[AT] Pellet stove

[deanvp at att.net]

Farmer:

Looks like you have a good plan. We have used a wood pellet stove for several years and have been quite pleased with it. Our alternative heat is a Lennox heat pump which we are not too happy with.  The Pellet Stove heats the house quite nicely for about 1/3 the cost. Had a bit of a pleasant surprise this fall when purchasing the first ton of pellets. They were on sale at $120 a ton. Usually around $150.00.  Ours is a Whitfield stove, which are made locally but the company is now owned by Lennox. As I recall our pellet stoves are significantly more expensive out here in NW Washington than the $1200 you paid. Not sure why there is such a difference. Good luck with the installation.

-------------- Original message from "Indiana Robinson" <robinson at svs.net>: -------------- 


> I bought a new pellet stove last week. I didn't need it 
> just yet but sales have been so brisk that I was afraid 
> that when I needed it (next month) that I might not have 
> much to pick from. I will install the new one in the house 
> and put the one we have used for the last two years in the 
> shop. 
> I am going to install the new one at one end of the family 
> room (24'x36'+) and put the last wood stove back in the 
> stove nook. It is one of the cabinet type wood stoves with 
> a thermostat and a blower on it. 
> I will also keep the big wood stove in the shop. It is 
> big enough to call a furnace and has a large squirrel cage 
> blower on it which blows a lot of air out and down from 
> each side of it. 
> The plan in both cases is to keep the wood stoves going 
> while we are available all day long but then to let the 
> pellet stoves take over when we are gone or at night. That 
> way neither place will have an opportunity to cool down and 
> have to be heated back up. Most days the pellet stoves will 
> be shut down after the wood stoves are fired up. The wood 
> fires will be banked down over night. The wood stoves 
> should keep the pellet cost down well and I have the wood. 
> Then in extreme cold weather using both should eliminate 
> the need for the electric heat to kick on in the upper 
> level of the house. The new pellet stove is also about 
> 1/3rd higher BTU rated than the old one. 
> I was going to buy a corn stove but those are all gone and 
> on waiting list here. Its not too big a deal as I have 
> burned a pellet / corn blend successfully in the stove I 
> had. At the moment I do not plan to grow any corn next year 
> anyway. 
> The new stove is a Breckwell like the ones at the bottom 
> of this page: 
> http://www.breckwell.com/pellet.htm 
> Mine is the "Big E" furnace but with the large glass door. 
> One of the things I did not care for on the old one was 
> that the hopper barely held 40 # of pellets. This one holds 
> 140#. Also at low fire the old one would use at least 3 to 
> 4 pounds of pellets an hour which in 40 degree weather will 
> drive you out of the house and wastes a lot of fuel. The 
> new stove claims to burn as little as .9 pounds an hour on 
> the lowest setting. 
> There is a "secret" set of buttons on the old stove to 
> adjust the low feed rate but that manufacture calls then 
> "factory set" and does not tell how to set them. I intend 
> to get a free video that they now have that supposedly 
> tells how to set them. I don't want that high of a feed 
> rate in the shop. I am not sure why they were so secretive 
> about those settings in the past. 
> The new stove will be connected to a millivolt thermostat 
> mounted at a remote location in the room which should also 
> save some fuel. Sometimes the day starts cold but warms a 
> lot before we get home. 
> The old pellet stove was $800 and the new one was $1200. 
> The shop still needs a bit of "closing in" but I am 
> gaining ground on it and it will be fairly tight a a couple 
> of weeks. I'm really looking forward to working in a warm 
> shop all winter. It is hard to get excited about working in 
> there at 20 degrees... :-) I feel pretty comfortable 
> working at 50 to 55 degrees. 
> 
> 
> -- 
> "farmer" 
> Living at Hewick Midwest 
> 
> Sometimes we have to work at it a little but if we 
> are all going to age well we must indeed work at keeping a 
> positive attitude. We might as well go out in overdrive and 
> with the pedal to the metal because this thing called life 
> "don't got no reverse"... There is no sense wasting 
> a lot of time trying to find one... 
> (FJR 2005) 
> 
> Francis Robinson 
> Central Indiana USA 
> robinson at svs.net 
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> Remembering Our Friend Cecil Monson 11-4-2005 
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