CORN / RECYCLED WOOD PELLET STOVES : A PERFECT WAY TO EFFECTIVLY HEAT YOUR HOME AND SAVE LARGE AMOUNTS OF MONEY COMPARED TO A GAS OR ELECTRIC FURNACE AND SAVING OUR ENVIRONMENT a.k.a. "GOING GREEN".

These days, if you do not live in a warm environment, have you noticed yourself having to turn down the heat because of the huge increases in the cost of natural gas, fuel oil, and electric? We found a way that will DRASTICLY SAVE MONEY AND OUR ENVIRONMENT AT THE SAME TIME and we NEVER HAVE TO TURN DOWN THE HEAT. Many people are not aware of this alternative heat source for their home or are not crtain it will be effective like a traditional furnace would be.This may convince you otherwise, it has us convinced and we heat our home for around 8 to 9 months a year for less than you could ever imagine.

When we first bought this 3 story home , in Northern Ohio, back in 1996, it was soley heated with radient hot water heat from a boiler furnace and had a fireplace in the family room. The boiler type furnace was connected to natural gas, supplied by the local gas company in town, like all towns have. It gets cold in this part of Ohio, for 8 to 9 months out of the year most people want some level of heat. The first year we lived here utilities were high in price, but nowhere near what they are now. During the winter months, the first few years , we watched our gas and electric bill skyrocket. We had it when we got a gas bill for over $500.00 a month an an electric bill for over $300.00 a month. So it was time to find heat that we could afford and keep consistant.We had considered a wood burner, but they are dirty, they kill trees at an alarming rate to keep warm, you have to have access to unlimited wood, you have to constantly worry about fires, your home insurance will skyrocket or some companies will drop you, you have to carry wood from outside to inside all the time and that just seemed to be a big inconvenience. ( I am disabled and would have to freeze because I can not carry wood and my husband has to work 8 to 10 hours a day).This is when we discovered stoves that burn corn and/or recycled wood pellets, or even a mixture of both.So we took the jump and invested in our first stove ( the smaller one in the photos that has been moved to the finished basement to be installed to save some wear and tear on our extra large stove you see in the photos). At that time the stoves were something new and pricey, but wood pellets were only $1.75 to $2.25 back then.So in 1998 we bought our first stove and realized halfway through the winter, we did not even need to run the gas heat every day, except when it got to be below -10 degrees. Our home is approximatly 3,000 square foot.Soon, our gas and electric bill dropped to a reasonable amount of money, around $150.00 a month for electric and about $235.00 a month for gas.We did this for a couple more years untill gas got to be so high we got behind in the bills and in a 3 month period had a $1,000.00 gas bill and a $300.00 electric bill.With the stove being so small, it kept us warm, but not warm enough, and the price of recycled wood pellets were on the rise due to the economy. We went ahead and had the gas turned off and suffered for 1 winter.It got very cold that year and everyone slept on the main floor because pellets jumped in price and that winter was extremly harsh.That is when my husbandhad heard online about someone in canada burning corn, and how it was a higher heat than the pellets and in ohio we are surrounded by farms that grow corn, so he saved up the empty pellet bags and the farmer a few houses up let him have corn that he had left on the rows for the deer, as long as he picked it and shucked it himself. Within a month we were back sleeping in our beds and with the small stove 2 levels of our house were kept very comfortable and our electric bill had dropped to around $125.00 during the coldest month of the year. We also realized our little stove was being overworked, it started to need replacement parts and we could not use the basement due to the cold. We ended up purchasing our large stove for 1/3 rd its price from a woman who had bought it with her husband and before it could be installed he passed away. Its cost was around 3 grand brand new, but had sat in her garage, still in the box, and she just wanted rid of it so she could park her car back in the tiny garage. This is when our luck really changed and the story and the money gets even better. We ended up finding out the perfect moisture content for corn by trying corn that was from different farms and had been picked at different times. We discovered the perfect moisture balance is betwen 12 to 14 percent and that handfull to handfull corn burns cleaner and at a much higher temeture than recycled wood pellets. Suddenly our electric bill was hovering around $100.00 a month and we had no gas bill to ever worry about. We discovered that instead of ash, with corn we were getting garden compost that was light as a feather and the waste bin only needed dumped once a week. We found an almost new corn wagon at a farm auction for $250.00 and a farmer, who always has corn left over from the previous year ( wich is the best to burn) who would sell us a ton to fill the wagon for half the price the co-op wanted, $260.00 a year. This new stove is installed and now we are using all 3 floors and sometimes it gets too hot we wear shorts in january around the house. We have more money and are saving the environment all at the same time. This is not the only money saving home improvement we have made , but this is my first installment on going green in your home and saving large amounts of money on utilities, my next installment will be a hub on how we heat water WITHOUT a hot water tank and have constant hot water in every room at all times while saving electricity and water both. That will be a new hub written soon, but I need to now go into how to install ( the best I can ) and explain how the corn/recycled wood pellet stoves work. And let me tell you, by the time we get the little one hooked up in the basement it will feel like Florida in January all the while living in Northern Ohio.

First, you need to purchase the stove ( I know , of course..right? ) but you need to have a proper and safe "pad" made of brick , concrete, marble, or stone and you need to vent it properly. If you notice, in most homes that have freplaces, the furnace , either gas, fuel oil, or electric, is vented out of a chimney or a chimney pipe.ours was vented out of he sane chimney , but a different "chamber" than the fireplace.We bricked the fireplace off and extended the pad to meet requirements of a reular woodstove ( for extra safety)..this will keep you up to code like it has us. Now the insurance company wants to see the stoves usually, but they are considered and really are very safe, unlike a traditional wood burner.The stove needs fresh, outside air to properly heat, keep a fire and vent itself properly, so you will need ( and the stoves generally come with this type of piping, unless you buy a usd stove-but always be cautious buying used, if it was installed find out why they no longer want it or use it, their could be expensive problems that need fixed, do your research ) a 3 inch round flexpipe leading from the stove to the outside of the home, when you make your hole know what your drilling into and seal it well.the rest of the piping is for venting the stove, and you run it exactly as you would a furnace out of the chimney.

Once properly installed, before leaving yourself with no heat, try your stove out for a week or so untill you are comfortable and know what settings you need and want.The controll panel on the side ( some stoves are diffent and you have to run them from an external thermostat or manually set it daily - like our small one we first had that will be in the basement this winter ) controlls the fresh air intake, the ventillation output, the fored air output and 2 augers. Your stove will and should come with a booklet to help you understand the air intake and output. If buying used, I would walk away from anyone who did not save the booklet - that is one sign that your purchase might not be in good or proper working condition. The augers ( our small stove only has one and we have to manually clean the fire pot daily) are easy to learn to set. Your main auger turns to put out the media you have chosen as your fuel and your secomd auger works along with it on the same controll seting to turn the material and clean it out as it burns up. with our small stove it requires a bit more manual maintenance, it had the main auger to controll the media output, but it simply holds the ashes that do not fall through the holes in the fire pot. Your firepot is simply that.the metal container that holds the media as it burns to put out heat.

I explained alot in the photographs and alot in my paragraphs. Now the media you burn is up to you, what you can have avalable ( its hard to have corn unless you can store it, so it will cost a bit more, but you are still saving alot of money by using recycled bags of wood pellets. The wood pellets are just not as hot of a heat, but they are easy to maintain and not everyone can get corn.You are also reusing wood waste so you are not harming the environment by cutting down trees and you get ash, unfortunatly it is not a good compost, but the small amount you see above that goes to the landfill is really nothing compared to the loss of our fossil fuels and the cost to get and use them. You are also saving electricity, once you get your stove set just right with your fresh air intake, it uses less electricity to run the auger and will regulate itself by the stoves interior thermostat,once it hits 115 degrees inside the stove, it is virtually maintenence free.

Now , hopefully you get the basics and can put the math together on how much money and how much of our fossil fuels you are saving by using a corn/recycled pellet stove. We are heating the house for less than $600.00 a year if you factor in electricity, and if the electricity goes out, a small generator will operate your stove without a problem because once they get hot and get going they do not use much energy at all.So now your cutting your part of the electric bill that you would be using on your furnace more than half and if you do not have gas appliances, you have no gas cost at all.

I will continue on with the moneysaving. I will tell you how to have hot water , without a hot water tank, and it never gets cold, and every room constantly has it for 1/3rd the cost of elecricity of a traditional tank and over 1/3rd the cost of water...

UPDATE: MY HUSBAND HAS INFORMED ME OF AN EVEN CHEAPER WAY TO KEEP YOUR STOVE OPERATING IF YOU ARE STUCK IN A POWER OUTAGE. IT IS A POWER CONVERTER, THAT YOU CAN PURCHASE ALMOST ANYWHERE, EVEN WALMART. IT IS A VERY CHEAP PIECE OF EQUIPTMENT TO BUY AND IT WILL OPERATE YOUR STOVE , JUST AS A GENERATOR WOULD. IT SIMPLY RUNS OFF A 12 VOLT BATTERY AND TURNS THE POWER INTO 110 VOLTS OF ENERGY. IT IS ALSO CLEANER AND IS COMPLETLY ENVIRONMENTALLY FRIENDLY, IT DOES NOT USE GAS LIKE A GENERATOR, THEREFOR THERE IS NO FUEL COMSUMPTION OR FUMES LEFT OVER TO BE FORCED INTO OUR ENVIRONMENT.

NEXT UPDATE WILL EXPLAIN, AND SHOW PICTURES OF OUR "TANKLESS WATER HEATER".....