TreeHugger Picks: Pellet Stoves

The idea of burning a foodstuff, whole corn kernals, seems like a wicked waste when people elsewhere are starving. It just doesn't sit well with me. Kind of like burning cows for heat.

There is a major problem with the pellet fired wood stoves not addressed in this post. If you run out of pellets, the stove is worthless. Because of this scarcity of pellets can be a big deal, and is already occurring in parts of the country. See this article from The Hudson Valley of New York: http://www.recordonline.com/apps/pbcs.dll/article?AID=/20061011/NEWS/610110362/-1/BIZ

My family home has 2 pellet stoves that my parents installed when I was a teenager: 1 on the main floor and 1 in the basement. Some of my fondest memories involve pulling a chair up to the one in the living room and reading with our dogs in my lap; the epitome of cozy. We never had trouble with running out of pellets; we bought enough to last us the season and stored them in the garage. I loved knowing that the pellets were made out of sweepings from saw mills that were being given a new use. When my fiance and I are married and buy our first house, I entirely intend to install at least one. I love them!

THe article about the wood pellet shortage is from over a year ago. T Interested to see if the shortage is going to be for this winter as well.

Re: burning foodstuffs

The type of corn used for corn stoves isn't edible by humans. Deer, yes; cows yes; humans, no.

Here in BC wood pellets are about the only thing that we can make out of our dead trees that are killed by the pine beetle infestation.

Wood pellets have a wealth of positives:
-they are basically carbon-neutral
-they are efficiently produced
-they are energy dense and very safe to transport
-they are made from waste streams (sawmill waste, dead timber, etc)

I could go on, but I have to get back to work now... :)

The type of corn used for corn stoves isn't edible by humans. Deer, yes; cows yes; humans, no.

Well, cows being herbivores, they won't eat corn unless forced to, and they'll get sick if they do (which explains why cows don't stay corn-fed for very long and need all the medication). Michael Pollan described this pretty well..

I'm curious to know if wood pellet stoves burn more cleanly than "normal" wood stoves. I know that emissions (particulate matter) from those is quite terrible..

I alwasy liked these too
http://www.centralboiler.com

James,
Pellet stoves are very enviorn-friendly: "coming and going."
You need to know that in addition to old or cheap wood-buring stoves, there are some extremely good wood-fired furnaces and some free-standing stoves as well. Science has done well here; it just costs a little more than "cheapest!"

Pellet stoves are great for farmers that have a lot of cheap corn around. That corn, from the farmers perspective, is almost free. Its a lot better than than using fuel oil or propane which is pretty pricey.

Buying the bagged pellets is pretty expensive. Maybe you could get the pellets in bulk direct from a sawmill, but the whole operation involves a lot of moving around heavy bags of pellets which you aren't even guaranteed to be able to buy, at a good price, or possibly at all.

Where is everyone buying pellets?

I live in Chicago area and all the chain stores have told me they stopped selling them because of various issues. Most have never heard of pellet fuel!

I bought 2 tons of softwood pellet fuel (made from waste) and the ash content clogs up my stove.

I could rent a truck and drive to Wisconsin, but that pretty much defeats the whole purpose of buying a pellet stove. I have come to the conclusion that these aren't worth it if you don't live on a farm.

So far this has been an expensive pain in the butt. Are there any hardwood based suppliers that sell direct at a good price with delivery?

Well, cows being herbivores, they won't eat corn unless forced to

Herbivore means "plant-eater". Last time I checked, corn is a plant.

Don't forget that without electricity these things don't work. Some manufacturers have a battery backup, but that seems like a complicated, failure prone solution.

If you are looking for something to provide heat in an emergency, power off situation (like a big snow storm) a pellet stove probably isn't a good idea.

I enquired about installation of a pellet stove in central Edinburgh. Alas they are not yet approved for use in smoke control zones in Scotland. On the up side, if you don't live in a smoke conrol zone you can get a grant of 30% towards the cost of many models of pellet stove.

I find it amazing that, during the summer season, home and garden stores can stock hundreds of pallets of mulch, soil amendments, gravel, sand, bark chips, bedding, etc, and then in the cold months they can't inventory some wood pellets? Something tells me that there are hidden issues related to in-store competition with more profitable items, poor distribution networks, and so on. Note that there are three distinct grades of wood pellet. As you'd expect ,grade 3 produces high ash.

In the commercial/industrial world, deliveries of bulk items such as wood pellets are done with something called a "supersack". It's a very large polymer or jute mesh bag that holds a pallet-worth of material, and the entire bag is sometmies mounted within a wire or plastic cage box to expedite handling. Often supersak cage is kept on a low off-ground base that has a built in gate valve for dispensing the bulk material into a pail or guerny. There is absolutely no reason that such systems (which employ re-usable bags) could not be delivered into home garages or stored on deck areas.

Many homes built before the 1960's still have coal chute doors at the basement window level - usually facing a driveway or alley from which the "coal man" approached for home deliver. It would be straightforward to follow this half-century old business model, but this time using an air handler, with air return through a dust fileter, to transfer the pellets from a home delivery truck into a basement mounted supersack. This is all off the shelf stuff commonly found in industrial settings.

Where there is a will, there is a green way.

"Herbivore means "plant-eater". Last time I checked, corn is a plant."

I meant herbivore as opposed to eating grain, like chickens, for example.. Cows naturally eat grass and a little grain, but their metabolism isn't made for an all-grain diet, especially now grain as rich in sugars as corn.

I previously owned a small house that was completely heated by the largest pellet stove we could buy back in 1997. It was our only heat source for 3 years, but eventually gave it up for two reasons:
1)Pellet issues - Pellets were a seasonal item and stores that carried them would always stop before the season ended to avoid getting caught with inventory. The answer was to have sufficient dry storage, but in a small house with no closets they had to be external. Lugging a 40lb bag is doable when your back is healthy.
2) Ash - You would frequently(~7 days cheap pellets, ~21 days for expensive) have to clean out a chunk of ash/charcoal that built up in the burning chamber. Even with an ash vacuum opening the stove up to remove this and the other ash spread a fine layer of ash around the room. I'd hope that better/easier cleaning is available today.
I do miss the orange glow and the rythmic corkscrew noise!:-jmw

Pellet stoves are great for farmers that have a lot of cheap corn around. That corn, from the farmers perspective, is almost free. Its a lot better than than using fuel oil or propane which is pretty pricey.

Buying the bagged pellets is pretty expensive. Maybe you could get the pellets in bulk direct from a sawmill, but the whole operation involves a lot of moving around heavy bags of pellets which you aren't even guaranteed to be able to buy, at a good price, or possibly at all.

From everything that I have read the central European Kachelofen (tile stove) is the most efficient wood burner to date. The only problem is they tend to weigh 3 tons and there are few craftsmen in the US to build them.

I like building things myself (especially out of dumpster-dived materials), and I'm wondering if anyone knows of any resources/designs for a build-it-yourself corn burning stove?

Any help would be greatly appreciated.

I have been using a pellet stove for two years now. I have not had a problem with shortages of pellets because I buy them by the ton in the spring when the supply is more plentiful. There are two pellet manufacturers in WV so its ok here. There is a certain amount of maintaining to do. The glass must be cleaned daily and the chamber vacuumed out daily as well. You should use the hardwood pellets as the soft pellets make too much ash. I have a wood stove as well as a pellet stove and I feel the wood stove heat is a nice deeper kind of heat. It soaks into your bones. On the other hand, Pellet heat is easier than chopping and dealing with a wood fire but not quite as satisfying. However the pellet stove does burn more cleanly and does not have a much of a creosote build-up so you are less likely to have a flue fire.
Also if the electric goes out the pellet stove is useless unless you have a generator as the pellet stove works by forced air heat.

A few pointers on Wood Pellet Stoves:

*They are capable of being run off grid and being backed up as they have peak power requirements of 300watt and some run as low as 30watt for auger and convection fan. A car battery sized back up system can run this for a while. Not expensive to back up.
* Wood pellets like oil can go into short supply but the following year trees grow and unlike oil which does not increase, some supply will be possible. Which would you rather have periodic wood pellet shortages or increasing shortages of oil or gas?
* Wood pellets are a suitable fuel replacement for nat. gas and oil.
* Most people have only experience with the auxiliary heaters/fireplace heaters while there are several pellet furnaces that can be drop in replacement for forced air systems or hydronic-hotwater systems.
* In Europe there are bulk pellet systems that deliver to tanks that automatically feed to the furnance or burner. This is just like oil systems. Pellets are in such demand there that they import from B.C. Canada.
* There are some pellet heater systems being designed and built that even generate power.
* To get off the electricity, oil and gas treadmill of higher prices one has two choices in all but the sunniest warmest places in NA: 1) Wood Pellet hotwater system with solar hotwater hybrid 2) Groundsource heat pump with solar hotwater hybrid. The second option still makes you massively dependent on the grid while the pellet hotwater systems can be ride through a power outage with a simple car battery or two. Infact with the new electrical generater versions of pellet stoves coming out there would be no necessity to recharge the battery with a generator if the black out lasted longer than you had power in the battery.

In many areas, one of the best potential biofuels for pellet stoves are grass pellets. Not many people in the US are aware of this. The stoves need to be ones with a bigger catch for ash...but more and more stoves will be capable of handling multiple fuel types and reduce the likelihood of pellet shortages. See www.grassbioenergy.org for details.

I live in the city, Washington DC, in an old urban row house and I have found that the pellet stove is a great way to use a fireplace in an old victorian house that would have been prohibitively expensive to use otherwise. Since the stove only requires a 3-4 inch flexible pipe running up the old chimney I did not have to reline the entire chimney to use it. For a city dweller pellet stoves are perfect only if you have access to pellets, a vehicle to carry them in, and a place to keep them. Luckily there is a place about forty minutes away in rural Maryland that has tons of pellets on site, once in the fall and once in the winter we drive out to fill up my small pick-up truck full and make it a nice country get-away too. I would only recomend pellets as an alternative to other heat for most people, as keeping the stove full and getting enough pellets can be a chore if it was your only source of heat. However we have had ours for three years now and never again had to use fossil fuels to heat our house! Recycled waste material feels a lot better heating our house then the non-renewable natural gas!

Starvation in parts of the world is not due to an inability to grow crops, but rather with storage and distribution problems. The American farmer has always been able to meet the world's demand.

I'm happy that by burning corn for heat, I'm supporting the American farmer instead of sending money to countries that export hate and terrorism. At the same time I'm helping the environment, and saving dollars on my heating bills.

I visited a family in Sweden recently - they had a very sophisticated heating system that included a pellet stove. The pellets are stored in a walled-off section of the basement (I'd guess about 10 cubic metres), and when they run low they are replenished by a truck that shoots pellets into the house with air. This must be the air handler JL was talking about.

By the way, the house also has solar panels for first-stage water heating, triple glazing, borehole water, and a truly amazing recycling system that splits waste into about 15 categories.

We too have a pellet stove and a shortage of pellets. We are in California - not the coldest place but it was in the 20's last night!
My question is about the corn. Can I go to our local feed store and get a bag? Can I use cracked corn or should it be whole to fit through the spaces usually meant to accommodate the pellets.Anything else to watch out for? I haven't checked the prices but it might save us.
The stores here have been out of pellets for 6 weeks now. NEXT week it's winter.

We live in Santa Cruz, CA and our local supplier of Golden Fire pellets is out. OSH is also out of the low end pellets that they carry. The person who answered the phone at Home Depot couldn't understand what we were talking about when we asked if they had pellets for pellet stoves in stock. Lowes in San Jose does not have any pellets in stock.

I've done a lot of searching online, but finding little help about availability in our area.

Its too bad that more attention isn't paid to the pellet and pellet stove industry - perhaps then we would have heard about buying a pallet of pellets instead of what our van can hold at one time.

The place we bought our stove from did not warn us that pellet availability could be an issue in our area.

Any info that anyone has about where to get pellets within a reasonable distance of the central coast of California would be great. It's Christmas night and we have one bag of pellets left until our local dealer gets more - estimated to be January 20th.

The compressed wood pellets look similar to the compressed paper pellets used in kitty litter. Does anyone know if they will work as a substitute if the wood supplies are scarce?

I couldn't get used to the sound of the augur. It reminded me of the "DIVE! DIVE! DIVE!" panic sound in a submarine movie --- even though my friend didn't mind it at all.

That was 7 years ago.

Is there a brand or model nowadays that is a lot quieter?

Take a look at my construction site for some really interesting information on pellet stoves and boilers
including a bulk delerivery in Austria simalar to a propane truck only delivering a renewable co2 neutral fuel source.As to the shortage,powerful forces want to make sure you dont have enough!
Chris Hurst www.zeropowerhouse.com

Im in calgary canada,i have a st croix made by even temp.It gets cold here -20 to -30 c. and this stove heats the whole place,i don't have a shortage of pellets as i am next door to bc. A couple of tips,you can put a piece or two of blacksmith coal in the burn pot,that heats it up real nice and it will burn for about 4 hours,and you can turn down the auger on the back of the board and you won't burn so many pellets,i get about 42 -48 hours out of a 40 lb bag,if you can buy the firemaster pine pellets at rona is your best buy.

We live in Connecticut and installed a pellet stove earlier this year. We love it!! We have a house that was 100% electric heat which cost us a fortune last winter (and the house was always cold no matter how high we'd turn up the thermostat. We had thought about converting the house to a propane FHA system, but the cost would have been $10,000-$12,000 and up with the furnace and duct work plus the cost of the propane. We decided the pellet stove was the way to go. It heats so well and such a large area. The house is so nice and warm now. We have not had any problem getting pellets. The stores around here are full of them and we've had 2 tons delivered by a local company so far. We bought a Harmon stove and are very happy so far. It's been great putting the stove on and not have to worry about paying insane electric rates anymore through the winter.

I orderd 3 tons of pellets in the spring when prices are low, and supplies are high. I had them delivered to my door in NJ. Cost me just over $700, including the deliverey charge. Got them from http://www.pelletsales.com . Great premium pellets. I will buy from them again next spring. Last year 2006, I ran around looking for them, from Home Depot ($268/ton)to Lowes and finally at Wal-Mart ($4.??/bag). Didn't like that I had to load, and unload them. PelletSales delivered them, (3 skids)wrapped and covered. Not a ripped bag was found.

i have a pellet/corn stove that i purchased 2 years ago and i love it!!i have not run into a pellet shortage problem''try your local feed or farm store '' i get mine from my local horse feed store and they always have them.even if we burn 4 tons, we are warm and it still doesn't cost what it would be for oil . the best thing is that i do not feel as though i am killing the environment while staying warm! pretty important feature.i mix the pellets 1/3 corn to 2/3 pellets and so far so good .it does require a lot of attention as far as cleaning goes but still cleaner than oil..smells great oil surely doesn't.

On my third year heating solely with a St Croix prescott EXP pellet stove. I have an oil furnace for backup but don't turn it on. Happy as a clam. Ordered 3 tons from pelletsales.com. Delivered to my garage door for 654.00. Got the locked in price under the early buy program in May. No more dealing with those big box stores and their crappy pellets. Oh, and if you are in an area where you lose power I'd suggest owning a generator. Most people who live in high power outage areas own one anyway. Stay warm people!

I am absolutely flabbergasted at the amount of research and effort that went into this site!
And the useful comments of your readers added just that much more to it! I will definitely be mentioning this work in my own Blog! BRAVO!
~Linda~

I orderd 3 tons of pellets in the spring when prices are low, and supplies are high. I had them delivered to my door in NJ. Cost me just over $700, including the deliverey charge. Got them from http://www.pelletsales.com . Great premium pellets. I will buy from them again next spring. Last year 2006, I ran around looking for them, from Home Depot ($268/ton)to Lowes and finally at Wal-Mart ($4.??/bag). Didn't like that I had to load, and unload them. PelletSales delivered them, (3 skids)wrapped and covered. Not a ripped bag was found.

Well, cows being herbivores, they won't eat corn unless forced to

Herbivore means "plant-eater". Last time I checked, corn is a plant.

From everything that I have read the central European Kachelofen (tile stove) is the most efficient wood burner to date. The only problem is they tend to weigh 3 tons and there are few craftsmen in the US to build them.

And the useful comments of your readers added just that much more to it! I will definitely be mentioning this work in my own Blog! BRAVO!
~Linda~

The compressed wood pellets look similar to the compressed paper pellets used in kitty litter. Does anyone know if they will work as a substitute if the wood supplies are scarce?

thanks

The compressed wood pellets look similar to the compressed paper pellets used in kitty litter. Does anyone know if they will work as a substitute if the wood supplies are scarce?

Is there a brand or model nowadays that is a lot quieter?