My Homemade Pellet Hopper

Hey everyone, this is my first post but I figured I'd at least try to make it a somewhat useful one. I've been a long time lurker of the site and I finally recently decided to join. I just had a Harman Accentra 52i installed this past Monday and I love it.

Anyways, I want to share my homemade pellet hopper I built with some of the pallet wood that my pellets arrived on. I've been looking for some kind of hopper but I didn't want to buy one since they are pretty pricey. After reading a recent thread about the subject, I decided to just build one. The entire thing took me about 2 hours start to finish and cost me less than 15 bucks. I bought the blast gate on amazon for about 12 bucks. The can holds 4 bags of pellets with a little room to spare. I hope this can help a few people out who were looking for an easier and less dusty way to fill their stoves this winter.

Here's a link to a video of it in action on my photobucket page. There's also a few more pics of the hopper on there as well.

http://s1252.photobucket.com/user/NHbrewer12/media/wood pellet hopper/686A5F79-57B4-4ED7-9278-41F2AF15371A_zpsmn0cfgsi.mp4.html?sort=2&o=8

Thanks for the kind words everyone! I forgot to mention in my post that I used a 4 inch blast gate made by Jet. Here's the link
http://www.amazon.com/Jet-JW1142-4-...F8&qid=1411664197&sr=8-14&keywords=blast+gate

I also just noticed that the price jumped just today actually. I paid 10 bucks and some change with free shipping. Now it's $14.49 and $6.99 shipping. It's still not a bad deal but it sucks that it jumped that much in a day.

bill3rail said:

Great job! Harbor Freight has a 4" dust collector flow control valve, which might work as the gate.
I wanted to create one of these for my wife to fill buckets from. I was debating on using a complete wooden box or a 55 gallon drum.

Thank you for the starting point!

Bill

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I looked at that blast gate before I bought mine. I decided to stay away from the plastic gates for this project but for the 4 bucks that HF charges it might be worth it to at least try it.

kramerica72 said:

How did you attach the gate to the bottom of your can?

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I replaced 4 of the shorter bolts with ones that were 1-1/2" long. Then I just bolted it together from the inside of the can. This picture shows the inside of the can.

No problem, glad to help!

SKOAL MAN said:

How is lifting 4 bags up 5 feet into a hopper and then filling a pail and then dumping the pail into your stove easier and less dusty than just putting the bag into the stove? Just asking.

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Actually, it's pretty easy, for me anyway. I can empty a full bag of pellets much faster into a trash can than into the small opening on my insert. I'm also only 30 and my shoulders and back are still in good health. It is however, MUCH easier for my wife to fill the stove this way when I'm not home. She's the main reason why I did this whole project to begin with. Now she won't have to lug a 40 pound bag from the garage to the other side of the house and then worry about lifting and dumping said bag into the stove. There certainly is less dust when I do it this way. I've filled the stove both directly from the bag and from the bucket and I can tell you it's a night and day difference in reduction of dust.