Pellet Furnace

For those running a Pellet Furnace, do you have a weekly/monthly cleaning procedure to keep them running optimal like a Pellet Stove? Or are they more forgiving than a pellet stove?

 

I'm interested in this as well. I almost went with a Pellet furnace instead of a Pellet stove for camp. But the money was the big factor. Less than half the money invested in stove.

 

But obviously, looking back on it, if the furnaces are easier to clean and not so finicky then it would have been worth it to get the furnace.

 

I'm on my first season with a brand new St. Croix SCF 050. I'm burning straight shelled corn for the first time as well. So far, I haven't been that crazy about cleaning it. I've burned well over a ton of corn so far, and I've cleaned it once. I need to take some time and really tear it apart and learn all the cracks and crevices and nooks and crannies, but I haven't done it yet. I really really really like having a furnace. If you're between a furnace and a stove, go with the furnace. That said, I also have a free standing stove that I can turn on if it gets really nasty outside, or if I need to shut the furnace down for whatever reason. My free stander (Englander 10-CPM) also is automatic, so I can shut the furnace off on decent days and let the CPM heat if it's not too cold out. I really like the redundancy of the stove and furnace setup.

 

I dump the ash pan every week or two. I dumped it a week ago today and it was only half full. It's fairly warm today, so I'll shut it down and dump it again today. If it's cold out, and I don't want to shut it down, I'll dump it every couple weeks.

Every ton or so (4-6 weeks this time of year) I give it a more in depth cleaning and hit the venting with the leaf blower. Once a year it gets the full cavity inspection.

 

I spend nowhere near the time cleaning the furnace as I did cleaning my 6041. I had to do an in depth cleaning every week on that stove just to keep it going. The furnace is nowhere near as difficult to clean.

The main reason I do a quick cleaning once a week is due to my goofy work schedule. If I end up being out of town unexpectedly for a few days, I want to know that my wife won't have any problems with the furnace. Well, problems that could be attributed to cleaning issues anyways.

Today I shut it down at 3 PM. Went to the grocery store for a few things, came back, did a quick clean, had a fire again at 4:10 PM. Only about 20 minutes of that was actually working time.

 

How many tons of pellets do you the Pellet Furnaces use on average? I recently replaced my 20+ year old oil burning furnace with a new one. However; we are looking to put a pellet stove in the downstairs to supplement. In order to keep the downstairs warm enough, we heat ourselves out of the second floor.

 

boettg33, most pellet burners use 3-4 tons in a "normal" winter. Since you're just looking for supplemental heat, probably wouldn't be that much....maybe 1 - 2 tons?

 

When you say pellet "burner" what are you referring to? A stove, furnace, boiler?

I don't think it's fair to make a general statement like most pellet burners use 3-4 tons in a normal winter. there are far too many variables from one indivdual's situation to another. I have a pellet boiler and I'm averaging between 5-6 tons per heating season.

I have a Windhager Biowin and it's been great. I generally only have to clean it after every 3 tons burned and the cleaning is pretty straightforward and quick to do.

The only pellet furnace I'm aware of is the on made by Harmann. I looked at their pellet boiler and was not impressed when compared to the competition.

 

Dana B
Not fair???? Sheesh, calm down. I'm pretty sure most of the pellet burners on this forum (or any other) , understand what I was referring to. I would feel safe saying that MOST pellet burners that now use a furnace or boiler, originally started with free standing or insert stoves.

Please notice that I said the word "most", not all. Making a general statement in this situation is perfectly acceptable, since I have no concrete numbers to go by. Neither do you.

As I highlighted above, MOST pellet burners use free standing units to supplement their existing heat as much as possible. While their use is increasing, pellet furnaces and boilers are still in the great minority.

So, I am saying that since free standing units are the great majority, 3-4 tons is a perfectly acceptable number. Furnaces & boilers could use more or less, depending on location & whether or not it's the only heat source or not.

Happy now?

 

I'm hoping 6 ton will be enough for me this year...How will this effect the average??

 

Gee.....I wonder who that might be? Do they have cast iron skillets?

 

I wasn't unhappy before.

I just wanted to make the point, as we all know, that the amount of heating fuel used in a season, whether it's pellets, cordwood, oil, lp etc etc is subject to so many different variables such as the size of your home, insulation and air sealing, how warm you like it etc etc etc

I think I misunderstood what you meant when you said pellet burner? I took it to mean that you were using the word "burner" to refer to a pellet burning appliance but now I see that you were actually referring to a person who is burning pellets.

I considered a stove or insert before I bought my boiler but it just wouldn't have worked in my home so I went straight for the boiler. I like that it ties into my existing baseboard and provides central heating as opposed to the radiant heat of a stove.