Best configuration for heating apprx. 4000 sq. ft 1 1/2 story home

[Todd]

Your not going to go through $465 worth of pellets or corn per month like you do with NG. So I'd say you will save money. You might go through 1 or 2 tons at the most per month at $147 per ton? I think you should look into a furnace to heat 4000 sq ft. Stoves and inserts are just space or small house heaters.

 

[budman]

Welcome to the hearth. I would agree with Keith in the fact that you may not save a great deal of money by switching to pellets. Especially when you factor in the cost of the stoves and installation, you may never see a payback.

When I was looking for my wood insert, I did look at pellet inserts also. I was sucked in by the dealer's claim that he cut his natural gas bill to a ridiculously small amount by switching to pellets. My eyes glazed over and I started 1/2 listening to him and 1/2 watching the flame in the display stove. It all sounded great until the light went on in my head and I asked how many tons of pellets he burned and at what cost. All of a sudden, most of that savings was spent on pellets instead of gas.

I'm not trying to talk you out of your plan. For a number of reasons, pellet heat can be a great alternative. I am just suggesting that you take a good look at the numbers before making the investment. Also, keep in mind that there is more work involved in heating with pellets than with NG. You do have to store them, move them and load the stoves. Granted, it's much less work than wood, but it is more involved than turning up the t-stat.

I would look at possibly spending the money you would have put into the stoves and fuel into replacing the rest of the windows and tightening up the rest of the house. I hate to talk anyone out of a pellet or wood stove, but sometimes it just doesn't make sense.

Mrgrizz well said. :coolsmile:

 

[budman]

IMO, if saving money is the main goal, a wood stove or wood burning insert is almost always going to win over pellet or NG. Before I get jumped on for saying that (especially without a mile of statistics and studies to back it up) let me explain what I mean.

If we say for the sake of argument that the cost to install a wood, pellet or NG insert (we'll use an insert in this example just for kicks) is roughly equal, we are left with the cost of fuel. If you have to buy and pay a premium for wood, you may as well go with NG and hit the t-stat. As we've seen here, the same goes for pellets. However, if you're willing and able to put in the time and effort to scrounge for free or very low cost wood, you can tip the scales in your favor.

Of course, the trade off is the increased amount of work. Not only is wood more work to acquire and process, it seems that as the cost of the wood goes down the difficulty goes up. For example, for a premium price you can buy seasoned and split hardwood and have it delivered and stacked. Or, you can work it down to having a load of log length dropped on your property and get to work bucking, splitting, stacking, seasoning and moving. One step down the price scale puts you in your truck with your saw searching for the elusive free score (not to mention that freecycle and craig's list seriously compete with hearth.com for your web time).

So, if saving money is the sole motivator; wood is the way. Of course, pellets do green you up a bit and even I'll admit that the "blow torch behind the glass" provides a lot more ambiance than the furnace ;-) .

I don't know how relevant this is to this thread, but it seemed like a good place to throw in these two of my cents.

YOU ARE ON A ROLL.

 

[Tom D]

i purchased a harman xxv a few months ago.it seems like alot of people on this forum are kinda anti
pellet i know theres work involved maintaing a stove i know people in my area of wisconsin that have these stoves and love the wood heat that
the pellet stoves have also two of the people i know heat there 1500 square foot homes with a little more than 2 tons at a cost of 350.00 per
heating season verus about 750.00 in natural gas.my wife and i liked the wood heat dont have the time to split wood storage etc. yes you have to
store bags to.i know i will never pay for the stove but love the looks and the nice heat. also the harman stove is built like a tank no other
pellet stove i looked at even compares to the harman.and im not a dealer.its two bad that harman is being sold. i hope the new owners
still carry this line and dont cut quality. even if it costs as much to heat with pellets we should be able to stay warmer.

 

[BrotherBart]

As with any social setting with common interests Misty there is always some good natured "ranking". People that do things differently will always think the way they do it is best, while secretly wondering if the other guy is doing it better, and pick on people that do it differently. Heck notice the number of us that promote the stoves we own above all others. And the good natured jabbing between owners of different brands of wood stoves. The fact is that they are all boxes with a fire in them.

What makes hearth.com a little unusual is that the members run the gamut from burners of pellets, cord wood, coal, gas and just about anything a match will light. Most forums are narrowly focused on one heating medium.

Pellets stoves are a great way to heat your house. The most common thing mentioned is the volatility of the pellet fuel market. Well I don't burn pellets but I do know that there is no way I can go down to Wal-Mart or Lowe's and buy a tree at any price.

 

[begreen]

I just happen to have a couple of 3 yr old maples from Lowes growing in the back yard. %-P And they were cheap.

 

[BrotherBart]

I just happen to have a couple of 3 yr old maples from Lowes growing in the back yard. %-P And they were cheap.

Trees man. Trees. Not axe handles in waiting. Go back and price a cord of'em.

 

[Gooserider]

Home Depot sells trees too, but I don't buy any kind of plants from them, there are much better sources locally. I think I've seen trees for sale at Wal-Mart as well, though the same logic applies.

Seriously, I'm not a pellethead, and don't have any real interest in burning pellets, but I don't have any problems with those that do. While I think the economics of pellet pricing makes the claimed cost savings debateable, there certainly can be other valid reasons for wanting to burn them, and in that case the money might not be a factor...

Gooserider

 

[Gooserider]

I just happen to have a couple of 3 yr old maples from Lowes growing in the back yard. %-P And they were cheap.

Trees man. Trees. Not axe handles in waiting. Go back and price a cord of'em.

Probably not much worse than that plastic wrapped stuff they sell at the grocery store...

Gooserider

 

[elkimmeg]

Wood nstoves is not one size fits all life situatiion. A pellet stove has advantages a wood stove owner dreams about, load set the thermostat. When will all realize pellet stoves play a vital part of the solution. Being green using carbon nuetral. less dependence upon foreign imported fuel. Not every purchase make complete economic sense, but our enviorment may thaks us for that decision.
erxample the poster having an Jotul Oslo installed for $4200 well a $1500 Englander direct vent pellet stove installed is less than $2k then there is the wood collection system which with a splitter trailer and good saw can add another 2K not counting the time of processing involved 4k difference can buy quite a few tons of pellets. I own and opperate two wood stoves, but I'm not critizing pellet stove ownwer but trying to help them install them correctly.
We all know the pellets cost ,and for some it not a solely an enocomic decision, but being more responsible to our planet

 

[begreen]

Good points Elk. We loved our pellet stove and in some areas pellets are still good, economically viable options.

 

[MrGriz]

In this case, the OP was most concerned with lowering heating cost. If that is the ultimate goal then that is what must be addressed.

I'm not criticizing pellet stove owners at all. I just think that someone who is new to the sport needs to be shown the up and down sides of the options that are out there. I would love to fill a hopper with splits, set the t-stat and go to work or to bed for the night, but I can't do that with my wood insert. On the other hand, when I need more fuel I don't have to write a check or whip out the credit card.

As I stated, I don't want to see anyone talked out of getting off the NG, oil, LP or electric heat in favor of a more enviro friendly (and hopefully cheaper) solution. I just think it needs to be done with ones eyes open.

 

[Todd]

Come on guys, he's paying $465 per month for NG! He can get pellets for $147, and lives in the corn belt so corn could be even cheaper. If he had a pellet or corn furnace, he would definitely make his money back in a few years. I know a guy that has a corn furnace and heats over 2000 sq ft and loves it. He went through a little more than 3 tons last year and I think he paid less than $150 per ton. $450 to heat his house in WI is pretty darn good. He might as well tripled that if he went with propane.

 

[Tom D]

I guess thats why i like this forum you guys are very helpful. i cant wait till i get home from work just to see what great information
you guys and gals pass on to other members to this forum. i didnt mean to be negative about the comments on pellet stoves.
who knows some day i might get off the couch and look into burning a wood stove. thank you.

 

[KeithO]

Todd:
If he ran the fuel cost calculator and came up a wash, it would simply a losing game going to a different fuel before solving the inherent insulation issues associated with the house. The stoves he was listing are cheaper than most, but for instance on my corn stove, I will never get any ROI unless there is a major (>30%) reduction in the current corn price. I can presently just about break even with the corn stove, if I completely ignore the investment to purchase the thing. And I get to lug several tons of corn from the basement through the house as an added "perk".

Financially, there are few cases where the investment is justifiable when looked at from a purely financial basis. When one adds the fact that the pellet stoves offer no backup whatsoever during power outages, for most reasonable people that is the final dealbreaker. There I was last year during the ice storm - no electricity, no NG furnace and no corn burner. My wife, who from the begining suggested that we get a wood stove was pretty smug and I was pretty embarrassed. Particularly since that came on the heels of a corn price increase fron $1.98 to $4.00 per bushel right after I bought the $3600 St Croix cornstove.

Which is why I am installing the Morso 7110 in a few weeks and have collected about 2 1/2 cord of wood since the ice storm for this winter. I'm not going to burn wood 24/7 but certainly every evening and am looking forward to the view of the fire, the relative silence of operation, compared to the noisy corn stove and radiant heat as opposed to the stuffy overheated air associated with any convection heater.

 

[McMatt]

You also need to give thought to your life circumstances and habits.

To give an example I am single and live by myself. I put my wood pellet heater in the living room where it is close to the recliner where I watch TV and the computer desk. This is where I spend a majority of my time after a twelve hour work day and I am comfortable. It is a bit chilly in the living room with the stove set on a low setting but it is tolerable. On the coldest nights of the year I grab a couple comforters and sleep on the floor in front of the stove. It's comfy and I enjoy the view of the "fire" as I fall asleep.

The home I rent is an old prefab (not a mobile home but dang close) built in the 60s so it is not well insulated and as a renter I'm not going to dump a ton of money into fixing that. My first winter here I spent over $1000 on heating oil. On the plus side it kept the whole house warm but since I am single that didn't matter. Now I pay about $400 bucks a year for pellets. $600 bucks is real money to me. It pays for toys.

As an added bonus I am not dependent on political turmoil in the Arab world (and you know once the radicals otherthrow the Saudi regime things are going to get ugly) and I am greener though that isn't a primary concern of mine. The physical labor of hauling the bags of pellets out of the basement doesn't bother me. I'm blue collar and I often have to unload trucks of cases of antifreeze and such that way a lot more. Vaccumming out the stove is more of a hassle as is replacing the vacuum filters which is a pain. (as is getting rid of the ash in the vacuum.)

As far as power outages my stove has a back up power inverter powered by a group 31 deep cycle tractor trailer battery on a trickle chager. I ran the stove off of that for a long weekend last year when an ice storm hit and knocked out power to Chester County. If push had come to shove I've got ten cars on the property with fully charged batteries that I could have substiuted.

I am sold on wood pellet heat. I'm just not sold on wood pellet heat provided by stoves that were apparently designed and built in Romper Room by the dumbest kid there.

 

[MrWinkey]

Ok now that we have Hijacked this thread......

Like everybody has said.....Wood has it's advantages and so do pellets.....

We burned a Fisher wood stove for well...pretty much since I can recall. My whole life it was my job to get up a few times during the night to throw some extra wood on the stove and check it.....Hear it roaring too loud...get up...damp it down a little. If it was really cold I had to get up grab more wood from outside.

I have to drive somewhere to cut wood as I do not have enough trees on my property. Decent cord wood here is more than a ton of pellets.

My clay liner was cracked. To replace or reline that would have added to the cost of a wood stove setup.

The biggest kicker.....I can load the stove and come home to a warm house.

I kept the wood stove out in the shop and I may switch back later but for now I prefer pellets.

Oh and on the heating 4k sqf....any way you cut it that's expensive. My house that is 1900 sqf 2x6 construction tripple pane windows ends up costing me about 1 bag of pellets per day from October 1 to May 1

My advice would be to downsize to a smaller house if you can. Any way you cut it unless you close off & winterize part of the house it is going to be expensive.

 

[seaken]

I agree with all the comments about improving your insulation and preventing heat loss. And 4000 sq. ft. is going to be hard to heat at a lower cost than you are seeing now. You'll have to analyze whether you really need to heat all 4000. Can you make better use of zone heating? If you have only one thermostat for the entire house it will be necessary to compromise and let some areas go colder. The only way to lower your heat bill is to heat less space. Think about how your family may be able to adjust to using zone heaters. If you can see yourself making such an adjustment you will probably be best served by putting in an efficient fireplace insert and convert that existing space into a positive heat source instead of a negative.

If I were you I would invest in a good insert (either pellet or NG) and use it for one season along with adjusting your thermostat down and learning to adapt to the zone heat idea. After that first year you will know more about how your layout may benefit from another zone heater on the opposite side of the house. Along with your efforts to insulate better you may find that you'll be able to make zone heating work for you. It will be hard to say if you will save a lot of money since the cost to install zone heaters will offset the lower NG bills. But it will give you choices and you'll have the option to get close to the zone heaters when times are tough.

Sean

 

[elkimmeg]

I don't know why I did not think of this earlier. How many zones of heat do you have? Did you know a hot air system can have split zones?
Have you thought about splitting the zones? It can be achieved using a zone damper and another thermostat location
.
I think you need to look at the large picture possibly a stove in one section and having that section controlled by a separate thermostat zone

If your original tstat location is not registering heat from the stove,it will cycle as normal and little gain from the stove's heat.

It also sounds like you have long duct runs zoning them would increase the efficiency.

and prevent heat loss due to transmission

Another possibility is a second furnace acting to supply a zone eliminating those long duct runs. I mentioned earlier every joint should be sealed with
Duct mastic and start reducing leakages. Do not over look your return leakages as well

 

[Todd]

Todd:
If he ran the fuel cost calculator and came up a wash, it would simply a losing game going to a different fuel before solving the inherent insulation issues associated with the house. The stoves he was listing are cheaper than most, but for instance on my corn stove, I will never get any ROI unless there is a major (>30%) reduction in the current corn price. I can presently just about break even with the corn stove, if I completely ignore the investment to purchase the thing. And I get to lug several tons of corn from the basement through the house as an added "perk".

Financially, there are few cases where the investment is justifiable when looked at from a purely financial basis. When one adds the fact that the pellet stoves offer no backup whatsoever during power outages, for most reasonable people that is the final dealbreaker. There I was last year during the ice storm - no electricity, no NG furnace and no corn burner. My wife, who from the begining suggested that we get a wood stove was pretty smug and I was pretty embarrassed. Particularly since that came on the heels of a corn price increase fron $1.98 to $4.00 per bushel right after I bought the $3600 St Croix cornstove.

Which is why I am installing the Morso 7110 in a few weeks and have collected about 2 1/2 cord of wood since the ice storm for this winter. I'm not going to burn wood 24/7 but certainly every evening and am looking forward to the view of the fire, the relative silence of operation, compared to the noisy corn stove and radiant heat as opposed to the stuffy overheated air associated with any convection heater.

I agree that he needs to tighten up the house, it will help. But if he's looking at saving over the long haul, I still say he would make his money back with a pellet/corn furnace. The fuel cost calculator on this site says he would save $600 per year with the price he quoted for pellets ($147 ton). Probably more because the calculator isn't that accurate, it's just a guide. For me it says I need 5 cord to heat my home to be comparable to natural gas btu's and I only go through 3. Also some pellet stoves/furnaces have battery backups