Anyone have a pellet stove?

[Greg]

We're thinking of adding a pellet stove to our front room. The price of natural gas in this area has been ridiculous and I'd like to reduce our dependence on the gas company... at least in one aspect of our lives. Last winter we had monthly gas bills around $300, that's outrageous! And we have an efficient home!

We're looking at a Kozi Model 100 stove, I'm wondering about ash cleanup & how long between dumping the ash the stove will fill again. Obviously this depends on how hot the stove is burning, just looking for some real-world results. Also, anyone know how well they distribute the heat?

 

[Caleb]

We had one in my parent's house for a while. IMO, they don't do very well. You could have that thing burning all day and the only time you could feel the heat is if you were standing right in front of it (it even had a fan on it, most of the time the air coming out of the fan was no warmer than room temperature). I don't remember ash build-up ever being a problem, I think we would empty the ash each time before we started it. The other thing that sucks about them is if your power goes out you loose any change of using it. We ended up pulling it out and giving it away, we replaced it with a gas fireplace. If it were me and I was putting in a fireplace and I didn't want gas, I'd go with a good old wood burning stove.

 

[BroncoMama]

X2 on the wood stove. My mom's house had a pellet stove when she bought it and it was a pile. As far as effective heating, in our experience, it's freestanding wood stoves that will rock your world. You stoke it up in the morning and it will heat your house all day long. Radiant heat is amazing. Talk to Chris about it though, he can explain the dynamics better.

 

[Don B]

X3 on the wood stove. We have a propane furnace and even spending a gawd awful amount of money on propane in the winter, the house never was really warm. I put in a free standing wood stove and the difference is amazing. Even when it's down below zero, the house is nice and toasty with just a small fire going. I wouldn't trade it for anything.

 

[Meat_]

I've never been around a pellet stove, but if I get the Alpine rockin in the other end of the house it will melt half the house.... if you kick the furnace onto fan it will heat the entire house. It's a free standing air jacketed forced air stove

Looks like they only make gas fireplaces anymore :wtf:

 

[I Lean]

A smart man once told me something that made a lot of sense: Wood can very often be had for free, pellets never can. Also, wood stoves are 1/3 the cost of a lot of pellet stoves.

 

[Skylinerider]

My folks have a heat king wood stove. My dad throws a chunk of coal in it at night and when he gets up in the a.m. it's still toasty warm, or down right hot.

 

[Greg]

Fast forward 6 years... It's getting cold again... time to think about supplemental heat!

As many of you know, we moved into a different home... one with a wood burning stove in the home and one in the shop too! They're both smaller units, the house has a Regency 1100s and the shop has something similar, but I don't remember off hand what it is. Both of them also have electric blowers, to make the most of the heat. I spend today cleaning out the old ash from both stoves, then also brushed out the chimneys. It was a messy job, but if it needs to be done 2x a year to keep us safe & warm, so be it. We fired it up tonight with some Pine from leftover camping trips and I couldn't be happier! It's not a cold night yet, only supposed to get down to 29* but this is a good test. It's warmed up the whole home, very nice & toasty. I'm loving this, I realize there will be more work than traditional heating but having an open wood fire is awesome!




I think we can burn coal in this stove, it's lined with fire brick... need to do some more research before I do, then find a supply of chunks of coal. Coal burns VERY hot and will burn thru a stove that doesn't have brick.

One of my neighbors (retired railroader I used to work with) stopped by and we started talking about the stoves, he loves his pellet stove. The wife and I talked about the idea of trading the wood burning stove for pellets, but I think we're going to stick with what we have. Wood is easy to get, sometimes pellets aren't. The cost to upgrade isn't worth the benefits when we have stoves that work fine as it is, IMO.

 

[cruiseroutfit]

Nice, looks toasty!

Reminds me I need to get my wood burning insert doing well, something. We have lived here 7 years and never had a fire in either fire place I really need to have a professional come inspect them and make sure they are good to go, the wood burning one has some things that scare me about using it (gas line coming out the clean out). Any RME'ers fireplace pro's?

 

[airmanwilliams]

I am glad you brought all of this up. The house my family is in now is gas and hasn't been used in a LONG time and I am afraid that if I start it up ill start the house on fire. Do any of you know of someone that can inspect it and clean the chimney?

 

[KWight]

Our old house had a heating system that sucked. It was downright cold downstairs in the wintertime and the heating vents on the ceiling did not help with circulation. We bought a pellet stove after our first winter there and it heated the 1700 square foot house well in the wintertime. A ton of pellets lasted us through the winter and on the coldest days we ran non stop for 1.5 days on a 40 pound bag.

Our new house has wood fireplaces upstairs and down. We did not use the downstairs one the first year due to the kids being in the basement. We had it ripped out last year and I bought an old style wood stove that weighs about 500#. Now we are able to heat the whole 2800 square foot house with just that stove and rarely use the upstairs one. The bonus is that we have plenty of dead/down trees on our property so the wood is free, just have to pay for it in sweat.

 

[mesha]

I love my wood burning stove.

My sister has a pellet stove and it works great. One of the downsides is that is can't heat without the electricity working.

 

[Rogerwh0]

I had a pellet stove. Had 2 of them actually.. Where I live propane is the only gas available. Propane is extremely expensive and I could actually heat cheaper with propane than with the Pellets. I was buring 2 bags of pellets a day. It was costing me about 300 a month to barely supplement what my furnace was already doing. I even bought a new bigger pellet stove. I was out the $1800 and had the same results. Neither of the pellet stoves I had could possibly heat even a portion of my house. Not to mention they are loud and make everything in your house very dusty. I bought an actual wood burner, now I only have to fill my propane once a year. Wood is a mess but free (other than cutting/hauling and storing it). Pellets were very dusty and not hardly warm. I would stay away from a pellet stove, I have been there and done that. I say pay the gas bill and be comfortable!

 

[lewis]

I think we can burn coal in this stove, it's lined with fire brick... need to do some more research before I do, then find a supply of chunks of coal. Coal burns VERY hot and will burn thru a stove that doesn't have brick.

We burn coal in the stove at the family cabin and it has no brick in it and the old steel isnt all that thick. Has burned a whole in yet.

 

[moab_cj5]

I had a Pellet stove in my house in Kansas. I LOVED it! We cleaned the ash every day with a shopvac before we fired it up, but 1 ton of pellets for $300 would last more than a winter, and my gas bill was never more than $150 when my neighbors were paying over $300 a month in the winter. It was an awesome stove, loved the heat, loved the real fire, and storing pellets takes up WAY less room than storing wood.

I think like almost anything, there will be people with opinions either way. There are many factors though that can affect the efficiency of a given stove. My stove was located in a corner of my basement, across from the stairs that led upstairs, and was controlled by a thermostat. If I set it for 79 degrees in the basement, the upstairs would be 72-76 depending on how often doors were opened. Placement, insulation, type of pellets used, and other factors can affect your experience.

I have 2 gas fireplaces in my house now. I want to replace my gas stove in the basement with a nice pellet stove, but haven’t done it yet. Jeep parts are more fun to buy J.

As for needing electricity, they don’t need much so a small generator can easily run the pellet stove. When we lost power from ice storms, I could run an extension cord to my basement and could heat my house comfortable with just the pellet stove.

 

[maveric]

When we moved into our house in 2003, it had a gas fireplace insert and a gas furnace. The first winter, we filled our 500 gallon propane tank in October, January, and march. We used approximately 1200 gallons of propane that first winter. We installed an Avalon Astoria free standing pellet stove that summer. The initial cost of the stove was quite pricey, but it has more than paid for itself. It is our ONLY heat source now and even with a ton of pellets costing $200, it is still cheaper than propane. Our house is 2400 Sq Ft, and the stove does an adequate job. We did put a small convection heater in our bedroom for when it gets -20 (or worse). The ash pan on my stove needs dumped about once for every ton burned. We usually burn between 5-6 ton a year. And it is convenient to take the trailer to the store, have them load an entire winters worth of heat on it in 20 minutes, strap it down, take it home and use a skidsteer to stack the pallets in the garage. It literally takes me all of 2 hours. Beats the heck out of cutting and splitting and stacking firewood, and a lot cleaner than coal. As for needing electricity, that is true, but there are a few options if the power goes out. As stated above, a small generator is more than enough to run it. Also, a single car battery and inverter will run it also. My stove actually had the option to buy the battery backup kit (which I didn't).

However, a good quality pellet stove is worth the cost. I traded for a small, cheap pellet stove a few years ago to put in my garage. I had a pot bellied stove in there for years, but the convenience and heat output of my pellet stove in the house made me want to "upgrade". The cheap stove didn't put out enough heat to melt the snow off my truck if it was below zero outside. I have since replaced it with a gas furnace. I may look into a bigger BTU output pellet for the garage in the future.

 

[bryson]

And I'm bringing this up again... I recently moved into a house that has a pellet stove in the basement - still learning how best to use it, but I think I like it so far. The previous owners were nice enough to leave us several hundred pounds of pellets, but I'm nearing the end of that supply. The pellets the PO preferred (and left me) are "Red-E-Fuel" fir blend pellets from Jenson Lumber Co. Inc. in Ovid, ID. As far as I can tell, I'd have to go to Idaho to get them (no local distributors near me in West Jordan.) I'd like to know if there are decent pellets available locally at a decent price.

What pellets do you burn, why do you like (or dislike) them, where do you get them, and how much are they?

 

[RogueJeepr]

I know there's a cal-ranch on 7800s. . Maybe talk to them and see what they say people perfer or try a different bag each time to get a feel on how they burn.

I just got a offer to do some trade work for a pellet stove. It's a New England model and not sure if its worth it or not, since the trade-work involves me reupholstering a small antique couch. Anyone have input on that particular model.?

 

[moab_cj5]

I wish I had a pellet stove again. I used to buy hardwood pellets as opposed to fir or pine because the hardwood would leave less ash to clean up. It's been almost 5 years since I moved so I don't recall the brands or anything, and at the time, I lived in Kansas. I used to buy my pellets from Tractor Supply out there.


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