Hello Everyone! I'm new to the site, but have spent the last three years using a P68 to heat our home. I've been admittedly lazy about researching how to do that better. Our home is a 4 year old, large ranch with an exposed walk-out basement. It is roughly 75x35 with 2200sf of finished living space upstairs and 2000sf of unfinished basement. The concrete walls are not insulated, the stud walls are.
We run the P68 set at 77 degrees for room temp, and feed rate at 2.75, only using the included thermostat wire. It runs pretty hard all winter keeping the basement balmy and the main floor at about 67 degrees. It is a very nice 67 degrees compared to FA. We circulate the air with the furnace fan, we've removed the cap on the terminated duct nearest the P68 and it does a great job sending the heat upstairs.
The problem is that we use about 7.5 to 8 tons of pellets during the winter, about 2.5 bags a day. This is saving us money compared to LP, but not as much as I would like. So, I would really appreciate some opinions on how to heat our home more efficiently (if possible). Here are some questions/thoughts I've had in no particular order:
1. If we move the stove to the main floor, can I expect to burn less pellets? What type of improvement would I see?
2. If I put a second stove upstairs, would I use less/same/more pellets overall?
3. Would we use less pellets if we used a real thermostat?
4. If we moved the stove upstairs, will the basement be ice cold/unusable?
Thanks in advance for your thoughts/advice.
-Bob
We run the P68 set at 77 degrees for room temp, and feed rate at 2.75, only using the included thermostat wire. It runs pretty hard all winter keeping the basement balmy and the main floor at about 67 degrees. It is a very nice 67 degrees compared to FA. We circulate the air with the furnace fan, we've removed the cap on the terminated duct nearest the P68 and it does a great job sending the heat upstairs.
The problem is that we use about 7.5 to 8 tons of pellets during the winter, about 2.5 bags a day. This is saving us money compared to LP, but not as much as I would like. So, I would really appreciate some opinions on how to heat our home more efficiently (if possible). Here are some questions/thoughts I've had in no particular order:
1. If we move the stove to the main floor, can I expect to burn less pellets? What type of improvement would I see?
2. If I put a second stove upstairs, would I use less/same/more pellets overall?
3. Would we use less pellets if we used a real thermostat?
4. If we moved the stove upstairs, will the basement be ice cold/unusable?
Thanks in advance for your thoughts/advice.
-Bob