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Heating options (Wood/Pellet/Corn/Corn-oil?) and insurance.

A

Average_Joe

Jan 1, 1970
0
Hello Newsgroup,

Propane out here is now $1.20/gal (June 2004) Since june is supposed to
be the cheaper month for the stuff, this sets off some alarms in my mind
as to what the future price will be. (and frankly it sickens me to think
of all those people dying overseas for petro, relying on petro for
survival really seems like a bad idea to me.)

I spent last winter cramped in to a tiny room with an electric and
kerosene heater. (Use kerosene when it was really cold and 900/watt
electric when I was sleeping, didn't DARE use more than 900 watts and
even that was probably risky)

This is an upstairs area with no fixed source of heat.

I'd like to install a more permanent source of heat in this area and the
next room. (maybe 400-500 sq. feet upstairs, not too much BTU but I like
to shut the rest of the house down when not in use, I could easily do
this if I had heat in the basement as all the plumbing is located there)

Kerosene was really not very good. (cheap, but dangerous in the
small area and left soot everywhere, handy for thawing the pipes or in
the garage, but I really hated breathing that crap, standing guard with
a fire extinguisher in the event of emergency wasn't much fun either,
this was a portable unit. If there was a proper circulation system, a
kero-sun heater could have very easily heated the area I'm most
concerned about.

This is an old house with poor insulation, poor wiring and would
basically go up in a puff of smoke very quickly if not careful.

I'm thinking of a pellet/corn stove upstairs, wood cook stove downstairs
and some other source of heat in the basement. (this house has no
centralized heating, it's currently propane space heaters downstairs
with nothing upstairs and nothing (working) in the basement) I was going
to leave one of the propane space heaters as-is.

The location has an abundance of corn (I live right next to a corn
drier and practically everyone here except myself is a farmer) I don't
forsee any major industry changes here for at least 10 years.

What are the typical insurance costs of installing corn/pellet and wood
stoves? Are they dangerous? Assuming I went with only the corn/pellet
would the chimney need frequent sweeping? What about using corn oil
instead of fuel oil?)

I'd like a wood cook stove simply because.. well.. I've come pretty
close to running out of propane.. kinda tough when hot
water/cooking/drying AND heating are all reliant on propane) I also like
the idea of using it for "waking hours" and falling back to something
else (with thermostat turned way down) during sleeping or out of house
hours. Seems kind of dangerous though.

I'd imagine the cost of insurance for this type of setup would be more
than using elecric heating though.

Any experiences from people using heating sources other than electric or
propane?

What are the down-sides of fuel oil (besides the petro factor)

What is/was corn/pellet like?

Was/is wood worth extra insurance costs?

Any experiences with these forms of heating (or *objective* web sites)
would be appreciated. Especially regarding chimney sweeping.

Thanks

Jamie
 
E

Ecnerwal

Jan 1, 1970
0
Average_Joe said:
This is an old house with poor insulation, poor wiring and would
basically go up in a puff of smoke very quickly if not careful.

So, deal with that end of it. No point in wasting heat. You can improve
the fire hazard aspects as well.

http://www.hearth.com/

Should address most of your chimney concerns. Typical pellet/corn stoves
don't have creosote issues, and vent with a doublewall pipe (air in the
outer pipe, exhaust out the inner pipe) direct through the wall. Any
reputable place you can buy such things will explain it all in detail.
 
S

SQLit

Jan 1, 1970
0
Average_Joe said:
Hello Newsgroup,

Propane out here is now $1.20/gal (June 2004) Since june is supposed to
be the cheaper month for the stuff, this sets off some alarms in my mind
as to what the future price will be. (and frankly it sickens me to think
of all those people dying overseas for petro, relying on petro for
survival really seems like a bad idea to me.)
SNIPPED

Kerosene was really not very good. (cheap, but dangerous in the
small area and left soot everywhere, handy for thawing the pipes or in
the garage, but I really hated breathing that crap, standing guard with
a fire extinguisher in the event of emergency wasn't much fun either,
this was a portable unit. If there was a proper circulation system, a
kero-sun heater could have very easily heated the area I'm most
concerned about.
SNIPPED

Was/is wood worth extra insurance costs?

Any experiences with these forms of heating (or *objective* web sites)
would be appreciated. Especially regarding chimney sweeping.

Thanks

Jamie

Fire place added 50 bucks a year in my home. Your results will vary. Call
your insurance company.

I have a friend that uses a Kerosun that is a through the wall unit. It
vents outside and is one kick ass unit. Must do 30-40k btu's never any odor
because it vents outside. Even has a fan on it to push the heat about. He
turns the heat off when he leaves and on when he gets home. I have been with
him when the house was almost to the point of freezing. He would laugh and
turn on the Kerosun and within minutes it was toasty. He fed the thing from
a 50 gallon drum also outside.

I would be very cautious about a pellet stove. After all you have to buy
pellets your really changing one fuel for another. Your still at the mercy
of the fuel company.
 
D

Dave Hinz

Jan 1, 1970
0
I would be very cautious about a pellet stove. After all you have to buy
pellets your really changing one fuel for another. Your still at the mercy
of the fuel company.

Unless you get one that burns shell corn as well, if you're in an area
with an abundance of same. Cost can be substantially less than pellets.

Dave Hinz
 
A

Average_Joe

Jan 1, 1970
0
I have a friend that uses a Kerosun that is a through the wall unit. It
vents outside and is one kick ass unit. Must do 30-40k btu's never any odor
because it vents outside. Even has a fan on it to push the heat about. He
turns the heat off when he leaves and on when he gets home. I have been with
him when the house was almost to the point of freezing. He would laugh and
turn on the Kerosun and within minutes it was toasty. He fed the thing from
a 50 gallon drum also outside.

I'll admit they do kick out a LOT of heat. (Too much in my case)
downside is you can't run them 1/2 way. Kind of all or nothing.

Startup is a pain on those since they have a catalyst type of thing to
burn off the gasses. The catalyst needs to be hot in order to function,
so, for the first 2-5 minutes it smokes. Just starts getting good when
it's time to shut it off because it's too hot. :-/ (End up doing really
strange stuff like opening a window) One would imagine they are most
effecient after they are hot, since more of the fuel is actually being
burned.
I would be very cautious about a pellet stove. After all you have to buy
pellets your really changing one fuel for another. Your still at the mercy
of the fuel company.

This is a concern for me, it's part of the reason I want to stick with
the "no centralized heating" model the house now has. Installing smaller
units in areas instead. (That and I don't want to have a bunch of water
damage if the pipes ever freeze, even though hot water heat is most
convenient because I'd imagine you could just install valves or
something to provide localized heat)

What other sources of heat are there? (Small town, solar is probably out
due to cost, I really don't want to spend more than 5-6k on this.)

So far I know of: pellets/corn/wood/propane/methane/hydrogen/bio-diesel
(?) (Bio-diesel is interesting but I've no idea where to actually get
the stuff or what it entails) propane is listed only because I already
have it. What about methane? (or hydrogen?) anyone ever have success
with these? I've never even heard of anyone in the midwest using methane
for heat. (and hydrogen for me at this time would be stupid)

For ethical reasons, as well as cost, petro is something I kind of want
to avoid. (I actually wish it's financial cost would go UP so that
people take other methods more seriously and we'd use less of the stuff,
I consider it's "real cost" in terms of blood.)

What about wood cook stove -vs- regular wood stove? Anyone have
experiences with either of these. (Particularly chimney people) seems
like cook stove is most versatile, but has more chimney fire potential
and is less effective in heating. Is this true?

I'd like to know as much as I can before calling the insurance company,
to provide multiple scenerios and compare costs.

Thanks.

Jamie
 
A

Average_Joe

Jan 1, 1970
0
So, deal with that end of it. No point in wasting heat. You can improve
the fire hazard aspects as well.

Hmm... wouldn't that be 10's of thousands to do? I would really like to
do that, but it's wood lathe which kind of scares me. Is it a matter of
tearing out the old plaster walls, installing insulation and
re-installing new walls? If it's around 1k it might be worth it to me.
(Keeping in mind this house is worth maybe 40-50k)
http://www.hearth.com/

Should address most of your chimney concerns.

Thanks! good resource! they appear to be fairly objective. (One of the
reasons I went to usenet as well as google is that I wanted first hand
experiences, was a little put off by web sites that may have an agenda)

Particularly interested in hearing what professional chimney sweepers
have to say about different things. Someone trying to sell you a pellet
stove will say it's clean burning.. but.. a fireman or a chimney sweeper
might have another tale to tell. :)

Jamie
 
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