Heat homes with CORN not #2!

[Drewhenry]

Not sure which forum this belongs in. The other day I was reading about using corn as a fuel for home heating. The process seems fairly simple: corn is ground via the augers and blown into a combustion chamber. It supposedly burns very clean, burns very hot, and is cheap-buy by the truck-load. The cost to convert was insignificant and can be used in new construction. If enough people used corn to heat maybe(wishful thinking?) there would be more #2 available for export to be sold higher than here in the U. S. , and we would still get screwed by the oil companies. The higher the cost of oil the greater the profits of the oil companies. God#@$%! GREEDY#@$%!mother#@$%!#@$%!s. I sincerely hope every one of those greedy SOBs goes straight to HELL and the rag heads with them. I like the way "thekidfrombrooklynn" describes camel jockies.

Ok I am done with my ranting.

 

[Gary - K7GLD]

That has been pretty common in recent years, as fuel oil prices went up, and corn prices were low - it was cheaper to burn the corn as fuel than it was to use oil...

 

[ROADWARRIOR]

I've heated my house with a corn stove for the past two years. Corn prices have increased significantly as the demand for it is increasing for the ethanol market. It's a lot more work than using natural gas, but I don't mind a little work to not have to pay a gas company.



Dan

 

[TboneMan]

Actually, wood pellets burn cleaner and do so at higher BTU's.



Pricing varies base on availability. In the mid-west where corn is plentiful the cost may be less than wood pellets, but anywhere there is a reasonable wood products industry (lumber, flooring mills, furniture manufacturing) , wood pellets would be cheaper.



Unless you heat with propane or fuel oil (electric in some cases), the cost saving would not justify the startup costs.



You can easily drop $4,000 on a stove, hearth and installation, not to mention needing space for storage.



I have a propane forced air furnace (95% efficient) and was looking at $2. 60-$2. 80/gallon for the 900 gallons of propane I use a year (heat, cooking hot water, clothes dryer). I took the plunge and bought a pellet stove (actually dual fuel corn or wood) and I'm in line to save $1,000 vs. propane. At the current propane prices, I'll be ahead in about 3. 5 years.

 

[steved]

My parents bought a wood stove (not pellet) and saved over $1000 the first year (and that was even after paying for the stove and the chimney)... they figured they saved nearly $2500 this year alone.

They have a wood supply, so besides time and gas to cut, it is nearly free.

 

[TboneMan]

My parents bought a wood stove (not pellet) and saved over $1000 the first year (and that was even after paying for the stove and the chimney)... they figured they saved nearly $2500 this year alone.



They have a wood supply, so besides time and gas to cut, it is nearly free.

My parents heated with a woodstove back in the 70's. Woodstopves are WAY more work than a pellet stove. Unless you have time (which I don't) to cut and split your own wood (believe me, I did enough of that when I was young), you have to buy wood which minimizes the saving. Factor in the BTU output/ton of cord wood is far less than pellets (due to moisture content), pellets have some advantages. The disadvantages are mechanical thing break, and pellet stove have many moving parts as well as electronics (sort of like our dear Cummins') .

 

[steved]

Factor in the BTU output/ton of cord wood is far less than pellets (due to moisture content), pellets have some advantages.

The main disadvantage of MOST pellet and grain stoves is the fact that MOST do not have the BTU output to heat a house of any size... and the fact pellet/corn/grain fuels cost money. By the time you buy the stove and the fuel, you might as well heat with oil/gas/propane.



If you season your firewood correctly, you should not have moisture (at least not anymore than a bag of pellets sitting on a pallet will have)...

 

[TboneMan]

My point here is not to start an argument but to clarify some points:



1) Air dried lumber would never reach the moisture content of a premium wood pellet as saw dust used in pellets is essentially kiln dried.



Premium Wood Pellet = 5-6% moisture

Air Dried wood - 17% - 23% (depending on climate)



Less moisture = more BTU/ton



2) Purchasing pellets is indeed an expense, but it is far less on a per BTU basis than oil or propane.



3) Most people don't have access to "free" fire wood from their own property. Should someone have a large plot of harvestable wood, they should factor a portion of any property taxes they pay on that land in any savings calculations (not to mention saplings for replanting).



4) Point Source heating (i. e. , wood stove, pellet stove) requires fewer BTU to heat the same area. In distributed forced air furnaces, a substantial amount of heat is "lost" in the duct work therefore requiring greater capacity to overcome these losses. There are several pellet stoves on the market in the 45,000 - 65,000 BTU range. Depending on the layout of the house, these point source units can actually be very effective.



It boils down to figuring how much you pay/BTU for your current heating appliance. If an alternative heating source cost less/Btu than it is worth considering. Add other non-tangible benefits like not supporting oil conglomerates and using a renewable fuel, wood and wood pellets are both great options.





I'm not sold on using a food source for heating fuel.

 

[JesseJ]

Please focus your energy at our worthless politicians who have bowed to the environmental nutjobs and won't let us drill for more oil where we already know it exists and build new refineries without all the red tape. The oil companies want to bring more product to the market, it's kind of hard when the politicians put a stranglehold on them. Please be mad at the politicians and tree huggers, not the oil companies.

 

[Thunderbolt]

I have burned pellets for the last three heating seasons exclusively. We installed it to suplement a forced air natural gas furnace. Soon we found out that it provided a more even comfortable heat. Ours is in the basement of our house. Heats the floor on the first floor and convection carries the heat up to the bedrooms. We stock 3-4 skids in the late summer. It usually uses a bag a day. My Dad and a buddy and I buy about 15 skids. We get a volume discount. It's easily worth the little effort it takes.

 

[JRBurton]

I have burned wood pellets for the past 8 yrs. I purchased a Harmon pellet stove from my wifes aunt for about 300. 00 nothing wrong accept a good cleaning. Well anyway I prefer to burn pellets vs buying oil from the oil companies, the only oil I use is to heat the domestic hot water other than that the pellet stove heats the whole house. I burn 3 ton a yr. and will purchase this month for next heating season. I burn about 125 gal. of oil a yr. give or take. It all depends how you look at it. I personally like the smell of wood burning.



John