Heating a shop.. How big of a pellet stove

[4570Man]

Your just a bit north of me - I'm surprised firing off an 80K gas furnace for a 30x40 shop works so quickly. Is that coming up from "winter" ambient, say 32° ?



That would tend to rule out heating a big concrete slab.
Since gas is ruled out and you probably wouldn't like the smell of diesel/kerosene that does narrow it down.

I leave the thermostat set on 45 and if I know I’ll be working again the next day I leave it at 50. I usually set it at 65 to work so it doesn’t have a long ways to go. And the gas furnace reaches its rated performance in a few minutes. It probably takes a wood stove an hour to get there.

 

[PA hayseed]

If you don't know, there are many different types of pellet stoves and pellet furnaces. Most people that wind up hating a pellet stove (besides the price of pellets) normally bought a Home Depot or Lowes Pellet stove. Most of those stoves are lower quality units. I know this because I have owned two in two different houses, and finally got a Harman P68 in my current house. It is rated to heat large areas (if you go this route ensure that it is rated to heat the sq ft you want it to). YOu only have to clean the ash pan out about once a month. Maintenance on this unit is easy. It is electric fan/blower and has a thermostat, and it starts itself. It comes with a 60 pound hopper and you could buy an extension for it to hold more or fabricate one yourself. I don't get paid from harman, it is just night and day difference with the one from home depot and the other from lowes. Mine currently sits in my basement and I use it to heat the basement only and use oil for forced air for the rest of the house. My basement is approximately 1700ft (maybe more) and it is not all wide open. I keep the thermostat set at 62 and the blower speed low. I put in about 2 bags a day, and go through about 3 ton a year depending on the severity of the winter. 1/3 of my basement is above ground. It gets cold on the hilltop with a lot of wind in the winter, but that is also where I put my home gym, dart board, man cave stuff.

Last year I bought my pellets at rural king in august/september when they were running a sale with an in store cash back thing. Being cheap, I bought it with a cash back card, and I used some other financial wrangling. Beware the rural king loaders, those guys were morons trying to load on my trailer. Read their store receipt about supervising the loading.

On a side note, I have a real small cast iron pan on top of my stove and I throw those scented wax things in there. I like the cinnamon ones, they make me hungry for cinnamon buns though, but they make the entire house smell good.

 

[LouNY]

We're getting too old and beat up to keep using wood heat, so when our current log pile is gone, we're also converting to coal- friends of mine fill their stove once a week, and it keeps their 3200 sq foot 1920's era farmhouse toasty warm, despite their still original single pane windows [they do also have single pane storms].

The newer stoves are ultra-efficient, coal doesn't rot, or get waterlogged, and my research showed that the prices have been amazingly stable compared with gas, electric, wood, and especially pellets.

I'm looking forward to being able to just bring a couple of bucketsful/week, instead of needing the tractor and forks to deliver a pallet-load of wood to the porch.

To tie-in to the thread topic- we also use a Kerosene/Diesel Salamander to heat our local work area in our barn, instead of trying to heat the whole space- but we're only talking 1400 sq ft, with 16' uninsulated walls, although we did put 1" fiberglass bonded to a vapor barrier insulation on the underside of the roof, it's just there to prevent condensation on warm days when there is still snow on the roof.

Same here I have my salamander set up with a piggyback thermostat which I set for 45-50 when I'm working in the shop, my brothers place we use the salamander to take the chill off then an old wood burner to maintain.
I use about a bag, 40#'s of coal a day in my fireplace insert, about 3 ton a year.
It saves several hundred gallons of oil and my wife likes it as the temperature is higher then the oil setpoint. :laughing:

 

[ovrszd]

Nothing quit like a warm floor .

Yeah, I'm anxious to try that.