# Home Supplemental Heating Sytems



## hurricaneplumber (Apr 12, 2004)

Does anyone else here heat their home with a corn burning stove?

We are using a Bixby corn burning pellet stove in our house. I am burning 100% corn to heat the first floor, about 1600 sqft.

My house heating system consists of two Trane furnaces, one for the first floor and one for the second floor (900 sqft). I now only use the second floor furnace and shut off the first floor one while heating with the corn stove.

Just wondering if there is anyone else doing this.

Kevin


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## PDX_Doug (Nov 16, 2004)

I have never tried corn, but beans seem to work really well!









I'm sorry, I really could not resist that one. shy

Happy Trails,
Doug


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## Ghosty (Jan 17, 2005)

When we want to heat the house we just OPEN the windows...


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## djd1023 (Sep 29, 2003)

I've never heard of a corn burning stove. Are the corn pellets less expensive than the wood pellets? Are the stoves more expensive?


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## mswalt (Sep 14, 2004)

Kevin,

I dind't know y'all had stills up there in your neck of the woods!

Good luck with your heat and don't forget to stir the mash once in a while.









Mark


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## Dreamtimers (Mar 7, 2005)

I hear corn in the _liquid state_ will keep you *REAL* warm!!!







or at least you'll feel warm.









I've never known anyone else who used it, How is the cost compared to other fuels?

Do you find one type of corn heats better than others? _OK I know its a silly question, Most of it was ment to be that way._

Dreamtimers


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## hurricaneplumber (Apr 12, 2004)

Shelled corn is cheaper than wood pellets, at least in our area. The real key will be in 3-5 years when quality wood by-products are in great demand because of all the new pellet stoves in use. Supply and demand will raise the wood pellet prices to a level when cost savings diminish compared to using coal or natural gas.

And in our area wood pellets have run out and are on backorder for several weeks.

I am working with local small farmers to get a better price per ton of corn than I have now, which is 150/ton. I am looking to get it for around $75-85/ton this summer, still working on it.

With corn all that is needed is to have it dry and shelled, then just burn it. And since farmers already dry it to use as cattle feed, you're good to go.

Plus it is a carbon dioxide neutral combustion process.

We are experimenting right now so will see how it all goes.

My wife thinks it is funny watching the corn kernels fall into the fire, she really loves the warmth while doing so.

My uncle is trying to convince me to create some of that "liquid warmth stuff".


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## Moosegut (Sep 24, 2005)

hurricaneplumber said:


> I am burning 100% corn to heat the first floor[snapback]61266[/snapback]​


DW burns the corn (and everything else) every time she cooks - and she'll be the first to admit. We don't have a stove or fireplace. When we want ambiance, we usually just burn one of her meatloafs and watch that.









Scott

P.S. Kevin, I know this was a serious question you asked, but sometimes I just can't resist.


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## djd1023 (Sep 29, 2003)

How come the corn doesn't POP?


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## tdvffjohn (Mar 10, 2005)

LMAO

Good question


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## Y-Guy (Jan 30, 2004)

Anything that doesn't rely on oil from other Countries is a good thing in my book. I'm all for Bio-Diesel for this reason too. But where I live with river dams, a nuclear power plant & wind turbines all around I don't see that we'll be burning corn, coal or wood pellets anytime soon.


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## PDX_Doug (Nov 16, 2004)

And heck Steve, with Hanford just up the road, you don't even need lights!
It's just lke Abe Lincoln, you can read by the glow of the... oh wait, he used a fireplace didn't he?









Happy Trails,
Doug


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## summergames84 (Mar 6, 2004)

I learn something new everyday from you bunch!







A corn burning stove, who'd have thunk it.


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## hatcityhosehauler (Feb 13, 2004)

Kevin, just out of curiosity, how many tons a season do you burn? And is the stove similar to a wood pellet stove? I heat with No. 2 (hot water too), and use about 800 gallons year. Until this year, the pellet stove option wasn't really much of an economy, but I paid $2.299/gal for my oil for this coming year, and that showed about a $500 increase from last year. I'm starting to think about putting an insert in my fireplace, and I want to look at all the options.

Tim


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## dthorfnp (Dec 15, 2004)

At our place we heat our house with a wood burner. We live on 15 acres of woods and have heated with the wood burner for the 7 years since we built the house and have never cut down a tree, just cleaned up the ones that are already down and the old scruffy thorn trees. We originally had a backup LP tank for the hot water system but have since taken it out since we never used it. Just built a house for our son in a different area and are also putting in a wood burner but we are having to wait because now with the price of natural gas and LP they are in bug demand. 
We also farm and raise corn but for us this is actually a cheaper process to burn wood than corn. But it does take a lot of time and work, however we get to chuckle when the news starts to talk about the rising cost of heat!!!! Sometimes living in the boonies has it's advantages.
Dawn


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## hurricaneplumber (Apr 12, 2004)

Tim,

I have studied this topic to death, just ask my wife, she is tired of it. For my case, using coal would have been a better dollar value, but then I would have more cost to either direct vent it or work on some sort of chimney, my existing chimney is inaccessible to use.

Wood is the next best thing since my family has 200 acres with about 125 woods. I have spent my whole life doing wood for my parents house, it is cheap but it is a lot of work and time consuming, plus I would end up handling each piece of wood about 15 times before it actually got burnt.

I went with a combination wood pellet, corn, biomass pellet stove, it will burn everything, including the new grass products being studied here at Cornell, using 2nd cutting timothy hay as heating fuel.

This is my first year with it installed so I am currently tracking usage and costs. So far I am saving money, and the Natural gas price just went up again so I will be saving more.

Plus in our area there are many acres of planted corn that end up being wasted for cattle feed, we have corn growing everywhere.

One acre of corn produces about 3.8 tons of shelled corn, which will heat my house all year and then some.

If anyone wants to track any plug-in appliance in their house, get a Kill-a-Watt device, it is great for tracking electric usage on appliances. Best $28 spent.

I could go on and on, the engineer in me.....we will see where I end up at the end of this season for costs.

kevin


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## Sluggo54 (Jun 15, 2005)

Interesting topic. I have never seen corn burned as fuel, but - Mom told me when she was a kid in Nebraska, each kid had to bring a bag of cobs for the stove ever day, during the winter. Sounds primitive, but it doesn't seem to have hurt her any.

Anyone else ever burn cobs?

Slug


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## Crawfish (Sep 14, 2005)

I'm with Ghosty, we live in the deep south and we just open windows. sunny

"*Let's Go Camping*"

Crawfish


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## hurricaneplumber (Apr 12, 2004)

Corn cobs when dry are used as kindling to start fires and they used to be used in old wood burning stoves that were used for cooking, bread etc. Easy to start a fire with and easy to obtain and cheap.

What people don't realize is that the US has used biomass fuels for a long time before we became oil hungry. It is nothing new. Back in the late 1700's and 1800's when oil was not used, grasses, corn and wood were the main products used for fuel. Then coal mining became cheaper and easier to obtain. During the Depression when oil was expensive and non-existent in areas, wood and corn products were used a lot. But in the 60's and 70's oil became the mainstay and provided the new goal driven society the easy means for a fuel supply.

I am hoping to put the majority of my heating money in a local farmers pocket instead of some company owned by a sheik driving a pure silver car.


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## 2500Ram (Oct 30, 2005)

Finally a topic is know something about









I just installed a pellet stove last year to heat the basement but with the cost of natural gas to heat the house it wasn't worth the extra effort to haul pellets to the stove everyday. It looked nice but just wasn't working for me. Summer passes as they all do and I get what I think was a great idea.

My pellet stove is in the basement as is my furnace. When I finished the basement I capped off a cold air return line to the furnace and put in a wall cold air intake. Following so far? So the stove is in the basement heating it very well but I couldn't get the hot air from the basement, big house, so remembering that cold air return I covered up last year I now have a 16x16 hole with grate in the ceiling in the basement as a 2nd cold air return to the furnace. So what to do now is just run the furnace fan only to pull the heat from the ceiling in the basement into the furnace and out the ducts in all rooms of the house, I also put magnetic grate covers on the cold air returns on the upper 2 levels so the only cold air return is from the basement.

I couldn't be happier with the setup so far. I have not lit the furnace once this year and it's been in the low 20's already still keeping the house above 70. Now this pellet stove is only rated to heat a 1600 sq ft house, ours is over 2700 and it's not having any problems so far. I expect that I will have to supplement some gas to the furnace but not much. The stove brand is a Quadrafire 1100i. It's on a thermostat and self igniting so set the desired temp and walk away, it will light it self and shut it self off when it's up to temp.

Now if I could only remember it needs pellets everyday









Edit for a picture


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## Grunt0311 (Aug 23, 2005)

I have to admit, I don't know much about the price of corn vs price of gas or heating oil. What I do know about is insurance ( I am an independant agent). While you might be asking what this has to do with this topic, it actually does have its place. One thing to consider before adding any solid fuel burner in the house is the effect it is going to have on you homeowners insurance. Depending on the company, it can be anywhere between a 20-125% surcharge







. Call your agent/company and check, and then do the math. You may find that it will take many years of savings over gas prices before you recoup the additional amount you are paying for insurance, as well as the price of installation. One way to get around this though is to put the wood/corn burner outside. With this set up it heats water which is pumped in the house to heat it. Just my 2 cents worth. action


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## rdowns (Oct 20, 2004)

We heat our entire house with a Harman pellet stove. We love it. We may sell next year and build again and will heat with a similar type stove if not the same. We too are looking into a dual-fuel type stove and are interested in corn burners. We live next to a logging plant/sawmill and pellets are made there so they are very readily available. Would love to find a stove to burn wood/corn/pellets. The land we will build on will keep us in wood a few years I would think. 
2500 Ram your basement set up looks great, think I will put in something similar in my new basement.


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## MaeJae (May 12, 2005)

We use a pellet burning stove. It is also capable of burning corn and cherry pits. 
Although corn and cherry pits are cheaper than the â€œwood pelletsâ€ they do have some draw backs.
Corn does not burn as clean and you must clean out the â€œsootâ€ it leaves behind more often. 
Cherry pits when burned alone can and have bound up in the auger and cause it to stop and then your burner will shut down.

We burn wood pellets with cherry pits. About Â¼ bag of pits for every 1 bag of pellets. Itâ€™s not much but the pits do burn hot and leave very little left behind.
Pits with pellets is good. The pellets help the pits move along in the augers with out binding and the pits burn hot and hotter is betterâ€¦









I think the brand is Englander...

Good luck with the corn.
MaeJae


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## hatcityhosehauler (Feb 13, 2004)

> One thing to consider before adding any solid fuel burner in the house is the effect it is going to have on you homeowners insurance. Depending on the company, it can be anywhere between a 20-125% surcharge


What if you already have a fireplace, and merely improve it with an insert. Would you see a change in premiums in that instance?

Tim


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## NDJollyMon (Aug 22, 2003)

Hurricane....really.

Ya'all need heat way down in those 'SOUTHERN' (New York) latitudes?

It's 34 degrees outside right now, and I don't even have the heat on.
Do they make a stove that burns rabbit pellets? We have plenty of those!


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## hurricaneplumber (Apr 12, 2004)

MaeJae,

The corn is a high ash content fuel and I vacuum it out once a week for all of the fly ash. I looked at the Dell-Point which burns corn/wood/cherry pits/hulled wheat, etc. But I was told for that stove you can't mix fuels, like use wood and corn together, your setup sounds pretty neat.

2500Ram,

Your thinking is one good, I have tried the same with my system and found that my house currents work very good by just using the stove with no furnace fan on. It takes about 12 hours to get the convection currents established, but it works pretty good. Just need to see how it will work when it is North Dakota cold outside.

Jolly, this morning it was 41.2 outside (yes I have a digital thermometer), if in 1911 the builder would have thrown in some insulation, I wouldn't need any heat on. But those big tall 10 foot ceilings, super sized large windows, stucco and plaster aren't very heat friendly.

I think Char-Broil can help you with the rabbits.


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## Dreamtimers (Mar 7, 2005)

NDJollyMon said:


> Hurricane....really.
> 
> Ya'all need heat way down in those 'SOUTHERN' (New York) latitudes?
> 
> ...


Way down south its about 36 degrees here this morning and is supposed to get up to about 80 today and 82 on thurs. With that kind of solar heat, the trouble is cooling. We pre-buy our gas in the summer and the Gas co. delivers it the rest of the winter. Helps to hold down the cost a little.

Dreamtimers

PS Jollyman, can you say Haseundpfeffer


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## Grunt0311 (Aug 23, 2005)

Tim, an insert shouldn't affect your insurance premiums. What will is any stand alone unit. A built in fireplace is still just that if you put in an insert. Another thing to be aware of, if you do not call your insurance company and let them know you put a burner in, you could have big problems. If your house burns down because of it, they could deny your claim, and then you have no house and no money to rebuild.


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## GlenninTexas (Aug 11, 2004)

I don't have a need for too much heat, like Ghosty. I do however have a GEO-thermal HVAC system which uses a loop buried in the ground to dissipate heat in the summer and extract heat in the winter. The ground temp here is 72 degrees below 4 feet depth.

With this I heat/cool my 2900 sq foot house without having any heating elements within the system and can maintain 72 degrees year round. Works great and is very efficient.

Regards, Glenn


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## hurricaneplumber (Apr 12, 2004)

Nice system Glenn, do you know how big your loop is? Most systems in this climate use the vertical wells for heat transfer.


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## GlenninTexas (Aug 11, 2004)

hurricaneplumber said:


> Nice system Glenn, do you know how big your loop is? Most systems in this climate use the vertical wells for heat transfer.
> [snapback]61733[/snapback]​


I have 5 - 150 ft. deep holes. The coil loops down and up then over to the next one to form a continuous loop.


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## huntr70 (Jul 8, 2005)

GlenninTexas said:


> I don't have a need for too much heat, like Ghosty. I do however have a GEO-thermal HVAC system which uses a  loop buried in the ground to dissipate heat in the summer and extract heat in the winter. The ground temp here is 72 degrees below 4 feet depth.
> 
> With this I heat/cool my 2900 sq foot house without having any heating elements within the system and can maintain 72 degrees year round. Works great and is very efficient.
> 
> ...


I too, have a Geo-thermal system, however, mine uses a separate well for the water to heat and cool. So far, so good....only trouble so far are the Taco valves for opening and closing the water inlet lines...I went through 3 of them in 6 years...at $150+ per valve, not fun!!!!

Steve


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