Learn me about pellet stoves

[BBsGarage]

We have a raised ranch and I am wondering where in the house would be the best place to put this type of stove.

in the downstairs area, thinking that heat rises.
or in the living room area, blowing the hot air down the hallway.

[NeilBlanchard]

Hi,

I'm pretty sure that putting it on the lower level would be better.

[Ryland]

normally putting it in the lowest part of the house that you want heated is best, and of those parts putting it as close to the center of the house is best unless part of your house is normally colder (like the north end), if it has a built in blower then point it at the part of the house that you want heat like the living space, otherwise your bed rooms are going to get to warm.

[Arminius]

Pellet stoves are great, if you can get the pellets at a reasonable price. I've never seen them low enough to make me want to switch from natural gas to pellets. I've always been interested in corn stoves too, because you can directly vent them out the wall, without a smoke stack.

[BBsGarage]

Well I do not have the option of natural gas and heating oil is close to $5 a gallon.

I'm looking for this to supplement the oil heat not really replace it. But the less oil I have to use the better.

[Ryland]

alot of these stoves that are meant to go in a living space ill radiate the heat out in all directions, and if they are designed to be vented directly then you just need to have them within the required range of an outside wall, or find out if you can vent them straight up, pellet stoves and corn stoves often are the same, but you should check to make sure the model you get can burn either, although corn tends to burn dirty so you have to clean the vent more often or it will cause problems, you are also then burning a grain that could be used as a food, where wood pellets can be made from sawdust with the right equipment.

[piercedtiger]

I have a pellet stove in my 2700sqft house. It's in a small den/office at the end of a 10-20 ft hallway on the east side of my house. Basically, it's really out of the way and not near anything we want to heat. With that said, I have a dual-fan window fan hanging from the doorway using the hall as a wind tunnel to blow hot air into the kitchen where the ceiling fan helps circulate it.

On high, that pellet stove can get the back room up to 80-90 on a 30F or warmer day and keep 3/4 of our 1st floor at 70-75. It doesn't quite reach our second living room or the 3 bedrooms upstairs, but the furnace can do those (plus hot water). A better setup would obviously be more efficient, but it was there when we bought the house and we have too many other things to fix! We just put 8 new windows in the 2 living rooms so I'm hoping that will help a lot. Our programmable thermostats also help me see the furnace isn't coming on to do anything more than maintain 60F upstairs, and 68 in the furthest living room. (New windows should REALLY cut the drafts down and may well not need the furnace to heat this winter.)

With that said, we were still buying 1 ton of pellets each month. At $230-$240/ton (tax free where we bought them), that was damn close to the $300/month we spent on fuel oil. We also still had to fill the tank 3 times last winter. So I'm not really sure which was better for us. Only upside to pellets is that I know how many I have left, how long that will last (roughly 1 bag per day), and I can go buy some NOW at a store instead of scheduling a delivery that'll cost $400 minimum. At least with pellets I could spend $50 and heat the house for the next 10 days or so.

[rjacob]

I looked at pellet stoves, but ended up going with a wood burning stove (insert). Wood is a little cheaper than pellets, and I can still use it in case of a power outage.

Our house is a post and beam style, and very open. So with the stove in the basement, it will help heat the whole house. I say help as we still have baseboard electric heaters. The wood stove helps keep them from working as much. Bringing in wood and keeping the stove going is a little more work.