Ducted Pellet Stove Solution for Heating 2 Areas

[the cug]

sounds like 2 pellet stoves would be better unless u get a furnace with ducting.. I agree its hard to get heat up to the 2nd and 3rd floors especially in the northern regions. re-insulating goes a long way also.

 

[bigdaddygrow]

I have 2 augers upper and lower yesterday the top one stopped working ..I cleaned out all the pellets and nothing .. I took the wires from the bottom motor and hooked them to to the top motor and it worked ... and of course the bottom one didn't ... any suggestions where to go from here ???<br/>

 

[sportbikerider78]

I'm just north of you in Jamesville...South of Syracuse. Welcome.

To me, I would be looking only at a pellet furnace. They are designed to be a primary heating source.

I'm all about purpose built devices. Figure out what you want and then buy the device that is designed to do that.
Having 2 pellet stoves going all the time would be something I would not want to do. It is just not something I would take on.

 

[Wire12xu]

Update....

Well, firstly I'd like to thank everyone for their feedback - marvelous, thank you!!

Having spoken (again) with our reliable dealer the Piazetta 963 is NOT the way to go.
It puts out 50,000 BTU which will not provide enough heat for the main floor and heating ducts into the basement. Plus this 'ferrari' stove will require more maintenance than others.
We live (by choice) in a very rural area, 15 miles from the nearest towns.. so servicing could become expensive.
Using a pellet furnace in the basement will heat the house but, doesn't give us the aesthetic of a real flame. So, we'll put this option to one side.

Now.. you may hate this 180 degree turn.
We're now looking to go with the 2 stove solution.
Not pellet, but wood - compressed wood bricks... Any Thoughts?
Due to our rural location, we think it'll be best to keep the stove simple, plus my wife will be able to handle the smaller sized bricks.
Delivery of the bricks doesn't seem to be issue, we can load up in summer and there's a few local heating shops that can provide them.

For our home size, 900 sq ft main floor and 900 basement. We're thinking of 2 Regency CS 1200 stoves, each with 55,000 BTUs. Regency also do a larger stove at 75,000 BTUs.. 2 of these (I think) will be over kill.. What do think?

The more I look into this, the more I'm finding issues/snags with each solution I/the forum come up. But then again the forum is giving me great alternatives too.
I suppose it's a learning process.

 

[chken]

I'm biased of course, as I have a Piazzetta, but, I think your house doesn't need 2 stoves given that it's 900sqft on an open main floor with redone insulation, etc. My Piazzetta is only 47k btus and it heats over 3000sqft of space in my home, and I think it would easily heat 1800sqft of space, including your basement.

As for maintenance, there are two dealers who have posted on Hearth who have P963 and love them, one is Pascal. I hope you got a chance to get in touch with him. My Piazzetta is super easy to maintain. There's a recent thread where I'm quite sure Pascal said his P963 maintenance routine is similar to mine. I only fill the hopper during the week, nothing else. I don't have any daily scraping routine. On the weekend, I shut it down and give it a thorough 20 minute cleaning. At this time of year it's about 10 bags between any cleaning. Once a month, I do the leaf blower trick. I just did it this weekend, since it was so warm, and there was literally no ash at all. That's it. It can't get any easier than that. Certainly a wood stove even with biobricks isn't easier.

I would do a search on P963 and contact both Pascal and the other dealer who posted here last season. They both were enthusiastic about the stove, enough so that I was wishing I had gotten that stove rather than my Sabrina.

 

[Lake Girl]

I have 2 augers upper and lower yesterday the top one stopped working ..I cleaned out all the pellets and nothing .. I took the wires from the bottom motor and hooked them to to the top motor and it worked ... and of course the bottom one didn't ... any suggestions where to go from here ???<br/>

Should go to the main page of the pellet mill forum and start a new thread with your stove name and problem in the title ...

 

[chken]

https://www.hearth.com/talk/threads/piazzetta-961.125841/

https://www.hearth.com/talk/threads...little-secrets-you-would-like-to-know.129833/

I realized that there are P961 and P962, so that you need to search for those as well as P963 to find others with a Piazzetta multifuocco stove, i.e. ones with ducting.

 

[Lake Girl]

The bricks you refer to have a learning curve of their own. About a month ago there were warnings on the news about the high heat output that is not as easily controlled as cord wood. Not sure about overnight holding power either. Good luck with your choices ... might want to start a new thread in the wood stove section.

 

[Wire12xu]

I'm biased of course, as I have a Piazzetta, but, I think your house doesn't need 2 stoves given that it's 900sqft on an open main floor with redone insulation, etc. My Piazzetta is only 47k btus and it heats over 3000sqft of space in my home, and I think it would easily heat 1800sqft of space, including your basement.

As for maintenance, there are two dealers who have posted on Hearth who have P963 and love them, one is Pascal. I hope you got a chance to get in touch with him. My Piazzetta is super easy to maintain. There's a recent thread where I'm quite sure Pascal said his P963 maintenance routine is similar to mine. I only fill the hopper during the week, nothing else. I don't have any daily scraping routine. On the weekend, I shut it down and give it a thorough 20 minute cleaning. At this time of year it's about 10 bags between any cleaning. Once a month, I do the leaf blower trick. I just did it this weekend, since it was so warm, and there was literally no ash at all. That's it. It can't get any easier than that. Certainly a wood stove even with biobricks isn't easily

I would do a search on P963 and contact both Pascal and the other dealer who posted here last season. They both were enthusiastic about the stove, enough so that I was wishing I had gotten that stove rather than my Sabrina.

Thanks 'chken'
The important thing for me is to site the stove on the main floor - to enjoy the flame and heat.
That leaves the basement without heat - cost of the Piazatta is $6000, so I'll run out of funds to heat the basement.
I had the idea of using ducted heated from the Piazetta to heat the basement.. but with 5K BTU it may not work + not even sure ducting heat 10ft below the Piazetta will work... my dealer cannot assure me of this.
Piazetta looks stunning, maybe I can cope with the maintenance.. but for $6k must be able to have the Piazetta on the main floor and heat the basement.

 

[chken]

Thanks 'chken'
The important thing for me is to site the stove on the main floor - to enjoy the flame and heat.
That leaves the basement without heat - cost of the Piazatta is $6000, so I'll run out of funds to heat the basement.
I had the idea of using ducted heated from the Piazetta to heat the basement.. but with 5K BTU it may not work + not even sure ducting heat 10ft below the Piazetta will work... my dealer cannot assure me of this.
Piazetta looks stunning, maybe I can cope with the maintenance.. but for $6k must be able to have the Piazetta on the main floor and heat the basement.

I'd contact Pascal and the other people who have the ducted stoves, like Solarstar and P962man, to get their actual experiences living with the stove and its capabilities

 

[p962man]

Hi Everyone,

It has been a very busy hearth season for us here in PA so I haven't been on the boards much, but I just stumbled across this thread and wanted to weigh in.

Mark- I am a Piazzetta dealer(among many other products) in Central PA and have a P962 installed my home. This is the second season this unit has been operating and I am very pleased with how it performs. I have a late 60's construction two story colonial approx. 2100 sq. ft. The two story portion of the house is the bulk of my square footage, however there is an attached one story garage in front/family room in back. It has original windows and lets just say it is apparent that insulating homes in that era was not a high priority. With that said, I have the 962 installed in my first floor dining room which backs up to the garage. The vent runs horizontally through that wall into the garage, then proceeds vertical through the ceiling into an attic space above the garage and out through the roof. This was all done with 4" ICC pellet vent. Since all the 96 SY series stoves have dual convection fans, I decided to leave one fan dedicated to heating the first floor with out ductwork and I ducted the second fan out to follow the vent pipe up into the attic space. I used old 3" Simpson Duravent pellet vent as the duct work inside the garage up into the attic at which point I split that into two separate insulated flex ducts back into the second story bedrooms on that side of the house and terminated each one with the Piazzetta wall registers. Both bedrooms are occupied by my sons (3yrs. & 19months) which was the reason for engineering a way to heat the upstairs. The stove does a great job of heating my house as best as it can in a "compartmentalized" floor plan. The ducts upstairs really keep the rooms nice and the stairs in the center of the second floor act as a great return air duct to the stove downstairs.

As far as maintenance, as long as your dealer has a good working knowledge of the operating systems and it is set up correctly at installation, they are no more needy than any other stove out there. I have intentionally neglected cleaning my stove recently as a test case and it ran for 6 1/2 days without shutting off before I turned it off to clean it. There was very little buildup in the firepot, I mainly shut it down because the flyash was starting to overflow down into the firepot. I should mention that I was burning Wood Pellet Co. pellets during that time, which as far as I know are a middle of the road pellet. I usually burn Greene Gold pellets but due to lack of supply, I have burning whatever is available. These stove are extremely easy to clean- no tubes, just remove the cast iron baffles plates and everything is accessible. The technology built into the software is great, all the parameters are adjustable (by your dealer ) to adapt to different installations.

I have a P963 installed in my showroom and I am equally as impressed with it, although I do not have ductwork installed with that stove (yet). As of this year, Piazzetta consolidated the pellet stove line from three different chassis in each size (P955,956,957 & P960,961,962) to one chassis in each size (P958 & P963) with several different ceramic choices for each. Otherwise, it is basically the same stove as the previous versions.

Of course I am bias because I sell them, but I would highly recommend Piazzetta to someone interested in heating with pellets. I apologize to all the Ecoteck (Ravelli) owners out there, but I used to sell them and I cannot give the same recommendation.

Hope this helps, feel free to PM with any questions. Happy New Year!

Justin

 

[Highbeam]

Update....

Well, firstly I'd like to thank everyone for their feedback - marvelous, thank you!!

Having spoken (again) with our reliable dealer the Piazetta 963 is NOT the way to go.
It puts out 50,000 BTU which will not provide enough heat for the main floor and heating ducts into the basement. Plus this 'ferrari' stove will require more maintenance than others.
We live (by choice) in a very rural area, 15 miles from the nearest towns.. so servicing could become expensive.
Using a pellet furnace in the basement will heat the house but, doesn't give us the aesthetic of a real flame. So, we'll put this option to one side.

Now.. you may hate this 180 degree turn.
We're now looking to go with the 2 stove solution.
Not pellet, but wood - compressed wood bricks... Any Thoughts?
Due to our rural location, we think it'll be best to keep the stove simple, plus my wife will be able to handle the smaller sized bricks.
Delivery of the bricks doesn't seem to be issue, we can load up in summer and there's a few local heating shops that can provide them.

For our home size, 900 sq ft main floor and 900 basement. We're thinking of 2 Regency CS 1200 stoves, each with 55,000 BTUs. Regency also do a larger stove at 75,000 BTUs.. 2 of these (I think) will be over kill.. What do think?

The more I look into this, the more I'm finding issues/snags with each solution I/the forum come up. But then again the forum is giving me great alternatives too.
I suppose it's a learning process.

Bad idea. Burning biologs in a noncat regency is asking for trouble. The biologs burn hot, explosively so, in a noncat woodstove. If you got a better woodstove that was a cat model like a BK then you can get enough control to burn them safely and with long load intervals. I've gotten an easy 24 hours with biologs on mine but I would much rather burn cordwood. You can buy firewood? Is it not cheaper than buying biologs on a btu basis?

Woodstoves are great for burning wood, a couple of them are pretty good at burning biologs, but if you want an appliance to burn compressed sawdust then buy a pellet stove.

I think you have a dealer trying to sell you whatever he sells.

 

[Wire12xu]

Bad idea. Burning biologs in a noncat regency is asking for trouble. The biologs burn hot, explosively so, in a noncat woodstove. If you got a better woodstove that was a cat model like a BK then you can get enough control to burn them safely and with long load intervals. I've gotten an easy 24 hours with biologs on mine but I would much rather burn cordwood. You can buy firewood? Is it not cheaper than buying biologs on a btu basis?

Woodstoves are great for burning wood, a couple of them are pretty good at burning biologs, but if you want an appliance to burn compressed sawdust then buy a pellet stove.

I think you have a dealer trying to sell you whatever he sells.

Isn't a cat stove more complicated than a regular wood stove, more maintenance and more chance of going wrong?
You could well be right about the dealer..
Thanks.

 

[Highbeam]

I have had both noncat and cat stoves. Still have a noncat in the shop, a very nice englander that only cost 800$ new, see if your regency guy can match that! The cat stoves are slightly more complicated to run since there is one more lever that you have to move when you open the door and before the fire gets hot but this is very minor and easily becomes routine. There are no less things to go wrong, the noncat has soft roof baffles that can break and the cat element has a 10 year warranty but I expect to replace it after 5 years. WAY less complicated to run or fix than a pellet stove.

If you expect to heat full time with wood then a cat stove from Blazeking or woodstock is far superior in efficiency and burn times than any non-cat.

For the record, I tested 240 lbs of biologs in my stoves last month in both stoves. I hated them. They were smokey and hard to light with a very non-linear heat output, they burst at the beginning and then burned much cooler for the remainder. They worked but they didn't work as well as cordwood.

 

[Lake Girl]

I have had both noncat and cat stoves.

For the record, I tested 240 lbs of biologs in my stoves last month in both stoves. I hated them. They were smokey and hard to light with a very non-linear heat output, they burst at the beginning and then burned much cooler for the remainder. They worked but they didn't work as well as cordwood.

Thanks Highbeam for hopping in here with your experiences ... I called my son who has a fireplace in the condo he rents and warned him about the biologs when I saw the news article. He doesn't have much experience with wood stoves or fireplaces - just bonfires - and with those its always go big or go home

 

[Lake Girl]

...Of course I am bias because I sell them, but I would highly recommend Piazzetta to someone interested in heating with pellets. I apologize to all the Ecoteck (Ravelli) owners out there, but I used to sell them and I cannot give the same recommendation. ... Justin

My Ecoteck has been good to us ... but they don't make the Elena Air anymore. Had the Piazzettas been around, especially the multi-fuoco, they would have had serious consideration as I like the easier cleaning routine they seem to have.

Have they sorted out the problem with baffle warp?

 

[Highbeam]

Thanks Highbeam for hopping in here with your experiences ... I called my son who has a fireplace in the condo he rents and warned him about the biologs when I saw the news article. He doesn't have much experience with wood stoves or fireplaces - just bonfires - and with those its always go big or go home

The directions say a max of two or three biologs. 9 is fine (safe) in a cat stove. That load smoked blue for 20 hours but made good heat. The last 10 hours were significantly cooler but burning smoke free. My goal was going smoke free with them and I've never been so embarrased to be a woodburner as a whole day of belching smoke.

The next day, back to cordwood and nothing but heat waves so everything was working well but the fuel source is weird. If it wasn't for the smoke I could actually get by pretty easily on these things cost isn't much different than buying prepared wood. Not sure if that constant smoke would muck up my chimney.

Anyway, sorry for the tangent. I am looking at pellets as a method of burning smoke free and stealth while also diversifying my fuel sources. Thought wood biologs in a good woodstove would be similar to pellet stove but it is not.

 

[Lake Girl]

The directions say a max of two or three biologs. 9 is fine (safe) in a cat stove. That load smoked blue for 20 hours but made good heat. The last 10 hours were significantly cooler but burning smoke free. My goal was going smoke free with them and I've never been so embarrased to be a woodburner as a whole day of belching smoke.

Bust on that goal....