but I'm not sure about the walls of > the house, I'm assuming they are but I'm going to check on that before > I make an offer. Insulation is the key to cost and comfort. I can't emphasize that enough. > The house has forced hot air, with oil. I got some info from the local > oil company and it seems the guy who used to live there was buying > about 860 gallons of oil a year. That's pretty expensive, so I was > thinking of buying a pellet stove for supplemental heat. I've been > told that if I buy a good stove and put it on the first floor it will > heat the entire first floor. Has anybody done this? It would seem that > the room the furnace is in would be reeeallly hot, and the other rooms > would get progressively colder as you move away? How do you normally > deal with that? In my old (uninsulated) farmhouse in Minnesota, we just gathered closer around the stove as the weather got colder. Roast on one side, freeze on the other. > Can you hook a pellet stove into existing ductwork to more evenly > distribute the heat? Has anybody done that? I've talked with local pellet stove dealers who've told me that some pellet burners can be tied into furnace systems to use existing blowers, ductwork, etc. There are pellet burners designed to be located outside the house. The real question involves current and future cost of pellets - as pellet burners gain in popularity in an area, availability of fuel may be come problematic and costs may rise beyond the point of providing any significant savings. > Does using a pellet stove substantially increase the electric bill? It shouldn't. The forced airflow for the burner doesn't require all that much power. Have you considered solar heat? -- Morris Dovey DeSoto Solar DeSoto, Iowa USA http://www.iedu.com/DeSoto/SC_Madison/ Posted by Vaughn Simon on March 9, 2008, 1:14 pm Please log in for more thread options > I've never owned a pellet stove and haven't known anybody that has so > the answers to these questions will probably be obvious to alot of > you...but here goes... You never got around to the most important question: How many BTU's of fuel oil can you buy for your buck compared to a buck's worth of pellets? Are there any other fuels avail to you to compare? A BTU is a BTU, there is nothing magic about pellets. (A gallon of heating oil is about 150,000 BTU, a 4000# cord of wood is about 20,000,000 BTU. I don't have numbers for pellets) That said, there may be value in having a backup heating system. Backup heating can keep you from freezing when things go wrong, and might allow you to take advantage in market conditions when one fuel is cheap compared to another. Vaughn Posted by Steve Ackman on March 10, 2008, 12:09 am Please log in for more thread options Sun, 09 Mar 2008 17:14:46 GMT, Vaughn Simon, vaughnsimonHATESSPAM@att.FAKE.net wrote: > > You never got around to the most important question: How many BTU's of fuel > oil can you buy for your buck compared to a buck's worth of pellets? Are there > any other fuels avail to you to compare? A BTU is a BTU, there is nothing magic > about pellets. (A gallon of heating oil is about 150,000 BTU, a 4000# cord of > wood is about 20,000,000 BTU. I don't have numbers for pellets) Pellets' heat content varies depending on composition, but generally run in the neighborhood of 16,000,000 to 17,500,000 per ton. At current local prices, pellet cost per BTU is comparable to cordwood; considerably less than oil. ($205 for pellets vs. $250 for cut & split seasoned hardwood) Posted by Loren Amelang on March 9, 2008, 4:52 pm Please log in for more thread options wrote: > the guy who used to live there was buying >about 860 gallons of oil a year. That's pretty expensive, so I was >thinking of buying a pellet stove for supplemental heat. That's a _lot_ of pellets. Do you have a truck, lots of handy dry storage, willingness to carry and dump literal tons of pellets to the stove, and willingness to clean out the residue from all those pellets? >I've been >told that if I buy a good stove and put it on the first floor it will >heat the entire first floor. Has anybody done this? It would seem that >the room the furnace is in would be reeeallly hot, and the other rooms >would get progressively colder as you move away? How do you normally >deal with that? We have a wall switch that runs the furnace blower. Works really great because our scorched-air furnace air intake is in the ceiling over the pellet stove. If it was in the floor it would take longer to get the heat around the house. >Does using a pellet stove substantially increase the electric bill? The vacuuming of ashes and mess probably uses as much electricity as the stove's fan motors. We keep the stove's room air fan low because it is noisy and isn't needed with the furnace circulator running. But as one of the other replies says, work out the cost of your fuel options per output BTU, and don't forget the relative efficiencies of the stoves/furnaces. By the time I factor in combustion efficiency, we're better off with electric heat this year, at the local per-bag prices of good-quality pellets. People who got on the allocation list for a pallet of pellets early enough are just barely saving money on those. People who can burn the cheap pellets without their stove clogging or needing excessive cleanout are doing a bit better... Loren Similar Threads Posted old duo therm oil stove February 10, 2007, 11:42 pm metal wood stove wall protection and stack effect August 30, 2007, 2:17 pm Buying Used Generator August 23, 2007, 10:19 am Buying Used Generators January 4, 2008, 7:35 pm