Pellet Stove is 2 to 3 times as energy efficient as a whole house baseboard

I usually burn about one bag of wood pellets to heat the rooms of my house that I use and heat to a comfortable
level. I do not heat all rooms 24 x 7, but only those rooms when I am using the rooms. The pellet stove
heats all of the house, except one crawl space in which the oil boiler zone protects the water pipes.

This week when my pellet stove was dead, I heated the house for two days, solely with an oil boiler
powering forced hot water through zones of baseboards. Each zone is 3 to 4 rooms of the house.
Three zones cover all of the living areas of the house, plus one zone for a crawl space.

The oil boiler used 5 to 6 gallons of oil per day. Based on energy content (BTU's), one bag of wood pellets
equals two gallons of oil. The oil boiler used oil at two to three times the rate of
my pellet stove. And truth be told, while I ran the oil
boiler, I heated the house to a lower temperature than I had been while running the pellet stove.

So, I thought about why has the oil boiler used so much more fuel than the pellet stove.
Then I realized that when I run the oil boiler powered zones, 3 to 4 rooms of each zone are being
heated even if only one room is being used by a person. In other words, several unused rooms are needlessly
being heated by each oil boiler zone. (I have tenant/housemates I share my house with.) People work various
hours and are not home about 1/3 to 1/2 of each 24 hour day, but the zone still heats all of the 3 to 4 rooms on the zone, when only one room
is occupied by someone. So, it looks like with the oil boiler zones, many rooms are being heated at times
when not really needed.

An improved zone heating system would be to have one room on each zone and its thermostat located
in that room. That might be a future plumbing project of mine; that means having about a dozen zones.
The ideal zoned heating system would be a one room per zone, perhaps when I change over to a wood pellet boiler.

The biggest reason that the wood pellet stove is highly energy efficient is because we heat only the rooms needed
when needed, by just keeping the door open and running fans, to move around air.

Just thought I would share these thoughts with you.

 

Being very moderate here so I'm back on pellets and corn again The propane is cheap (on pre buy) but the pellet stove heats better anyway.

 

I spend less running two pellet stoves, heating both the entire upstairs and basement than I spent heating just the main floor with my boiler (FHW is only run thru main floor). And that was keeping the main floor at 64*. My boiler is propane, not oil and the burner is over 30 years old, which may account for some of it (plus it has a pilot light). Those FHW pipes are running thru the unheated garage before branching up into the bedrooms to deliver heat (those rooms are at the end of the line and the thermostat is in the living room). So the return water is fairly "cold" in the scale of things.

The garage gets down in the 20's in the deep of winter and sits in the 30s and 40s during the milder temps. I believe the basement would drop to 40-50 (from the boiler and pipe residual heat), so a lot of the heating ability was lost to the cold areas. I'm not even sure if the basement would actually stay that warm as I put in the P61a before the extreme deep of winter hit the first year I lived here.

 

Back in 2012 Lori & I were both still working, we used the baseboard electric heat during the week and used the wood stove Fri night thru Mon mornings during heating season. Electric rates were going up (not as drastically as they are now but still going up) and the wood we got from trees and large limbs that had fallen from strong storms the previous few years was running low. And the cost of buying a couple cords of wood was increasing as well.

I had been researching pellet stoves and at the time we got a pellet basket for the wood stove. Worked but not a long term heating solution.
In 2013 we decided to pull the trigger on a pellet stove and having decided on a Harman, bought the P43. We figured the $1100-$1200 we'd spend on electric bills from Nov-April which kept the house at 67* would pay for 4-5 tons of pellets(then, just barely 3 now) and keep the house warmer. And as we were working, getting the SkyTech programmable remote thermostat to set weekday & weekend temps made sense. (Our electric heat does have a hard wired programmable thermostat in each room of the house).

Over the last 10 years we've found that heating with pellets that $1200 keeps the house at 72* vrs the 66-67* of electric. And today we'd probably be at 65* given the prices. Even with both of us retired now we find we're not using more pellets. Warmer winters the past few years helped. And our house is well insulated.

The only thing I'd do different is I wouldn't have let Lori talk me out of getting the P61 I wanted. At the time I think it was only about $400 more than the P43

sam

 

been unseasonably mild here so I'm, back to running pellets and corn again and I will say that the 'felt heat' is much more pleasant than the propane HF furnace, even though the propane is cheaper at $1.66 a gallon.

Very strange weather this year.

 

Sam,
Back prior to 2014, when I was thinking about purchasing a pellet stove, I had just moved into this cira 1750 house (2,500 sq. ft.) in 2013, and I did not
have much idea of how to heat it or the heating load. The previous owners were elderly who heated the house to 75* to 80* using 2,000
gallons of oil each winter.
I observed that the price differential to go from P38 to P43 to P61 to P68 was small,
maybe $1,500 to go from a P38 to a P68. So I decided to err on the side of a bigger stove, and given that I would probably make the stove
last 20 years: I purchased a P68. After living here 9 years, I have learned a lot about what pipes freeze first, and I make improvements on
sealing and insulation every year. I have also learned which rooms do not have to be heated much above 40* or 50*.

 

Best thing I bought was the Therm Guard that controls the new plus 95 furnace blower. Money well spent. It's 72 in here with the multifuel stove running on HR3. Currently 43 here and 93% RH. If it gets crappy again, I'll switch back to the cheap propane but for now, the solid fuel heat feels nice.

 

Very true

Cold air flows to where warm air is rising......A THERMAL SIPHON TYPE EVENT....

We had a house down in town years ago (When we first got into pellet stoves)
It had a long narrow hallway that led to the bedrooms/bathrooms and to the kitchen/dinning room

The living room was all by itself in the front of the house.....One small fan in the back of the house at floor level set on low to move the cold air along the floor would start the cycle and the the entire house would warm up quit well......

We tried to blow warm air from the living room down the hallway.....That did not work.....

Warm air is light....Cold air is heavier and tougher to get moving..........

Nice thing is....once you figure out what works as far as getting the air to move.....IT WORKS....

Also in our little house the bathroom vents were at the rear of the house and they would help create an air flow......

A house that is sealed up tight is tough to get air to move ....Exception being a closed loop heating system air handler with a duct system and central fan.......


The place here at the ranch is real open with zero hallways.....Air moves around readily.

Pellet stoves at opposite ends of the place aimed at each other mixes the air really well.

A STOVE IN EVERY CORNER

 

Our stove sits just off the stairs to the 2nd floor. When it's running the upstairs stays between 69-72. If I put my hand down by the bottom stair I can feel a slight cool flow of air coming down. So the convection creates a flow so the upstairs (3 small bedroom and a full bath) gets warm.

Same with the downstairs. It's like a reverse L with a small hallway, a bathroom and my den off the hall. I have 2 5-inch fans mounted pointing toward the living room (the flat part of the reverse L) and that room has a ceiling fan in it. I found that that fan blowing down pulls more heat in than what is commonly thought of to run the fan the opposite way. I taped tissue paper strips to see the air flow when we first got the P43. Lori thought I was a bit off doing that but she likes being warm as well.

So the 2 5-inch fans pull the rising hot air towards the living room, where the ceiling fan draws the air in, blows it downwards and creates a flow where the air gets pulled back toward the stove (we don't have an OAK, dealer told us we didn't need one). This flow also seems to draw enough air so the bathroom and den get warm air.

The SkyTech remote thermostat I have set at 73* with a swing rate of 2 so kicks on at 71*, off at 75*. It's on a wall about 12 feet away from the stove. I found this temp range keeps the house comfortable for us. When it's real cold (temps in teens or single digits) I just set the SkyTech to constant run mode and use the feed rate to keep a steady fire so it's comfortable but won't roast us.

sam

 

I'd expect the efficiency of your pellet stove and your oil boiler feeding the baseboards to be similar but the cost of heating with them to be very different.

 

Most modern pellet stoves run about 80% efficiency (depending on fuel and how clean they are). Nice thing about them is, most of the combustion heat stays inside and heats the surrounding area. Always amazes me that my 45K btu stoves are capable of heating the entire 2 story farmhouse so long as the heat is distributed properly, which means auxiliary fans placed in pertinent locations.

Our units can hold 72 degrees no matter how cold it is outside. The only issue is RH which we need to maintain at 50%. The lower the RH is, the colder you feel. I don't see that level of efficiency with any flue based appliances as so much heat is going up the stack.

 

It turns out that the zone layout of my house has too many rooms on each zone. The house does not
have enough zones. While running the
zones, extra rooms are heated to 65* to 68* during times that some of the rooms really do not need to be heated.
Perhaps, I will look into subdividing the zones in the future. What makes the pellet stove so economical is that
rooms are heated by the pellet stove only when needed by leaving doors open and turning on fans to move air.
In the layout of my house, I can achieve the same comfort level running the pellet stove, using fewer BTU's of fuel.
The reason I described above, I only realized recently when I switched over to heating with the zones while the
pellet stove was dead for two days, during similar weather.

And yes, wood pellets cost less than heating oil.

 

AKA wrap and stuff,seal cracks,wall off heat sinks,buy only unobtainable unobtainium pellets, SKA keep the BTUs generated in the shack and where they warm you.

 

Like I posted before, the 6039 in the greatroom (with assistance of properly placed fans), keeps the entire house at 70 or better, including the second story. Now, if it's way cold and windy(as way below freezing, the Plus 95 condensing furnace will come on to hold the heat load (in frequently). The 6039 in my well insulated shop will hold the temp at 55 no issue running on a corn-pellet mix.

I just keep wondering where pellets will be next year. I'm pretty sure the under 300 a ton cost is gone but then I can increase my free corn to pellet ratio. Problem with that is the excessive ash and clinker issue and cleaning frequency. I don't like to clean either of them anyway. Messy job.

 

BTU's are BTU's....you need a certain amount to heat a certain sized area, regardless of fuel type. Not sure why people think otherwise.

 

Actually, I don't even though I have a Buskirk pto driven pelletizer in the barn that I have not used in a while. Way back when I pelletized switch grass but it's really ashy.

One thing that is never alluded to is the after the production stuff. Pellets have to be cured before use, IOW dried and screened

On reality, the best way to roast any baled material is the way Europeans do it. Combusting a full bale in a controlled draft environment.

 

Not quite correct realized heat load depends entirely on how good your insulation is as well as the ambient humidity. Our old shack is very well insulated, consequently, the heat load is less.

 

That isn't even close in my case. I run 4-6 tons of pellets to heat my whole house (including basement). Most years that would be $1,000-$1,500 to heat. So if I paid this year's prices for GS at about $300/ton, it would be $1,200-$1,800. At today's propane prices (at $4.999/gal, which is not as high as the price was last spring and fall), that would buy me only 400 gallons of gas - not nearly enough (1st year I was here I was using 250-300 gals a month to heat the main floor to 64*).