Pellet stove advice needed.

[TOMLESCOEQUIP]

I'm thinking of installing a pellet insert in my wood burning fireplace. I currently have a heatilator insert that was built into the original masonry fireplace when our house was built

(it is the firebox & has a standard damper & a standard size opening).


The Amish mason who installed the original unit was a great mason, but not a PEH installer. He bricked over the duct work in the firebox that should have been hooked up to provide outside air for combustion, & also replaced the metal fan grates (for intake & output air to the built in circulation fan) with fancy brick work with gaps in between........

Looks much better than the black tin grates that came with the heatilator kit, but cuts the cfm of the air the fans can move by probably 50% or more.

I have glass doors on the FP now, but still go thru way too much wood for the heat value I'm getting out of it. I burn hardwood cutoffs from a local lumber mill, clean square sawed 4x6x12 to 8x8 x16 inch chunks........some smaller, but you get the general idea.

I used to buy a large tandem dump truck load heaping from the sideboards delivered for $175, & went thru about 3 loads a year. Now the same load is over $300. Plus we still use nat gas as we aren't there to feed the fire 24-7.

It got me thinking about capping of the fireplace with a pellet insert & being able to dump a bag of pellets (or corn) in it & letting it do its thing. Since I'm spending about $1000 a year now on wood, having to buy pellets wouldn't make the difference in cost too bad for me, since I don't have access to free firewood.

Anyone know anything about what brand to buy or have any experience with these ??

I'm looking for one with a good reputation from a company that's been around & will be around if & when I may need parts & service.

I've looked at units at a local farm store & the door handles were already broken off some of their display models !

Thanks.............

Tom

 

[Dmace]

Our house came with a Harman brand pellet stove which I have researched to be one of the best and the contractor went top of the line with everything else, so I am not surprised. For 3 years now, the stove has been great. I clean the ash tray about once a month just for safety not because it is full and the pellets are about $4 per 40lb bag. Cranked, the stove uses about 1 bag a day, but we keep it on low to help out and have that nice wood burning scent throughout the house. Make sure you use hardwood pellets like the ones from Lowes, the other pellets from Home Depot were tough to start and made more ash than heat.

Here is a picture from before we moved in.

 

[VABlue]

I can't tell you who to buy from, but I can tell you my experience... A good friend has two of them - one in each enclosed kennel building. The buildings are roughly 60' long x 30' wide, each contain 30 runs, and are not insulated. The pellet stoves will keep the temps between 40-50 when the outside temps drop near 20, so they work quite well. They are used pretty much 24/7 during the coldest couple of months of the year and (to my knowledge) have not broken down over several years of operation.

Based on that, I would recommend getting one...

 

[jdgreg]

I have 2 Whitfield pellet stoves, one fireplace insert in the family room and a free standing unit in the basement. I've had them for around 10 yrs, and have been completely reliable. At the time, Whitfield was one of the top companies. Which model you get will most likely depend on what suppliers/installers you have in your area. Personnally, I'd stay away from the units that are sold at the farm & family type centers, as I dont think they are top models. I do get all my pellets at TSC however. Dont recall the cost now, but I usually go through about 2 tons a winter. Pellets are a LOT easier (and probably cheaper) than dealing with wood.

 

[ByronBob]

Mine is made from New England Stoves. They sold the model I have at TSC at the time. I still can get parts directly off their web site.

Pellets around my area are over 200 / ton. So you'd get 4 tons for under $1000. I burn 1 bag a day and my furnace still kicks on occasionally. The settings are low on the auger or else I burn more like 2 bags a day.

 

[jfh28]

Just had one installed this year....Harmon Accentra. We did away with an old wood burning insert. This is so much easier, uses about a bag a day and keeps the first floor of the house at a nice 68 degrees. Comes with it's own thermostat and auto ignitor so it will turn on an off during the day as needed by itself. You just have to dump the bag of pellets in it. Very quiet, no smell, no fuss. You need to spend about 10-15 minutes a week scraping the fire pot and cleaning....a little more once a month. But so much easier than the woodburner.....and a whole lot easier on the back!

Our ultimate decision came down to the local shop that sold it and installed it.....family run and stands behind it. Even in the pellet shotage of a few years ago they kept their customers supplied. Spend the time to look around.

8 degrees here last night but house was nice and toasty!

Jack

 

[TOMLESCOEQUIP]

A local dealer sells the Harman & recommended the Accentra insert........but quoted me $3800...........ouch !! ........that would take a long time to recover the investment.

Thanks for the replies so far. I'd like to get to know as much about them as I can before I buy one......especially brands to avoid with known problems !

Tom

 

[Mickey_Fx]

I also have a Whitfield, about 5 yrs, and have been satisified with it. It's a pellet insert and replaced a woodburning insert. Wouldn't go back to the stick burner. How often you have to clean out the ashes depend upon qlty of pellets used and how big the ash box is. IMO ash content in independent of whether pellets are made from soft or hardwood. Ash content should be listed on the bags. The pellets I'm using list ash content of .25% and are made from fir.

IMO you do want to get one that has the capability of hooking up a thermostat. I have a programable tstat and don't have to mess with the stove regardless of time of day or need for heat. My controller doesn't shut the stove off when set temp has been reached, it just slows the stove down so there is only a vary small fire. BIL has a newer Whitfield with a different controller and he say when tstat set temp has been reached the stove completely shuts down. Takes a lot longer to fire it up again and for it to heat up than how my controller works.

Whitfield is now owned by Lennox. Local dealer no longer sells them saying they have moved production to Mexico and qlty isn't what it was.

As for buying from a farm store, all depends upon the store. My local farm store has an area, showroom, as large and a lot of stove shops and handles several different brands. There are stoves setup and operating during the winter months. IMO blanket statements are not always valid for everyone.

 

[Sigarms]

A local dealer sells the Harman & recommended the Accentra insert........but quoted me $3800...........ouch !!

You're in the same boat I'm in.

I currently have a gas furnace-A/C for my first floor and was thinking about replacing the furnace a/c set up with a heat pump without strip heat and using a pellet stove for back up heat.

Have a friend who owns a fireplace shop and he gave me a VERY good price on a pellet stove insert. Problem was the pellet stove was just over 30% more than a variable speed, two stage, 95% gas furnace (which I would duel fuel with the heat pump). If the A/C has to come out (system is pushing twenty years old), labor wise, it would actually be eaiser to put in the furnace than stove.

I'm now scratching my head. I'll probably end up going with the variable speed gas furnace down the road.

 

[Red55]

I'm on my third season with a Englander stove which I believe is based in Virginia. Got my pellets from Lowe's $4.48 a bag and a bag lasts almost a day (20-22hrs) Great stove had one problem called them and they walked me thru the problem and it was fixed in less time than I was on hold for. It can also be hooked up to a remote thermstat but I leave my stove on all the time on warmer days I run it at it's lowest setting (1) I believe that if you're always pumping heat into the house it is much more cormfortable and efficient than trying to catch up when the weather turns colder. Burn about 4 tons a year lot less work than "free" wood and a lot less clean up and mess.
-Ed

 

[shvl73]

I have the smaller Englander pellet stove found in the home centers. It works well. I had one problem with the blower and they sent out a replacement with no hassle. We burn 2 tons a year to supplement our oil heat. We also burn a little wood. For the $, the Englanders are decent units.

 

[charlz]

I am on my 3rd year with my Quadrafire 1200i (Quadrafire is made in Washington state I believe). It is an insert but it would not fit in the fireplace (one of those 'for show' metal ones.. not very deep or big) so I ripped out the fireplace and configured it to be a stand alone (extra $$). Pipe had to go up 2.5 stories and all installed it was $4500. Wife had to have the gold trim and all that.

I am on propane at over $2.00/gallon and pellets this year were $220/ton. On a BTU basis pellets are half the price of propane for the same BTU's. Based on this my payback is about 4.5-5 years. I have a 3000 sq ft house and burn between 5 and 6 tons per year. The stove can keep up until the day time highs are only in the 20's. Then I run the propane over the pellet stove... meaning I set the pellet stove high and the propane to what I actually want the house at. This way the pellet stove runs all the time and the propane only kicks on as needed. I went from 3-4 propane tank (500 gal tank) fills per winter to none in the last 3 years.

I buy all my pellets at Home Depot and use the 12 month financing. I have had bad pellets before. All softwood I believe out here... the lighter the color the better as it means less bark and trash. I get some great ones out of Canada called Fire Master.

Pay attention to the firepan size. Mine has a very small pan, just to empty the firepot. All the rest of the ash builds up inside and you need a $200 ash vacuum to clean it out (or lots of time to scoop it out). When running 24x7 I use slightly over 2 bags a day and have to clean out the stove weekly.


That feature to run the stove low versus turning it off sounds nice. It does take quite a while for the stove to really put out heat from a cold start.

Charles

 

[jfh28]

If you wait until the end of the season that price will come down......I bought mine in the summer. We used about 900 gal of propane last year and at 2.75/gal this year it's not going to take long for the harmon to be paid off. Based on what we have used so far i figure we're going to use about 3 - 31/2 tons of pellets at 235/ton.

Jack

 

[Dmace]

Here is the picture that was supposed to be in my first post.

Tripod stinks for picture hosting - Use photobucket, it's great!

 

[Nasty135]

Hey Tom, I had a slight different approach, I bought a good working used Whitfield Advantage II fireplace insert from the classified , It had 18 bags of pellets with it for a total $500. This was a few years back when people in my area were going to gas logs.

I did have to clean & paint it and make my own flu flange (very easy) but now my heat is set on 60* upstairs (cool for good sleepin) and 60* down stairs so the downstairs unit doesn't run much if at all... Our house has 6" walls which helps ...

This stove also runs through a bag a day, and my only complaint is it has a small ashbox , so every two days I have to shut it down to clean.. but the wife usually shuts it off during the day because she gets too warm (in her mid 40's )

I think it would probably be a good move to get a pellet stove new or used just keep the bearings on the brushless motors lubed up and it should give you good warm service...

Mark

 

[heehaw]

sounds like you got a heck of a deal on that stove: i've wanted a corn/pellet stove for a couple years now, but the price scares me off: an now with corn being used to make fuel, the price has gone up so pellets would probably be cheaper? i'll keep looking for a used one, and maybe luck out.
heehaw

 

[charlz]

sounds like you got a heck of a deal on that stove: i've wanted a corn/pellet stove for a couple years now, but the price scares me off: an now with corn being used to make fuel, the price has gone up so pellets would probably be cheaper? i'll keep looking for a used one, and maybe luck out.
heehaw

Yep, I bought a pellet stove that can also do corn... figured 'dual fuel' would be the way to go.... oh well.

 

[TOMLESCOEQUIP]

Looked at a local dealer today that has Breckwell pellet stoves........he says they're great & no issues in 2 years on the demo model he uses to heat his display area. Quoted about $2200 for a "deluxe" insert with gold trim, cash & carry.

He wanted $450 to run a 4" stainless tube up my chimney tho............

Anyone have a Breckwell stove ?

TIA

Tom

 

[RonMar]

Whitfield was bought out a few years ago by Lennox, so parts shouldn't be a problem. I have one of theirs, a PF-20 that has been working well for 2 years now. The Harmon's and the Quadrafires are very nice, as well as those made in Canada by Enviro Fire. I would say all 3 of these makes are built a little better than the Whitfield. Some of the cast iron models are much nicer. I did quite a bit of research before I bought mine, but I also got a pretty good deal on it at just under $1700 delivered, which ultimately made up our mind. I installed it in place of a freestanding wood stove.

I don't know how familliar you are with pellets, but the combustion process is powered by a blower on the flue outlet pipe. It places a vacume on the firebox which forces combustion air to be drawn in thru the burn pot under the pellets, from an air duct. Any leak in door or case seal will draw in air instead of letting smoke or gas out into the room.

One thing I wish I would have looked closer at was the combustion air inlet. You want one that is hard plummed all the way into the burn pot. IE, the only source for the combustion air is via a single pipe so you can draw all the combustion air from outside the house by connecting it to an external air duct. The Whitfield I bought has a small pipe for combustion air, but it is only thru the rear skin of the outer case, which is full of louvers and about as airtight as a birdcage. The actual combustion duct on the fire box draws it's air from the inside of the outer case, or basically from the room it is setting in.

Pellet stoves burn so clean by pumping a LOT of air thru the stove. I would say far more than a woodstove does. If the combustion air is drawn from the house, it is pumped outside via the flue pipe. This room air has to be made up from somewhere else, like any leak around a window or door seal with cold outside air. Our first season of running it was pretty chilly in the living room. The stove was pumping out heat like mad, but the outer edges of the room were always cold, way colder than they had been with the wood stove. I had to do some internal welding and ducting on this new stove to get the combustion source into a single duct that I could plumb to the outside. Once I could draw the combustion air from outside the house, it was much more comfortable inside.

I did not get the opportunity to take the sides off of the whitfield when shopping. The only one I found local, was a working demo and the store heater. The gentelman didn't sell Whitfield anymore. I found the one I bought on line from a supplier in Idaho. If I would have had the chance to look inside, this lack of ductwork would have been readilly apparent and taken it off my list. The rest of the stove is built pretty well, so the little bit of the pipe I saw comming out the back lead me to assume(as it was intended to) that it was hard plummed the the burn pot as in other stoves I have seen. Caviat Emptor... IT looks nice(wife liked this one's look) and after a little work by me, it is performing as well as any pellet would in our home, and the price was right. But I would NOT buy another Whitfield! My next vote based on performance VS construction VS Price was the small envirofire that had about the same 12,000 BTU output on low.

Another thing to look for is heat exchanger size. there is a second blower that pumps room air thru the heat exchanger tubes and back into the room. The size(surface area) of the heatexchanger is directly proportional to the efficiency More tubes are better. Most pellet stove heat exchanger efficiencies are in the area of 75-80% I found when I was doing my research, that some manufacturers advertised their stoves output by the ammount of fuel it burnt(in BTU) as this is a larger number and makes the stove look more impressive. Some listed theirs the more honest way by the actual heat output into the space. But since they all give burn rates in pounds per hour, this is easy enough to check out. Average grade wood pellets contain around 8500 BTU per pound. So a stove like mine that burns 1.8LB(around 15,300 BTU) on low only puts about 12,087 BTU into the room at the 79% advertised heatex efficiency. So the claimed 12K BTU on low was accurate. Usually some or all the parts to this equation are available in the stove info brochures, pounds burnt per hour, claimed heat output, or heatex efficiency, to see just how honestly the manufacturer is selling their product.

The above information is also handy in calculating the size stove you need. Most all the stoves I have looked at offer low, medium and high heat output levels. And I think with only one exception, all were reccomending NOT to run them on the highest setting for extended periods. They are also less efficient on the higher settings(more heat goes up the chimney) So you should size the stove to meet your needs on the lowest setting and the intermediate and high settings used only intermittently to take the edge off a cold room. Most all the stoves I have seen offer a thermostat option that turns the stove on or off for heat control. Some, like the Envirofire can also shift from high to low under thermostat control to maintain the temp in the room, I wish I had this feature, mine only does on or off. Since I don't run the stove wheni am not here, I don't even use the on or off feature.

Most all the stoves I have looked at are top fed, IE: The auger lifts the pellets up from the botom of the hopper to where they fall down a chute into the burn pot. I believe Harmon marketed a bottom fed version where the pellets are pushed into the bottom of the burnpot, which makes for a very steady and quiet feed method. I don't know if they make these anymore, but it didn't look especially safe to me, as if the power went out, and without forced airflow control, the potential existed for the fire to burn back along the pellets in the auger and ignite the pellets stored in the hopper. This is virtually impossible in the top fed design, which most all pellet stoves employ.

Another factor is noise. Mine sets in my living room along with the TV. It has 2 blowers and an auger motor, so it makes noise. It is not especially annoying, but it does add to the background noise level. One of the quietest stoves I looked at was the Envirofire Mini. It actually has insulation on the insides of the cabinet panels. Not for heat, but to dampen the blower noises and it was by far the quietest I have ever looked at(this one initially had my vote, but the wife didn't like the way it looked. A insert model should be quieter, but look for insulation on the trim panels that will fill in the open space around the unit once installed in your existing fireplace.

Another issue may be necessary heat. My main source of heat was the woodstove that the pellet replaced. Pellet stoves require power to operate so I wound up building a small generator set for my home to keep the lights and now heat on. They don't take much power, mine uses about 400Watts in normal operation and about 700W when lighting. This was a little too much to feed long term with a inverter, so I went with a generator as this had other advantages.

Good Luck.

 

[charlz]

One thing I wish I would have looked closer at was the combustion air inlet. You want one that is hard plummed all the way into the burn pot. IE, the only source for the combustion air is via a single pipe so you can draw all the combustion air from outside the house by connecting it to an external air duct. The Whitfield I bought has a small pipe for combustion air, but it is only thru the rear skin of the outer case, which is full of louvers and about as airtight as a birdcage. The actual combustion duct on the fire box draws it's air from the inside of the outer case, or basically from the room it is setting in.

And I think with only one exception, all were reccomending NOT to run them on the highest setting for extended periods. They are also less efficient on the higher settings(more heat goes up the chimney)

I did not find any recommending to not run them on high 24x7, maybe I did not look hard enough. I did see stories of control boards failing due to the constant high heat. My Quadrafire has the board mounted on a 'stand off' with lots or air circulation around it... barely gets warm.

I do wish mine had modes where you could leave the blower on high and run the stove on low/med. I could see where this might be an issue if you ran the stove on high and the blower on low as you could overheat the stove. Mine just has three modes low/med/high which controls both the blower and the stove.

I would expect to see better thermostat/stove controls come out. The existing thermostat wires could easily carry a digital signal between the two allowing more than just on/off low/high/med. Of course this requires a special digital thermostat and controls in the stove so more $$

I called on Propane the other day and it is $2.629 per gallon. My propane furnace and pellet stove are both about 80% efficient. On a straight btu to btu basis each $229 ton (including $9/ton for delivery) of pellets offsets almost $470 worth of propane which keeps about $240 in my pocket.


This year is the 3rd year of operation with the pellet stove. I spent $4,500 to get it installed and by the end of this winter it will have offset about $3,000 in propane costs.

What other improvement can you make to your house that will give 22% Return on Investment (ROI) ???

Charles