Pellet stove suggestions?

[Mr.B]

Just bought a house in an Rural area. I heat with Oil. Id like to kick over to a pellet stove for the main source of heating. My house is about 1200 square feet, an old barn. Could someone point me out to a good range/brand of pellet stoves. I googled pellet stoves but didnt find what I was looking for.

-Mr.B

[SpoonBread]

unfortunately I can not think of any specific brands at the moment. My grandpa put one in his old farm house a couple years back (little bigger than what you have ) and it keeps the place nice and toasty. I think his can burn either pellets or corn. Next time I see him I'll try to remember to ask him what brand it is. I know he got his through a local dealer though.

[wy0mn]

I've never dealt with a pellet stove in any way, but one of my co-workers has one.
He told me that pellet prices are climbing like everything else AND that the auger & blower require AC power to run it. If the power goes out and you don't have a genny or battery bank... big cold house.
Heres a few to look at, just to give you some ideas:
http://sutherlands.com/products/viewcategory.php?subcat=4

[humbug]

I used to have one..A Whitfield. I had a lot of problems with it, finally took it out and replaced it with a wood stove. Whitfield is supposed to be a good brand. the two repairman that I dealt with said it was rare to have problems with them. I have friends who have a Quadrafire and love them. Around here pellet stoves run around 1500 to 2000 dollars. Pellets are going up in price. But they are nice to have if you don't have the problems I did.

[Mr.B]

Yup I know about the battery problem with wood stoves. Ive been looking on ebay allot for used pellet stoves. Thanks for the info!

[bkuhn]

I would suggest looking at Quadrafire brand pellet stoves. I believe they are located in Washington State. I have had one for the last 2 years and have had no problems with it. So far I've run about 5 tons of wood pellets through it. When I bought it I investigated several brands but consistently heard from multiple dealers that the Quadrafire was one of the best products around.

The model I have is the Santa Fe (http://www.quadrafire.com/Products/Pellet_Burning/Pellet_Model.asp?f=santa-fe). One of the things I liked about Quadrafire is that they support both wood and wood/corn combinations (not all pellet stoves will burn corn). Last year in our area (Oregon) one of the pellet manufacturers had a fire and wood pellets were very hard to come by (dealers were limiting people to 5 bags, if they had anything in stock at all). I ended up down at the feed store and bought shelled corn and mixed it 50/50 with some existing pellets that I had. Got me through a month that I would otherwise have had to shut it down.

While this doesn't really address your question, I thought I'd share what has worked well for me. As one of the previous posts mentioned the price of pellets has gone up significantly in the last few years (from $110 per ton in my area 2 years ago to about $215 now). I actually run both a wood stove and a pellet stove in our house (about 1400 sq feet on 2 levels). I fire up the wood stove and keep it running low all day to provide about 80% of the heat. But since the pellet stove is on a thermostat it covers the other 20% (and on a timed thermostat it also kicks on before I get up and takes care of the morning chill before the wood stove gets going). The result is that the wood stove (which is much cheaper to run since I cut my own wood, though even if I bought it in my area cord wood is still cheaper per btu than pellets) heats the bulk of the house but the pellet stove takes care of keeping the temp consistent. Without the pellet stove I'd either have to watch the fire carefully to keep the heat output consistent or the house temp would fluctuate as the fire increased and then burned down. And without the wood stove my cost for pellets would be very high if it was the only source of heat.

I mention this because when I initially installed the wood and pellet stove I didn't appreciate how well they complimented each other. I think if I had only 1 or the other I would not be completely satisfied with the results, but the combination really compliment each other.

Hope this helps. Good luck with your purchase!

Brad

[JAK]

The combination of pellet stove and wood stove sounds very good. I would like a conventional wood stove and a pellet fired hot water heater. Does anyone make one of those?

Other thing of course is insulating and weather proofing. Not just to reduce energy costs, but also the cost of your heating system, and just to be physically able to keep up in January. If you can get your heat and hot water requirements down to 5 tons or less of biofuel then I think you are doing well. Modest sized house at 1200 sqft an excellent start.

Are there pellet fired water heaters?

[JAK]

I found some, but they are rather large, so its a go big or stay home proposition I think.

http://www.ecobusinesslinks.com/wood-pellet-burning-wood-pellet-boilers.htm

What I had in mind was a pellet fired domestic water heater in winter, combined with solar hot water heater in summer. Regular wood stove for space heat, combined with passive solar for the shoulder seasons. Thing is, they don't make pellet fired domestic water heaters small enough. Maybe I can rig something up. I'm looking at as little as 50 gallons a day, so 40000 BTU per day. That might be 10 pounds of wood pellets per day if 50% of the heat goes into the water and 25% escapes to my house and 25% goes up the chimney. I was thinking I could batch fire it, maybe on a timer, as long as I used *most of my hot water at the same time each day.

Maybe adapt this sort of design to a pellet or wood fired water heater, scaled to 60 gallons or so. Simple enough.

http://www.aprovecho.org/web-content/media/rocket/rocket.htm


I wouldn't want the water to be pressurized, for safety and compliance reasons, but perhaps my hot water lines could run on small electric pumps or hand pumps. That way I could also have the water for the hot water supplied by rain water catchment, so it would be soft water, and require less soap, which would in turn lend itself better to grey water recycling.

[Mr.B]

So I just picked up this pellet stove about a week ago. A chunk of $ but then again I just paid off my car after 5 years. Ill never buy a new car again!

Well heres my new pellet stove. I still have to get it installed.

http://www.americanenergysystems.com/babycountryside.cfm

[walls0stone]

Are you going to make our own pellets at home?
I know a fellow in that business. people call him all the time, year round looking for them and he can't keep up with orders for pellets. Even in summer.

[Mr.B]

Are you going to make our own pellets at home?
I know a fellow in that business. *people call him all the time, year round looking for them and he can't keep up with orders for pellets. Even in summer.

Nope I do enough stuff at home to keep me busy. I delt with Home Depot. They had the best price on pellets in this area.

[walls0stone]

2 man hours per week and I have all the wood I need for the year. gota clear those fields some how.

Say, if sawmills burn sawdust, why bother make'n pellets?