wood pellet or corn burners

[pushbutton]

anyone have any experience with them? have heard reports of them being a low cost heating method, but things too good to be true usually are...........

[LMITOUT]

Couple guys I work with have them and it doesn't sound like they are really that cost effective unless you have a cheap source of corn. They also always mention the maintenance and constant cleaning. I compared what they told me they pay for corn to operate the unit for a month to what it would cost to heat with natural gas and at best it's a push, plus I don't have to fiddle with making sure it's cleaned all the time so it works properly.

[Gadgetman]

I have a wood pellet stove and like it. Yes, there is maintenance involved but the heat is very nice and compared to propane it is less expensive. You can go to the pellet fuels institute and find a calculator that compares pellet heat per btu to other methods of heating. It certainly is more attractive if you have to burn propane or if/when fuel prices go up again.

[Scott K]

It is always nice to have an alternative in case prices sky rocket again on propane!

[BobT]

The question that usually comes to my mind is how available is the fuel supply for these burners?

[Smoker]

Yes you do have to do cleaning on them but if you ever burned wood it is a lot less maint. I just run mine on a low heat setting so the furnace will kick in once and a while. The first couple years my fuel oil furnace didn't run much and the third season it cost alot to repair it and that was with my employ discount. If you know farmers to get the corn from you will come out ahead. I have not checked the prices yet thos year.

[pushbutton]

lets say i have a 2000 sq. ft. house.....aproximately how many lbs of corn or pellets am i going to burn a day?

[BobT]

For your conversions it looks like the following would be pretty close for estimating cost comparisons if you're interested. I'm rounding the numbers out a bit. Note that with corn, 13% moisture is common and the higher the moisture the less BTU/lb. output. Of course, you need to consider you heating system's efficiency into this too. Multiply your results by the system efficiency rating to acheive more realisitic conversions. For example if your fuel oil furnace is 85% efficient, the amount of heat energy used to heat your home (not going up the stack) will be approximately 140,000 X .85 = 119,000 BTU

1 pound of corn @ 13% moisture = 7300 BTU

1 Gallon #2 = 140,000 BTU (19 lbs. corn)

1 Gallon LP = 91,500 BTU (12.5 lbs. corn)

1 KWH electricity = 3400 BTU (.47 lbs. corn)

[Dale Rueber]

lets say i have a 2000 sq. ft. house.....aproximately how many lbs of corn or pellets am i going to burn a day?

A lot of variables to consider but a guy I work with heats a 2500 sq. ft. house (900 sq. ft. basement included in the 2500) with about 2 bushels (4 five gallon pails) on avarage per day in the winter.

This is an older farm house and the insulation is not great.

[pushbutton]

thanks,

sure looks like a push to me, if you were to buy corn at the local mill for 5 bucks a bushel. and the only way the adds that tout these at .85 cents a day can be true is if you lived in new mexico and needed to take the chill out of the air on a 40 degree night!

[jeffreyd]

The one other thing that is not being considered however is the lower carbon imprint that is being placed with the corn/pellet stoves. These both are good methods to lower greenhouse gas, taking into consideration that it took fossil fuels to generate both sources. It is still lower than what it takes for a Kw of electricity.

[BobT]

The one other thing that is not being considered however is the lower carbon imprint that is being placed with the corn/pellet stoves. These both are good methods to lower greenhouse gas, taking into consideration that it took fossil fuels to generate both sources. It is still lower than what it takes for a Kw of electricity.

Is that a guess or do you have some data to back that up? I've never really found any reliable sources of data to show the carbon print of producing 100,000 BTU from electricity vs LP vs fuel oil vs corn etc.

[BobT]

Incidentally, corn is about $4.00 per bushel right now at the local elevators.