[ctviggen]

We bought a large house, solely for an in law apartment.  Then I realized the house (according to the previous oil company) uses an average of 1,600 gallons of oil per year.  Yikes!!  We definitely will be putting in more insulation (attics spray foamed, basement sill spray foamed, ceiling of garage/floor of in law blown-in insulation, etc.).  However, that's going to take a while to save for.  In the interim, we've had a recommendation to install a pellet stove.  We have a large great room (living room, eat in kitchen, kitchen) that opens up to other areas of the house.  The living room has a fireplace.  If we added a pellet stove to that fireplace, we could heat a lot of the house and probably dramatically cut down on oil. 

Anyone have a pellet stove?  If so, are there any cautions you have?  I'm particularly afraid of fan or other noise (I HATE fan noise).  We have plenty of space to store pellets in the basement. 

Thanks!

[Chromisdesigns]

Not specific to pellet stoves, but a couple comments on wood stoves in general.  For whole house heating, it's best to locate them in the lowest level, then provide circulation grates to allow heat to flow up.  My sister had two in her house -- the original one, installed when it was built, was in the basement, and pretty much heated the whole house.

When they added an extension, they put another one in the new space.  It heated that area fine (with assistance of a ceiling fan), but the heat never spread out from there.

Also, consider how many of those 40lb bags of pellets you want to haul up the stairs...again, it was much easier for her to wheel a rack of logs from the woodpile in the basement door, than it was to fuel the upstairs stove.

[bladesmith]

I use a Buck stove, very efficient,  very easy on the wood pile. A little fickle to get started.
But I can burn all day with one wheel barrel of (hedge) wood. Thats pretty good.

My whole house, two story, 1700 sq. ft., stays warm. All I have to do is turn the (central heating systems) fan on for about 15 minutes every 3 or 4 hrs to circulate the heat evenly thru the house.

Hedge burns the hottest, but is a bit sparky, if moist. Needs to be throughly seasoned.

Hack berry is good to burn also. Never used pellets.

Good luck.

[Bob in St. Louis]

Good thread Bob, I'd like to follow this one. I think we're on the same page with several aspects of the idea.

Bob

[mgalusha]

We have a Quadrafire brand pellet stove in our living room. Living out in the sticks we're on propane, well water and septic, so natural gas isn't an option. The first winter we spent something like $2700 on propane, as you can imagine that was a rude surprise. As we met some of our neighbors we learned many had put in pellet stoves and were generally happy with the results.

We had one installed over the following summer and have been using it since, starting it's 6th winter at the moment. Our house is a 1700sf ranch and it heats the living room, kitchen and dining are pretty well, not so much the bedrooms but small space heaters work well for the short time we need them in the bedrooms. This year two pallets, one ton each, cost about $550 delivered. Usually we have a few bags left over at the end of the season but we did use them all last year as my wife was working nights and thus it burned more during the day. In Colorado there is a massive about of beetle kill in the forests, so we've been buying pellets made from beetle kill trees.

I have it connected to a standard programmable thermostat, it comes on at 05:30 along with the gas furnace to warm the house up so we don't freeze getting out of the shower. It then shuts down along with the furnace when we leave for work. Comes back on at 16:00 to warm the house up. The gas furnace doesn't come on at all except at 05:30 as mentioned previously.

They burn hot and clean enough that we don't have to abide by the wood burning restrictions that occur during winter in our area.

Fan noise, yes indeed, there is plenty of that, very dependent on the setting. It's not bad on low but fairly noisy on high, however we save perhaps $1000/year in fuel costs and so put up with it. Thankfully my listening room is in the basement, so it doesn't intrude on music. We do have to turn the TV up in the living room but it's tolerable, at least for us.

hope this helps, mike

[bladesmith]

My fan has one speed, noisy. Turn it on when I go to sleep. It shuts off automatically when the fire burns down.

You might get one with lower speeds or quieter modes. Not sure. But they can be noisy.

It's been pretty chilly here for several weeks, teens and tweenties. But the fire is nice.
 
A real wood fire is nice, but more work than pellets. From what I gather.

[Russell Dawkins]

Some of these outside wood burners look like they make sense as a complete replacement for a forced air furnace or hot water system. They burn for a long time with one refilling and so don't demand the attention that even the best stove or insert requires. Also, they can be situated near the wood, eliminating the long walks in and out of the house to replenish the stove wood.  They burn at efficiencies approaching 100% and make little smoke as a result. If you live in a rural area with wood on your property, these could amortize in a few years despite their high initial cost.
Here's an example:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rwL01iW36MA

[ZAKski288]

Have a Harman pellet stove (actually two of them) well built, cast iron, very heavy, you would almost think is was a wood stove. The fan is variable speed with a high / low switch .   Great stove, I think they also make an insert

[GT Audio Works]

Wow...I thought my oil bill was obscene! Do you live in a very cold part of the country, or is your oil burner very inefficient ?
What is the Gallon per hour rating on your oil burner nozzle..your oil burner may be set up wrong and wasting a lot of oil.

Pellet stoves make 2 annoying noises...fan noise and this tink tink noise that comes from the auger dropping the pellets into the metal combustion chamber.
Some less noisy than others. A good large pellet insert is gonna run you $2.5- $3k. The main advantage is convenience, just load the hopper set the thermostat and forget it..just clean out the chamber when needed. Pellets run about $200/ton, not sure how long a ton will last but they are more expensive than firewood for the same btu output.
A cheap interim solution may be a plain old big wood stove..you can find them cheap on craigslist...minimal investment...lots of heat, firewood cheap..$175/chord.... no way to control the temp like the pellet stove, and more work to maintain the fire and clean the ash.
The disadvantage of either type of unit is turning down your oil burner will make the rooms further away from the heat source cold.
So you turn up the oil burner and defeat the purpose of saving oil...Is you water heated by oil also ??

The best way to go is with an outdoor wood fired boiler.... They mount outside your house connected to your oil boiler water system via pipes run underground. It keeps the big mess of dealing with wood outside next to the unit, the fire box is big and burns for many hours..the heat transfers to your indoor boiler and heats your domestic hot water system and keeps the whole house warm. They are not cheap..$5k or better, with some of the high efficiency environment friendly wood gasification units over $10k... but with oil only going up..it is a viable alternative.
If your oil fired unit is forced hot air..it can be fitted with a water to air heat exchanger to run off the outdoor boiler, but I am not very familiar with how well this works.
                                                          Greg

[mgalusha]

FWIW, we typically use about 1bag per day when it's very cold, less when somewhat warmer. Last week we had temperatures in the single digits (F) during the day and very cold nights, we used more fuel but the minutes it takes to carry a bag in fro the garage and fill the hopper isn't a big deal.

It does not look this bright in reality, just a nice dancing flame.

[ctviggen]

Thank you all.  Harman is a brand of pellet stove that appears highly recommended. 

Our house is 4,100 square feet.  All the equipment is about 15 years old (since the house was built).  We bought the house for the 700+ square foot in law apartment for a 68 year old woman (my mother) with 9 (yes, NINE) cats.   She's the last remaining grandparent to our children and she was too poor to move to our area of the country .  We also gave her an adjoining room, so she has another 100 square feet or so (almost 100 square feet per cat).  So, we bought the house for the in law apartment.

Personally, I think fireplaces are useless and just big holes in your house's envelope.  However, they could be useful with an insert that limits or prevents inside air from going up the flue.  I believe I can do that with a propane or pellet stove insert.   They also appear to be cheaper to run than most oil furnaces.

I was originally thinking of using propane, since we have a 500 gallon propane tank on the property.  The previous owner used the tank to heat the in ground pool.  We used the pool heater once, just to test it.  The pool is in the sun, so I think we're going to get rid of the tank.  A pool heater seems superfluous, and I'd rather have something that takes less energy.  If we could put in a propane insert, though, we could use the propane.  We'd have to get a trench dug from the pool to the house, and I don't know how much that would be.  (And we can't do it now, since the ground is frozen.)

I'm not trying to replace my oil furnace as of yet.  I was just examining options that would lower my oil bill and provide some heating for the main floor.  Both propane and pellet stove inserts seem to fit that bill.  We also moved into this house when my town was selected for a special program to have solar cells put on your house.  So, we're having an 11.5KW solar cell system put on our house soon.  This opens us up to other options for heating, such as replacing our AC units with heat pumps.  This would increase our efficiency while also providing heat.  Perhaps we'll generate enough power using the solar cells to make up all or most of the power for the heat pumps.

So, what I'm looking for is something to make it warmer in the house while lowering heating costs, particularly this year.  Lugging 40 pound bags of pellets is about the most I want to do (I don't want to cut wood).   If we got a nicer pellet stove, I could put it on a thermostat/timer and have it run at high right before we get up and perhaps right before we have dinner.   Then, I could run it on low or turn it off if the noise is too great.  I could use the fan only mode of our air handler to allow the heat to circulate through the downstairs of the house. 

I'm going to go see some pellet stoves and get some different opinions from dealers, but we're locked inside this weekend due to a major snowstorm.  More research will have to wait until next week.

[doorman]

Pos & cons ! I lived with a Whitfield PS insert for many years, it heated the house fine but, always a but, right.
They CAN be noisy, three separate electric motors, remember, pellets keep going up in price, what doesn't.
Need a dry place to store em, and if for some reason the pellet supply is even temporarily interrupted, no heat, unlike a wood stove, which certainly have their own issues. Also, unless in possession of a back-up genset, pretty important depending on where you live, not power, no heat.
The upside includes great efficiency, minimal chimney requirements, virtually no creosote build-up.
Trade offs, always trade offs !
Good Luck on your search .

[GT Audio Works]

Pellets are great and convenient but they can go out of stock so be sure you have a good inventory on hand. Also I doubt you will find a unit with a high enough BTU output to compete with a large wood burner.. so considering you have a large area to cover you may need more than one unit. Free standing units are not too expensive and can be easily vented through any outside wall.
If they get too noisy when listening top music,,just turn the thermostat down..that's what I do since my oil boiler is right behind the wall of my stereo system.

[rif]

Here's a crazy idea - whatever you end up choosing for your pellet stove, why not augment it in another part of the house with a propane inset? I'm pretty sure they can be installed on any exterior wall and since they're completely sealed they don't need a chimney. The vent right out the wall horizontally. 4100 sq feet is a huge house after all.

I should mention I have no direct experience with this, is just a thought that came to mind.

[Russell Dawkins]

I looked into propane wall heaters for the far reaches of our house and stopped when I discovered that the cost per BTU of heat produced was around the same as electricity, but the initial cost–at least to conform to the local building code-was much higher than electrical alternatives.
This was a year ago; now they're talking about double digit rate increases on electricity next year.

[ctviggen]

These calculations are always hard.  If I buy a nice pellet stove, I estimate the total cost will be about $5,000 or so after installation.  That means even if I save $1,000 year in heating costs, it'll take 5 years just to recoup the initial outlay.  However, it can get pretty chilly in here, as we're keeping it cool to save on oil.  If a pellet stove (or propane) would heat the main room to say 70, that would be a bonus.  We'd also have something useful in our fireplace, instead of just a big hole.  However, I haven't calculated yearly cleaning of the new equipment, lugging pellets up from the basement, etc.  Furthermore, I won't have actual oil usage data until the end of this heating season, but if I get a pellet stove soon, it'll make the calculation even harder as it'll be harder to calculate how much less oil we're using since we're changing in the middle of a season.

[bladesmith]

The wood insert might be a lower cost solution right now and with the improvements in the insulation that you are planning, the wood insert might work.

I go out outside for wood, bring into my home, 'twice a day' and fill a box, about 16"x16"x20", thats all I use. You do have to tender the fire every hour or two, takes about 30 seconds. You must give it some attention, a fire is a living thing.

Heat my whole house, 1700 sq ft. Something I might note, all of my house has brand new siding, insulation and windows, so it is pretty tight.

My home is very comfortable.

(I can see how the pellet stove can be very tempting, with the busy life styles we all live. Easier to manage,  but more expensive in initial cost. )

[Russell Dawkins]

I just re-read your posts, ctviggen, and think you should definitely include heat pumps in your survey, since there are quieter ones available now, and include the cost of a conversion unit (water to air heat exchanger) for the existing furnace. Furnace fan motors can be quiet - we had the motor in our old furnace replaced with a two speed model that runs almost silently at low speed when the furnace is not running, then kicks up to normal speed when it comes up to temperature. The new (rebuilt) motor and installation cost around $250.
You say you hate fan noise (as I do) and reading what has been said on this thread about the various noises a pellet stove/insert makes I would be very cautious indeed about that aspect.

[Bob in St. Louis]

I can't help but to think that a guy could "audiophile" the fan. First off, surely there are quieter fans out there. Secondly, a fellow could mod the mechanism to make it quieter.  Something like lining the intake with some 1" Owens Corning 703. You could also put some thick putty on the fan motor support braces. Also a "squirrel cage fan instead of a typical three or four blade fan.
Just a couple ideas.

Bob

[ctviggen]

We (my wife and I) went to listen to possible contenders for pellet stoves.  One was definitely out because it had too much noise.  However, the quadra-fire MT Vernon AE Pellet Stove

http://www.quadrafire.com/Products/MT-Vernon-AE-Pellet-Stove.aspx

Seemed to be pretty quiet.  It also has a thermostat.   The cost for the insert and installation was about $5,000. 

I think what we're going to do is put this money toward insulation, since insulation helps always and just not in the cold months (though granted New England has a lot of cold months).   We had a green builder come in and he's going to give us an estimate to seal the building envelope (mainly attics and basement).  He's not going to use spray foam in the attic but will be using other techniques (completely sealing all the penetrations through the attic, such as recessed lights, building an insulated box for the air handlers, shortening the runs for the air handler, upgrading the stairs into the attic, etc.) and blowing in a mountain of insulation.  Unfortunately, that means anything I want to do that involves the attic (i.e., recessed lights, ceiling fans, whole-house audio or wired network, bathroom ventilation) has to be done sooner than I anticipated, as the attic will basically be off limits since there will be so much blown in insulation there.

Consequently, we're putting the idea of a pellet stove/insert on hold for a while and I'm going to use the money for that to install everything I need in the attic.  We'll save money for the attic insulation and hopefully have that done before winter this year.

Also, since we're going to be changing the amount of insulation, I can't really look at heat pumps (or changing the oil furnace) until we get the insulation installed, since at least theoretically the insulation affects the size of the heat pumps/furnace. 

I may have to post again toward winter this year, when we revisit the idea of a pellet stove/insert.