After this last winter’s natural gas heating bills, we’re about fed up. Add to that a desire to use greener fuels, and we’re considering buying a pellet stove. We need one that will heat about 1,700 square feet for our upstairs. We’ve just started shopping around, and we like the features and look of this Harman P61A. We have only found one price quote online that was about $3,500.
What would one pay for a pellet stove with a 61,000 max BTU output? How much do pellets run, and how much would you use in an average upstate NY winter? Anything we should know about owning and maintaining a pellet stove? Which one do you have and do you like it? What features do you recommend or not recommend?
I used my pellet stove for the first time this winter. I looked long and hard before I bought my stove, finally finding this fireplace insert at a farm store. I bargained with the owner because he had two in his warehouse and wasn’t selling them anymore. I got both for $800 and resold one on Craigslist for $700. I bought my pellets for $4/40 lb bag in the middle of summer.
I live in Tennessee. It was a reasonably cold winter. I have a very drafty, poorly insulated farmhouse built in 1849. I heated an area of 17 X 35 with 10 ft ceilings. I didn’t heat it very warm - mid-'60’s mostly, and I used 48 bags to get through the winter. I spent $400 for the winter. Last year I used over 100 gallons of propane per month at over $3/gal.
I found my stove to be low-maintanance. I took about 5 minutes per day to clean and fill the stove, with about 20 minutes on a week to do a more thorough cleaning. I have plent of room to store pellets, and found them clean and easy to use.
Secondhand caution: a friend of ours got a pellet stove last fall and it’s been a disaster – because the pellets he bought, which were labeled as being the right kind for his stove, contained some ingredient (binding agent?) or contaminant that didn’t burn right, and left a godawful sticky mess. Then we had a big storm and he lost power for two weeks. His stove requires electricity to start and to feed pellets, so he had to move out until the power came on. Moral: be aware of your pellets, and have a back-up plan if the power is likely to go out in your area.
We bought a woodburning Pacific Energy Insert last fall and have been deeply impressed. It’s a noncatalytic burner designed to reburn combustion gases, getting the most out of the fuel. It burns so hot and so thoroughly that we’ve only had three buckets of ash to take out since November, and we’ve used less than three cords (mostly white oak, with some pine and birch) to heat our whole 1500 sq.ft. house (though we don’t mind 58 F at night and 64 F during the day). We only need to load it twice a day. Once the fire gets going, you can’t even see smoke coming from the chimney. The best newer pellet stoves are also this efficient.
The insert cost $3500 installed – quite a chunk of that was retrofitting the chimney, lining it with metal flue to be the right diameter for the stove, which is CRUCIAL in making any late-model stove efficient and easy to use. If your chimney is poorly sized or placed, no stove will work well.
We went with regular wood instead of pellets because in our immediate area, firewood is much easier to get, and is sold more competitively, than pellets. For a while last summer and fall, before oil prices fell, you couldn’t even *get *pellets near here. If there are still working sawmills near you this would probably not be an issue.
Just to add to Emmaliminal’s comments regarding wood burning stoves.
You can always burn bio-bricks or other bio-mass logs which are essentially big pellets but designed for use in a wood burning stove. This was very applealing as I can simply buy cord wood if the manufactured bricks costs get out of control.
I’ve never owned a pellet stove so I can’t compare the costs but I live in New England and went through just over 3 pallets of the bio-bricks. The pallets contain 50 individual packages of bricks that weigh about 40 lbs each. I stored them in the basement and the garage w/no worries about bugs or unseasoned/wet wood. On the coldest days I would go through 2 packages.
I just had a tree company take down 4 big Oak trees on my property and after splitting and stacking it I’ll have my heat completely covered next winter.
Best of luck with whatever option you go with and I promise you will smile each time an oil/gas truck drives by your house w/out stopping.
Rubystreak, that pic doesn’t show a vent/flue. One of the big reasons my husbands balking on getting a wood stove/ pellet stove is that it needs a flue cut into the wall. Was that a huge cost or a PITA for you?
We haven’t done it yet, but I don’t think it’ll be a big issue. We don’t have a fireplace, so we can’t use the pre-existing chimney. We’d rather use a pellet stove than a wood stove for environmental reasons. I’ve also heard there are stoves that can burn pretty much anything: pellets, cherry or olive pits, corn cobs, etc. I wonder how they stack up w/re: price.
I have to go look for the cite, but if IIRC multi-fuel stoves have an environmental problem in that they give up efficiency to get diversity. That is, a pellets-only stove burns pellets with very little particulate matter in the smoke compared to a multi-fuel stove.
If environmentalism is a factor, you might want to consider how far the fuel has to travel to get to you. I was really intrigued by corncob-burners but realized that nobody produces corncobs in bulk in New England. I’d have to have them shipped in. If there’s a pellet-producer near you, that’s a strong argument in their favor.
I have a little Newport Avalon pellet stove that we love. I live in NW Oregon and the winters are usually mild. A couple observations:
As noted above, when your power is out the stove will not work. Don’t get talked into buying a battery backup because that will only get you a few more hours. If it is going to be your only source of heat when the power goes out, get a generator too.
Pellets vary widely in quality. As with most things you get what you pay for. Cheap pellets are higher in ash and you will need to clean the stove often. I use a hardwood pellet with less than .25% ash and only have to open the stove and sweep the main part clear of ash about once per week. It takes about a month or more before the collection box in the bottom of the stove needs dumping. Mine really does not require much maintenance. A few minutes a week and a longer cleaning once per month. But these cleaning intervals are really a function of the pellet quality you use. If you try to save money by getting cheap pellets you are going to be cleaning it a lot more.
Some areas of the country experience a pellet shortage in the winter. 2 years ago we had to travel far to get them. Now we buy them in the summer. Went through 2 tons so far this season of the premium pellets at $220 per ton.
Other than those items we are happy with ours. Quiet, efficient heat. You don’t even need a traditional chimney because the stove extracts most of the heat. They can be vented through a wall. As I sit here the stove is running on low and I can grab the stove pipe with my bare hand.
After a second year of tinkering with my multi-fuel stove, I’m more pleased than ever with it. This year, I burned a 50/50 mixture of wood pellets and corn, with a handful of chicken scratch. I started doing it as an effort to stretch my supply of pellets during this year’s shortage. To my surprise, the mixed fuel burns better than either fuel does alone. Better meaning, in this case, hotter and cleaner.
Instead of having to shut the stove down and clean it every 3 days or so, I was able to run it continuously for over a week at a time. Even then, the amount of ash was dramatically reduced over what I’d seen in previous years.
Scumpup, what did you pay for your multi-fuel stove, if you don’t mind me asking? And what’s the going rate for regular pellet stoves? The ones at Home Depot seem to be significantly cheaper than the Harman ones, to the tune of $1500-$2000. Do you get what you pay for, or is it all style and no substance?
I havethisstove. When I got it a couple-three years ago, I bought it in Spring and paid about 1/3 the price shown. I bought it locally. As noted in one of the reviews, the only real fault this stove has is the crummy manual.
Chicken scratch is crushed oyster shells and reduces the formation of clinker and fly ash. A 40 pound sack is less than $20 and lasts me a couple years. I use a little when burning just pellets and a greater quantity with corn or other fuels.
Just for shiggles this year, I also tried burning some other biomass that I had laying around the house and that looked like the auger would feed it. Wild bird seed mix burned very well and provided a lot of heat; no doubt due to the oil content. Too expensive to burn as anything but an experiment though.