The wind was howling through the Evergreens outside my shop all day yesterday. With the temperature in the low teens and a chill factor of around -7°F, it was the perfect day to test my newly installed wood pellet stove. I had accepted the stove from a customer as part payment on a kitchen remodel that I did for them a few months ago. It was an expensive stove, costing around $700 new, but I wasn’t quite sure what I was going to do with it until my wife suggested that I install it in my shop and scrap the old WWII pot belly stove that I was using to heat it. I had my doubts because my shop is a relative large one with a 600 square foot floor area with a ceiling height of 8 feet, but it worked great. It worked so well in fact that I was soon working in my tee-shirt.
Heating your home with a wood pellet stove
Wood pellet stoves are very efficient, with an efficiency rating of between 85 and 95 percent. A typical wood pellet stove rated at 60,000 Btu (British Thermal Units) can heat a 2,000 square foot home. As a rule of thumb, figure that you will need 25 to 30 Btu/h (British Thermal Units per Hour) for each square foot of floor area to be heated. In other words, if your home has 1,600 square feet of living space you will need a stove rated between 40,000 and 48,000 Btus. To calculate, simply multiply the floor area by 25 and 30 Btu/h. My stove, at 30,000 Btus was more than adequate for my shop, even with the exhaust blowers running full blast. You can plan on paying somewhere between $1,000 and $2,000 for a 60,000Btu wood pellet stove.
The anatomy of a wood pellet stove
Wood pellet stoves consists of six basic components
1. A pellet hopper that holds between 35 and 130 pounds of wood pellets. Depending on your comfort settings, most stoves operate from one to two days on a full hopper.
2. A feed auger that transfer the pellets from the feed hopper to the burn box where the actual combustion takes place.
3. The electronic control module that controls the burn box, the augur speed, the heat exchanger and the blower. The solid state speed controller can be set to feed from one to five pounds of pellets to the burn box every hour. One pound provides a gentle glow. Five pounds provides a blazing fire.
4. A squirrel cage blower sucks in cold air aid combustion and is then blown across the heat exchanger where it is heated to 250°F before being discharged into the room.
5. The heat exchanger transfers the heat generated in the burn pot to the air flowing across it while containing combustion products to the burn pot.
6. Electronic ignition system. Although you have to light some pellet stoves manually, most high-end stove have automatic ignition system
7. A flue to exhaust combustion products to the outside environment.
Because of all the extra moving parts and electronics, wood pellet stoves require more routine maintenance then other wood or coal burning stoves but they’re well worth it.
Locating the stove
Wood pellet stoves become very hot and some precautions need to be observed when installing one. The distance between the back of the stove and the sides of the stove from combustible material is very important. They should be placed at least 3 inches from any side wall and at least one inch from the back wall and they must stand on a noncombustible material that is at least 3/8 inches thick. Because they get so hot, they shouldn’t be installed in an area where young children or pets may come in contact with them.
Chimney placement, chimney sizing and the sizing of the connecting stove pipe is of the utmost importance.
Every installation will be different depending on the particular stove being installed. Everything has to be sized properly in order to develop a good “Stack Effect” and that’s why it’s a good idea to not install a pellet stove as a DIY project. Hiring a professional to install your stove is a good investment. Fortunately I had the software programs on my computer that allowed me to make those calculations for my shop stove.
The fuel
The wood pellets are normally sold in 40 pound bags, so they’re easy transport and easy to store. A forty pound bag sells for $3 to $4, so you can heat you home for a whole day for less than what a pack of cigarettes cost today.
