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Posted by GeekBoy on March 14, 2008, 5:28 pm
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And don't forget about the pellet shortage a couple of years ago and people
could not heat their homes with them.
What about you do if that happened?
> wrote:
>
>>I've never owned a pellet stove and haven't known anybody that has so
>>the answers to these questions will probably be obvious to alot of
>>you...but here goes...
>>
>>We (me, wife, 2 young boys) are thinking of buying our first house, we
>>live is Massachusetts. The house is a big (2300 sq ft) old (1890)
>>house. It's got two floors with the (3) bedrooms all on the 2nd floor.
>>I know that the attic is insulated but I'm not sure about the walls of
>>the house, I'm assuming they are but I'm going to check on that before
>>I make an offer.
>>
>>The house has forced hot air, with oil. I got some info from the local
>>oil company and it seems the guy who used to live there was buying
>>about 860 gallons of oil a year. That's pretty expensive, so I was
>>thinking of buying a pellet stove for supplemental heat. I've been
>>told that if I buy a good stove and put it on the first floor it will
>>heat the entire first floor. Has anybody done this? It would seem that
>>the room the furnace is in would be reeeallly hot, and the other rooms
>>would get progressively colder as you move away? How do you normally
>>deal with that?
>>
>>Can you hook a pellet stove into existing ductwork to more evenly
>>distribute the heat? Has anybody done that?
>>
>>Does using a pellet stove substantially increase the electric bill?
>>
>>I was thinking of putting a stove on the 1st floor and just using the
>>existing forced hot air system to heat the bedrooms upstairs (which
>>will require me to move the thermostat upstairs...but that's not a
>>problem). How do people on this forum generally use and setup their
>>pellet stoves?
>>Thanks
>
> Hi Mash,
>
> I'm not a huge fan of pellet stoves for several reasons -- while they
> do offer some advantages over wood log, pellet stoves require
> electricity to operate, they're mechanically complicated and
> potentially trouble-prone, and they're fairly fussy in terms of the
> quality of their fuel (e.g., moisture content must be kept low and
> pellet size must be uniform). Because these machines have two or
> three motors, an electronic control board, an igniter, photo eye and
> various mechanical components that are susceptible to ash and dust
> build-up through the course of normal use, they do require a thorough
> cleaning/tune-up at least once a year. Budget between $150.00 to
> $200.00 a year for a professional service call if you don't feel
> comfortable doing this work yourself -- that's an expense that could
> easily wipe-out 15 to 25 per cent of the expected savings right off
> the bat. In addition, most stoves must be shutdown once a day/every
> other day so that ash and clinker build-up within the combustion
> chamber can be removed. Likewise, you'll need to clean the venting
> about every fifty bags and, trust me, this is not something you can
> ignore. Due to their constant neediness and often temperamental
> behaviour, I refer to these products as the "Plymouth Volare of
> heating technologies".
>
> In any event, depending upon the sap content of the pellet, you net
> about 275,000 BTUs of heat from a 40-lb bag (i.e., 8,600 BTUs/lb x 40
> lbs. x 0.80 combustion efficiency = 275,200 BTUs). One gallon of
> heating oil provides you with 139,000 BTUs (gross) and typically
> between 97,000 and 118,000 BTUs net, as determined by the efficiency
> of your furnace. In most cases, one bag of pellets will displace
> about 2.5 gallons of heating oil. If this home consumes 860 gallons
> of fuel oil, that's the equivalent of 344 bags or just about 7 tons.
>
> Locally, we pay about $4.80 per bag for a premium quality pellet/$240
> per ton, so 7 tons would cost you about $1,680.00. At $3.30 per
> gallon, 860 gallons of oil will set you back $2,838.00, so the
> difference is $1,158.00. It's unlikely you could displace all of your
> heating oil demand (some parts of the house will always need a little
> extra heat), so your actual savings might come in closer to $800.00 a
> year, and if you do have your stove professionally cleaned and
> serviced at the end of the heating season, $600.00.
>
> Also, does this 860 gallons cover-off domestic hot water use? If this
> home has an oil-fired water heater -- and that's fairly common of
> older homes with oil furnaces -- your space heating consumption might
> fall in the range of 700 gallons/year with the balance being DHW
> related, in which case your net savings could be 20 per cent lower
> than what's estimated here.
>
> Lastly, a good quality name brand pellet stove, hearth pad, vent pipe
> and installation by a certified technician is probably going to run in
> the range of $3,500.00, so your simple pay back is likely to be
> anywhere from four to seven years, assuming the spread between both
> fuels stays roughly the same. It's not uncommon for a control board,
> auger motor or combustion fan to fail over that time span and one or
> more service calls could seriously eat into your savings. This is one
> of those products where an extended warranty plan makes a lot of sense
> because, sadly, there are a lot of reincarnated Plymouth Volares out
> there just waiting to suck you dry.
>
> Cheers,
> Paul
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