Top middle of MO. land of green hills and grass | A note, not all pellet stoves will burn corn, but I don't know of any corn stoves that won't burn pellets to some extent. I've burned corn gluten, hardwood, softwood pellets, cherry pits, corn, a few beans through my Harmon, and have done ok. The gluten pellets didn't do so well, but the rest were ok. With the stir rod in my stove, there's no clinker. I burn ~2buckets of 75:25% corn/pellet mix/day on an average day here on I-80, and dump the ash bucket about 1x/week, and shut it down to vac out the rest about 2x/month. You can save alot on pellet cost by shopping around. I bought all I needed for the year during one of those Menards 11% sales, so I got 11% off what was about the best regular price going at the time. If you have the storage space, now's not a bad time to buy pellets as many places are clearancing them out.
Dad took out a decent wood stove and started burning corn about 6yrs ago...he now handles way less material to get the same heat, so his back is much happier, even though the trees are just standing out there, they're not free when you factor in labor.
They're not maintance free though, you have to fiddle with them, and there's a little mess that goes with them, they're not a box on the wall that you just poke a button and make it warmer, so expectations are key to happiness. Though we're happy with mine, I just got a call from home a couple minutes ago that it went out...reason #1 why you'll still want other heat sources in the house (my insurance required me to have something else) |
pellet stoves
