Posted by Paul (in NY) on Sunday, September 29, 2002 at 10:54AM :
In Reply to: Heating a garage? -O/T posted by Dale D. (NM) on Sunday, September 29, 2002 at 9:49AM :
I heat my shop/garage which is 24 x 40 with a pellet stove. Its cheap, safe and does a great job. If you use UL Listed Type L pellet Vent pipe which is double wall, with the stove running wide open, you can hold the vent pipe. It can be directly vented outside, no need for a high chimney. UL required clearence to combustibles is 3 inches. These pellet stoves are VERY efficient. Once heating season gets serious, the stove runs for the rest of the winter. Last winter I burned 2 tons of pellets @ $165.00 per ton. I collected all the ash each time I cleaned the stove and put it in a 5 gallon paint pail. I wanted to see total ash for the heating season. End of season, I had just less than a 5 gallon paint pail of ash. Compare that to when I used to burn split logs in a wood furnace and had ash like you would not believe. The pellets come in 40 pound plastic bags, easy to store. My wife also uses pellets in her greenhouse. I am running a little heat each morning now, it was 32.7 last night. I am a real believer in pellet stoves. Safety, vent pipes run cool, when powered up, a relay is held in by the line power. If power fails, this realy drops out and the stove is SHUT DOWN, till you restart it. They use so little electric, you could power off an inverter in your car.
A warning/concern, there are cheap pellet stoves on the market. The cheap stoves use a bottom feed into the fire pot. The pellet hopper is gasketed and has a air tight top. This is for the 'POSSIBLE' chance that the fire might work its self back across the horizontal augar and ignite the pellets in the hopper. The air tight construction would not allow the pellets to burn if this happened.........not a perty sight.
The good pellet stoves use a top feed. The pellets work up an augar to the top of the stove and are then dumped down a steel tube into the fire pot. There is NO way fire can work back to the pellet hopper. The pellet hopper is NOT air tight, does not need to be.
Be careful of the ones sold in chain stores, usually these are bottom feed. Just SAY NO
to bottom feed.
Paul
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