Pellet Ponderings

or

How I Said Goodbye To Fossil Fuel As My Heat Source And Found Warmth, Peace And Contentment

Updates

For those who have visited this page in the past and would like to jump to an update section relative to my ongoing experiences with my pellet stove, click here.

My House

As the adage goes, your mileage may vary, so let me take a moment to describe my house so that any fuel consumption data that follows can be placed in perspective relative to your own circumstances.

I live in what was once a standard 24 by 40, 3-bedroom ranch. Over the years I've made some modifications so that it's now a 24 by 40 1-bedroom ranch with a very open floor plan. I did this because I like large open spaces but it also lends itself to easy heating with a single-point heat source, such as a pellet stove.

Built in 1978, it has 2X4 walls with an additional 3/4" layer of foam for an approximate R-value of 14 in the walls on the main floor. The day-light basement half walls are 2X6, R-value of 19, while the concrete walls have foam with an R-value of 10. The ceiling has 12" of fiberglass plus 1" of foam with an approximate total R-value of 43 (the bathroom ceiling has 2" of foam, total R-value of 48).

Several years ago I had low-E glass vinyl windows installed along with vinyl siding and Tyvek house wrap. Additionally, I made thermal shutters, made of 2" foam, for the windows, providing a total R-value of approximately 13. This brings my windows to virtually the same R-value as my walls. The difference between shuttered and unshuttered windows is noticeable, both in terms of comfort and fuel consumption. The shutters are in place 24/7 on 11 of my 13 windows during the heating season. Some people I know think I'm crazy but with an open floor plan, the two unshuttered windows, with a south-western exposure, provide ample light throughout the house. Plus, when I remove the shutters in the spring I have a new appreciation for the light and view the windows provide.

The basement, where the pellet stove is located, is further partitioned with insulation so that only about 1/4 of it receives direct heat from the stove. The remainder of the basement remains in the low to mid 50's during the depth of winter.

This makes the total area of directly heated space approximately 1,200 square feet.

Heating History

When I bought the house it had only electric heat. Fortunately, I moved in in April so I had time to have a woodstove and masonry chimney installed before the next heating season. I heated with wood from 1980 until 1995, averaging about 3 1/2 cords of wood a year. I would purchase my wood a year ahead of time (actually buying in the spring for the winter 18 months away) so I always burned well-seasoned wood, maximizing its energy potential. Of course, this also meant I always had 6 to 8 cords of wood stacked in my yard, on a 1/3 acre lot here in Lewiston.

In anticipation of the 95/96 heating season, I decided to treat myself to the lifestyle of my parents and I installed a direct-vent Toyostove and 275 gallon fuel tank for the K-1 it burned. My first order of K-1, on April 24, 1995, was for 257.6 gallons. At 80.9 cents a gallon, that cost me a whopping $208.40. It might have cost me more than wood but it was nice not having to haul arm loads of wood into the house each night. It seemed a reasonable trade at the time.

For 12 years the Toyostove ran very efficiently and trouble-free. I averaged 364 gallons per year over that period, with the last 5 years (new windows, shutters and improved house insulation) averaging just 300 gallons. My house averaged 66 degrees during the night and daytime and 70 degrees in the evening, controlled by a two-stage thermostat. Life was good!

But, alas, I began to feel a certain uneasiness about my use of fossil fuel. Our environment was paying the price of my comfort, the true costs of which would be visited upon my son and future generations. In good conscience, I couldn't continue to be a part of this cycle of destruction.

A Change For The Better

I had been intrigued by pellet stoves for several years so this past summer I decided to do some research. The more I investigated, the more certain I was that this was one way I could make a difference. I was not motivated by dollars and cents but by a sense of social and environmental responsibility. In fact, I anticipated that it would cost me more to heat with pellets than with K-1, even excluding the neccessary investment of installing a new stove. Thanks to impeccable timing, that turned out not to be the case.

Wood pellets are considered carbon neutral by today's standards. They're made from a renewable resource that was, until recently, considered a waste product. They're energy efficent and cost competitive. There are many sites that discuss these and other topics. I don't remember all the sites I visited and I didn't visit all the sites out there but here are a few to get you started on your own exploration:

Pellet Fuels Institute

A posting on the Grist.org site

U.S. Department of Energy

New England Wood Pellet - The brand sold at Fireside Stove Shop and what I burned in the winter of 2007/2008.

Some have voiced concern about the removal of wood products from the forest and its impact on the forest's health. I've been forwarded the following information from Terry Bell, a forester, which sheds some light on this subject.

The tree itself is only one aspect - and not the greatest resource - for the soil.

1. Most of the soil's nourishment comes from the decomposing leaves over the years.

2. The tree's root system, which they leave in the soil to decompose unless they are creating a field, is usually many times greater than the size of the tree.

As for the grade and type of pellets to use, www.woodpelletprice.com provides some interesting information. Many other sources I've visited corroberate this information.

My Own Experience

Now let's get down to it. The whole reason you're here is to read about my personal experience, not the promotional material from companies trying to sell you a product. So here's the truth, the whole truth and nothing but the truth, in more detail than you probably want. I hope it helps you in making your decision regarding pellet stoves and our planet's future.

It didn't take me long to know I wanted a Harman stove in my house. I was going to depend on this stove to keep me warm through a long, cold Maine winter and I felt confident this brand would. "You get what you pay for" and "you'll never be disappointed buying the best" are sayings that apply here. The only question was, which model?

Based on the specifics of my home I chose the P61A. My Toyostove was rated at 40,000 BTUs and never had trouble keeping me warm. The P61A is rated at 61,000 BTUs so I knew it would be able to handle the job. I could have gotten something a bit smaller but, based on my understanding, the operating efficiency is not decreased by burning at a lower heat output. The pellets burn as efficiently, you just burn less than the stove is capable of handling. I liked the look of the P61A and that was the final deciding factor.

My Toyostove was a direct-vent appliance so it was simple enough to run the pellet stove's vent piping out the same hole in the wall, with some minor trim adjustments. The vent pipe is friction fit, coming in standard lengths, and very easy to work with. The stove operates under negative pressure, if I'm remembering the term correctly. Whatever it's called, the result is if you don't properly seal the vent pipe with high-temperature sealant, you get smoke in the house. There's no real trick to it but I did miss a couple of spots the first time through. Simple enough to remedy by applying more caulk around the joints and, after my first test fire, I haven't seen or smelled the slightest bit of smoke. If you're at all comfortable with this type of project, save yourself the istallation costs and do it yourself.

Ignoring the dust on top of the stove, here's what it all looks like. The corrugated pipe on the left is the external fresh-air combustion feed. Air for combustion is drawn from outside the house, which reduces air infiltration in your home. Centered is the fuel vent pipe. The wire you seeing hanging down is thermostat wire that runs to the temperature sensor, located on the main floor of the house. I may have exceeded the distance Harman recommends for locating the remote sensor but it works fine in my application.

I purchased the stove from the Fireside Stove Shop on outer Center Street in Auburn. I had bought a woodstove from him many years ago and been pleased with his business approach. The pellet stove cost me $2,750 and piping ran me another $481. I decided to purchase my pellets from him as well, at least for this first year. I initially bought three tons, at $259/ton, but decided to pick up a fourth just in case (total fuel cost of $1,036). Without any history to go by I didn't want to run out. As it has turned out, three would have been enough, having used only 118 bags through May (50 bags per ton). Entering the warm summer weather, I consider the books closed on the 2007/2008 winter. Total fuel cost was $611.24. Actually, that cost can be reduced by about $7.77 as the hopper is full and holds about 60 pounds, or 1 1/2 bags (I count a bag used when I pour it into the hopper, not when the hopper is empty).

Actual usage per month breaks down as follows: September - 2 bags, October - 8, November - 15, December - 23, January - 22, February - 20, March - 18, April - 8, May - 2. Meteorological winter runs December through February and for that period I averaged just under 3/4 of a bag per day (65 bags divided by 91 days).

Transporting pellets can be challenging if you don't have access to a truck or trailer. I'm fortunate to have a friend with a car-hauling trailer. We can put two full pallets (2 tons) on the trailer and then park it in my yard until I can move the bags into my basement. I have a daylight basement with vinyl windows so all I need to do is remove the double sashes from the window, place a board across the sill to protect it and pass the 40-pound bags through to the basement. With the trailer parked about 30 feet from the window, it takes me around 45 minutes to move and stack 50 bags, 1 ton, in my basement. That's working by myself; two people could do much better, I'm sure.

I stack them in a utility area of my basement, where the oil tank used to be. There's plenty of room for four tons and it's very easy to access. In the pictures, the space beyond both pallets held the other two tons I consumed this winter. I have two Staples file boxes which, by perfect chance, hold exactly 40 pounds of pellets so I empty two bags at a time into the containers then roll them to the stove, at the opposite end of the basement, on a dolly I happen to have. I then scoop the pellets out into smaller buckets to facilitate filling the hopper.

While I don't need to fill the hopper every day I find it most convenient to do so. I turn down the stove an hour or so before going to bed. That gives time for the fire to die down so that when I open the hopper the fire doesn't flare up. Again, the negative pressure causes the fire to react to any sealed opening being cracked (not that anything terrible happens if you do). I then use my assortment of buckets to fill the hopper to the top. It holds about 60 pounds but after the initial filling I've never put more than 40 pounds (1 bag) in at any one time, usually less. I then close the hopper and walk away.

That brings us to one of the great pleasures of a modern pellet stove. Like Ron Popeil's famous rotisserie, with a pellet stove you simply set it and forget, almost. Aside from filling the hopper and very occassionally removing ash, the entire process is automated. After I set the desired temperature on the control panel, the stove monitors the house temperature and starts, maintains the fire or shuts down accordingly without my intervention.

Cleaning is simple, low-tech and infrequent. Here are the cleaning instructions for my stove. It says 30 minutes but it was closer to an hour for me but very easy. I've only cleaned it once, right around Christmas, and then dumped the ash bin a second time without cleaning the fire box, etc. I'll give it a full cleaning at the end of the heating season.

Some Technical Stuff

The Feed Adjuster sets the maximum amount of pellets that will feed into the stove in a one-minute period. I'm not sure I fully understand it but the manual says that once set, you usually don't need to touch it. They recommend a setting between 4 and 5 so I split the difference and, through my first winter, I've never changed it. And I don't plan to. :-)

The Room Temp/Off/Stove Temp control is fairly simple. Room Temp uses the sensor to control the stove, Stove Temp uses the stove temperature and Off turns it off. As for the range between L and H, that's another gray area for me but again I set it back in September and haven't touched it since. And I don't plan to. :-)

The only control I adjust daily is the temperature. In the evening, sometime between getting home from work and feeling a chill in the house, I move it to the mark between 3 and 4. That keeps the house at about 68 degrees. Before going to bed I set it as pictured, at the mark between 2 and 3. That keeps the house at about 62 degrees.

The Distribution Blower is a fan that blows air over the top of the firebox to push warm air into the house. My sense is that it runs less than half the time as convection heat from the stove seems to do fine on its own. The Combustion Blower is what creates the negative pressure inside the stove. If the stove has a fire burning, the combustion blower is running. The Feed Motor runs the auger that pushes pellets into the fire pot. As pellets drop from the hopper, the auger feeds them into the bottom of the fire pot, pushing the ash up and over the front edge, so you don't have to. The frequency of the auger running is dependent on the burn rate. The Ignitor is just that, a high-wattage electric ignitor that starts the pellets burning during a cold start. Once the fire starts, the ignitor turns off and remains off until the next cold start.

With all this talk of electric blowers and ignitors I should mention that my daily electric usage has not increased this year and that includes adding the use of an electric blanket (just to warm the sheets before getting in bed) and a small heater in the bathroom to take the chill off before showering. I must assume that the Toyostove used about the same amount of energy as the Harman.

For those who want to know btu equivalents for various sources of energy, here's a good site.

Final Thoughts - The Good

The global social and environmental justifications for using a pellet stove stand on their own merit and don't need me to further their argument. But what of the personal intrinsic value to heating my home with a pellet stove? How do I compare it to heating with K-1?

I like the fact that I buy a local fuel product. Given Maine's forest industry, there's a good chance the raw material for pellets will be available for some time to come. Whether I buy pellets from New England Wood Pellet or Corinth Wood Pellets right here in Maine, my dollars remain in the local economy.

Heating with my Toyostove I was disconnected from the process of staying warm. Yes, there was the occassional call to Lampron Oil to get a fill-up but, aside from that, I gave little thought to it. I wasn't aware, on a daily basis, of how much fuel I was consuming. There was no easy and obvious way to measure it. With the Harman, that has changed. At $259 per ton, each 40-pound bag costs $5.18, and, because each bag gets emptied into the hopper by me, I know how much fuel I'm using, at what rate and what it's costing me. That's a good incentive to conserve energy.

If my Toyostove were set at 66 degrees, it would heat the house to 70, shut down and turn on again once the house had cooled to 66. The Harman provides a far more consistant heat. At my night/daytime setting, the house will drop to about 59.5 degrees before the stove fires up but once it brings the house to about 62 dgrees, it will adjust its burn rate to maintain that temperature with an impressive lack of fluctuation. I consider that a big improvement over the roller coaster ride I had with my Toyostove.

Mechanically, the stove is built in a way that I can service/replace any of its parts. That's important to me. While the Toyostove never gave me any problems, I would have been hard pressed to troubleshoot any, had they arisen. I know nothing of the fuel-injection process nor how to adjust the flame inside the combustion chamber. If the stove broke I'd need to call a repairperson and be at his or her mercy. With the Harman, I understand what makes it work. Wood pellets drop from the hopper, activated by a rotating cam which opens a small door. The auger motor then turns the auger, feeding fuel to the fire. The combustion process is simple to understand; wood burns. Both the distribution and combustion blowers are run by simple fan motors, easy to troubleshoot/replace. Aside from the elctronic controller, which I'd simply replace if it failed, the stove is pure mechanics with easy access to all parts. That gives me a personal sense of control that is reassuring. I'm not dependent on someone else to keep my house warm.

I like being able to see the fire once again. It was a pleasure of the woodstove that I had missed. By the way, the smoked glass is after burning over a ton of pellets and the photo seems to exaggerate it. It's not that bad when viewed with the naked eye, and it cleans off easily.

Probably the best endorsement I can give is that the stove is just there. It keeps the house and me warm without much thought on my part. And I actually enjoy filling the hopper and taking an active role in controlling the daily temperature adjustments, rather than leaving it to a preset thermostat. I've found that sometimes I don't need to bump the house up to 68 degrees but if the stove did it on its own, I'd probably let it.

To my surprise, it will cost me less to heat my house this year with pellets than with K-1. Assuming I use 3 tons, my total cost will be $777. It's a bit more difficult to calculate my K-1 costs, given the price fluctuations this year. Back in September, K-1 was $2.899 a gallon. Today it's $4.149. At an average of 300 gallons a year, my cost would have ranged somewhere between $869.70 and $1,244.70. With pellet prices far more stable than fuel oil, I can hope these savings will grow over time.

Here's a price update as of June 11, 2008. K-1 is now $4.739 per gallon, compared to $2.899 last September (up 63%). A ton of pellets is still unchanged, $259.00 per ton, at the Fireside Stove Shop. But it gets better. I'll be buying 6 tons from the True Value in Turner, which carries pellets produced in Corinth, Maine, selling for $229.00 a ton. That means that the fuel to heat my home for the next two winters (under 3 tons per year) will be purchased at a price (including the extra cost of transporting the pellets to Lewiston) that's 10% less than last year. And I'm buying a product produced right here in Maine.

Based on last fall's prices, will your fuel bill be 10% less next year?

Pellets seem to be in short supply this summer of 2008. This posting on the New England Wood Pellet website might help address concerns.

Final Thoughts - The Bad

At 55, and in relatively good health, I can manage to move 4 tons of pellets into my basement once a year and I can also handle loading a 40-pound bag of pellets into the hopper every day or two. But how about when I'm 65 or 75? True, I can hire a strong Bates student to move the pallets of pellets (reminds me of that wonderful dialogue from Danny Kaye's movie, "The Court Jester" - "The pellet with the poison's in the flagon with the dragon; the vessel with the pestle has the brew that is true") into my basement but even a 40-pound bag every other day might be beyond me as I get older. Fortunately, I have some time to come up with a creative solution but it's a concern.

Wood pellets are dusty. Nothing extreme but when you empty a bag or pour a smaller amount into the hopper, you will see a fine dust rise up. If the stove were in my living room it might be more of a concern. In my basement, the dust must compete with the sand I track in from my walk home from Bates so I give it little thought. And it shouldn't be overstated. I mention it because it exists and might matter to you but I don't consider it an issue.

Final Thoughts - Final Thought

I would not hesitate to do this again. It has been a feel good experience in every respect. In a world where one person can feel powerless to affect change, this was something I could do. Power to the pellets!!!

I'm sure I've left out some important details so feel free to contact me or find your own answers in cyberspace. Either way, I encourage you to explore this option for heating your home. I'm glad I did.

Updates

I did my first full cleaning of my stove in September, 2008, following the online guide referenced earlier. It took me about two hours but I took my time and tried to get every last bit of ash. When done it looked close to new. My shop vac, with a fine dust filter, completely clogged up and required cleaning before I was done but otherwise the process was very simple.

I did fashion one tool to assist in the cleaning. I took an old toothbrush and duct-taped it to a wood dowel I had. This allows me to easily reach along the length of exhaust piping where the gas sensor is and gently clean the area without disturbing/damaging the sensor.

I chose not to clean the vent piping this year (the stove burns so cleanly that there's little residue in the pipe) but I'll probably buy the brush for next year just to be anal about it.

On December 3, 2008, I got home from work, turned up the setting on the stove and got on my treadmill for half an hour. When I finished my exercise I noticed the house wasn't warming so I checked the stove. The burn pot was full of pellets, the stove had shut down and the status light was flashing. I immediately suspected the ignitor and called my stove shop. Fortunately, it was about 4:45 PM when I discovered this and the shop was open until 6 PM so, with the help of a friend who had dropped by, I removed the ignitor, exchanged it (under warranty) for a new one and had the heat back on in my house by 6:30 PM, less than two hours later.

For the record, the stove dealer said it appeared Harman got a bad batch of ignitors. He said he went years without ignitor issues but just last year had several. In an imperfect world, I can live with that.

I know I couldn't have gotten my old Toyostove serviced that quickly, or cheaply. Though the part failure was unfortunate, it did reinforce my sense of indepedence by my ability to service the stove myself. I find that very comforting.

I also bought a bottle of starter gel as insurance. The stove will run perfectly happy without the ignitor as long as I can start the pellets burning. With the gel, I could go days without an ignitor, though it wouldn't be as convenient.

I've had people ask me about the electrical power usage of the stove, whereas it has an ignitor, combustion blower and circulation blower. Here's data for 2008-2009, as well as pellet usage.

Electicity usage, measured with a Kill-A-Watt meter, was as follows (I didn't start taking readings until October 24): through November - 28.69 KW, December - 43.92 KW, January - 47.36 KW, February - 30.21 KW, March - 24.38 KW, April - corrupt data, May - 2.2 KW. At approximately 16.5 cents per KW here in Lewiston, Maine, my most expensive month was January, with a daily cost of 25 cents, or $7.81 for the month.

Pellet usage was as follows: October - 6 bags, November - 11, December - 20, January - 24, February - 16, March - 13, April - 4, May - 2. That's a total of 96 bags, compared to 118 for 2007-2008. Total cost was $490.56 compared to $611.24, a result of keeping the house cooler and purchasing pellets at a lower cost.

Here's a chart showing my pellet usage, in number of bags, over the first two heating seasons plus October of this heating season, 2009-2010.

One change last year, 2008-2009, was that I ran the house cooler than 2007-2008. When home, I kept the house around 63 degrees (hat, sweater and scarf help). At night I turned it down to around 60 degrees and when at work I dropped it to about 58 degrees.

I'll admit that the lower temperature takes some getting used to and I'd prefer to be warmer but I'm not freezing in the mountains of Afghanistan or fleeing Zimbabwe to escape cholera so I think I can manage this hardship if it helps the planet and saves me some money.

There are two changes for the current heating season, 2009-2010, that will impact my usage going forward. I've added a passive solar air heater to my southwest wall and I've moved my bed out of my bedroom and into my living room (I live alone and can do crazy things), closing off my bedroom for the winter, except to make daily visits to my clothes closet. This will reduce my primary heated space by about 216 sq. ft. though there will be heat loss to the bedroom through the uninsulated interior wall.

Email address: gdudley@bates.edu

Last Revised 11/1/09