Hybrid Cars, Solar Energy, Alternatives....

[mehastings]

I've not encountered any funny smell from pellet stoves. They are so efficient it's not funny.

And what do you mean by good circulation? My stove will vent right up the chimney. All I have to do is run about 6 feet of pipe from the back of the stove up into the chimney and pack around the pipe to seal off the rest of the flue opening.

I suppose my pellet stove issue might be the result of dealing with an older stove. Close friends of ours had one as a secondary heat source in their new house and the previous owners of left a LOT of pellets. So, for two years it was pellets, pellets, pellets. The smell was weird. Sort of like burning particle-board. It wasn't strong, just annoying. The circulation issue was way worse. They didn't have a good system for distributing the hot air through the zone. As you obviously know, pellets burn super hot. The area around the stove was VERY hot and dry (to the point that we couldn't sit on their couches), but the rest of the zone wasn't.

 

[Motokid]

My guess is a few things. An older stove that was less efficient at sealing off the combustion area which resulted in leaking some smoke....and a cheaper grade of pellets. I've found that much like gasoline there are various grades of pellets. Some have higher quantities of moisture (not good, more smoke), some are made from particles of hard wood (good, less smoke, higher heat), some are made from particles of softer pines(not good, smoke).

Fans can distribute heat, plus the stoves now have great blowers on them to push the heat out into the room. Requires a bit of electricity but no more than a standard table lamp.

 

[Motokid]

here it is:

pictured using 100% shelled corn as fuel

 

[abecedarian]

It's beautiful too! I wonder how much corn it would take to feed one of those for an average winter?

 

[Motokid]

That's a tough question.

Are you using it as a sole source of heat to replace something?
Or as an addition to what you are already heating with?

Will you run it 24 hours a day, or only for the evening hours?

Will you run it on high most of the time?

How many months would you typically be burning the stove?

I can run mine off a thermostat. Meaning it will shut itself down and start itself up based on a room temperature setting I determine. But it will only do that using wood pellets or a wood pellet/corn mixture of 50/50. My stove will not automatically shut down, and start itself back up again on corn alone. It will run continuously on corn and only require a small handfull of wood pellets to get started.

I think on average most people who use pellet stoves a lot burn about one ton of pellets a month. Supposedly one ton of pellets equals about 1 cord of wood. Pellets usually come in 40 pound bags.

Being in Kansas you may be able to get the shelled corn easily, and cheaper than wood pellets.