Burning Oats in Fort Kent, ME

Hi all. My father and brother both invested this summer in an outdoor pellet/corn boiler back when we all thought heating oil was going to $5/gallon. They considered coal as well, but the fact is that as potato farmers, they always have some sort of grain they grew as a rotation crop. And, with the low prices they have gotten historically for the grain, they thought they might as well burn it. A business acquaintance bought one of these last year, and has been burning all sorts of things in it with success... rye, barley, cherry pits. Basically, anything he could get for free or cheap, that was granular enough to go through the machine seemed to burn OK.

This is the unit:
http://www.maximheat.com/

Here's a few pictures I took of my father's unit during Christmas.

They put their units in their garages. Why trudge through the snow?


A 43-bushel hopper and auger saves constant filling. They bring oats in old oil drums in the back of the pickup. Takes 7 to fill the hopper. (The internal hopper is only 7 bushels.)


Inside the unit more oats trickle in.


Pex to the house. The unit uses propane to light up your fuel.


Here's the burn chamber, heat exchangers off to the left.


Burning. Dad's is pretty dirty. Needs regular cleaning.. just scraping. My brother's is cleaner... with a bigger house and 3 kids and their showers, his unit runs at full blast much more often. Dad's unit has to idle sometimes.



Ashes are pushed forward by incoming fuel and by the agitator. The agitator is there to aerate the burning matter and break up clinkers. Dad scoops out the ashes with a grain scoop into an oil drum. Seems to run about 15 drums oats = 1 drum ashes. Oat ash is interesting, you are left with little black oats.

j00fek said:

killer setup, like how you burn everything and still get good performance out of the unit. dont worry, once the economy is back up oil will go to 200/brl

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Right now, my brother and father could probably get enough money from selling their oats to pay for the oil they would need to burn. Some of the crop was harvested late and is "dark", and not worth much. (These are dark oats in the picture... good oats are whitish gold.) So, these are what they are burning. With the oil price plummeting, they aren't saving much this year, but both are happy to be growing their own heat, rather than lining the pockets of some Saudi prince.

They looked at other multi-fuel boilers, and not all would be as forgiving as this one. The fuel is pushed forward by an auger, not into a burnpot, but more of a burn trough. Burnt fuel is just pushed forward until it falls over the lip into the ash bin. So, no matter how poorly the fuel burns, no matter how much it clinkers, it will work. The only requirements are the fuel be sufficiently dry, and that it be able to pass through the augers.

After the heating season is over and this thing is all cleaned up, I plan on bringing a bag of pellets to burn. I bet pellets will burn very nicely, and very cleanly, compared to grain.

BTW... about $10,000 for boiler, hopper, auger, and all supplies and Pex tubing.

Well it is against NFPA 211, the no solid fuel appliance in a garage.

Does anybody really think that the gas in the car will build up so much fumes in the garage as to cause an explosion? No. We all know that a HUGE percentage of the codes are busybody bureaucratic bull-bleep. I know engineers and scientists here at UMaine who have studied and testified about the 1 appliance per flue code... they cannot find a shred of evidence to show that it is necessary.

However, you do raise a good point. I will mention to my father the code issue.... as this could screw up homeowner's insurance.

daydreamer said:

What's up with the 20 lb propane cylinder sitting there. Isn't that a no-no having that indoors?

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As mentioned in the picture caption, the unit uses propane to light up the fuel. While pellets are fairly easy to light with resistance heater, corn is not. Even worse, grain like this would just sit and smolder. So, we have an electrical spark to light the propane, the propane lights the grain, and you get heat!

Actually, that is tank #2, since the barbecue grill is in the garage too. In the winter, the folks just open the garage door when grilling. The garage keeps most of the winter wind and chill out.

About the codes.... yeah, most of us up here have an opinion about where the inspector should shove his codes... which is why one never calls an inspector in to look at your stuff. However, Dad will make some discreet inquiries about homeowner's insurance. Need to know if this is yet another excuse for the insurance company to not cover a claim. (Like they need another excuse.)

packerfan said:

Bad idea for inside a garage or other area with flammable stuff.

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:lol:
Like a pellet stove 20 inches from your couch? (The necessary side clearance for a Harman P68.) Close to flammable stuff like that?

The unit is placed the appropriate distance from flammable objects as recommended by the manufacturer. One could put this thing in the basement after all. I have 0 concerns about flammable objects. This unit is much cooler to the touch than a pellet stove. The big ole' water jacket, for one thing, sucks up all the heat. For another, it is insulated to keep the heat in. (It is designed to sit outdoors after all.) Even the door is merely hot, but not enough to burn my hand when it was at full burn.

NFP211 is more concerned with inflammable materials, like the gasoline in the car. However, Dad is not concerned at all. There is no way enough gasoline fumes are leaking from the fuel tank to cause an explosion. Heck, the garage isn't even airtight.

pelletwood said:

Where did you get that extra hopper and auger assembly?

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Clarify, I do not have one of these. My father and brother do.

They got the hopper and auger from the same dealer. They come from the same manufacturer. Whether they actually make it or have it made for them, I can't say. Page 16 in Maxim's catalog.
http://www.maximheat.com/downloads/MaximCatalog2008.pdf

rowerwet said:

First time I have seen one of these with the hopper, how do they like that set up?
I actualy turned my stove pad back when it was just a hole with a form in it so I could add the hopper some day, I was going to have it sideways to my house so I could read the display with binoculars.
I couldn't tell from the picture, does the transfer auger connect to the plug in the front of the hopper?

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Honestly, they both said they wouldn't want to be without the hopper. Burning the grain is dirty.. you have to clean regularly. But, were they using pellets, I believe you would only have to touch this thing once every 2 weeks. Fill the hopper, dump the ashes, scrape the burn chamber a little, and you are good to go.

The external hopper came with mounting points for the auger. The internal hopper had a knockout for the auger to come in.