Installed Electric Heat Cheaper than using the Pellet stove?

So I have a bunch of electric baseboard kicking around that was removed from a remodel project.

My Sante Fe has perplexed me by the fact that it does not heat my 672 square foot mobile home completely and I am really doubting the stove is living up to the manufacturer's specifications. Or maybe it is a fuel problem. Anyway averaging a bag and a half a day to heat 672 square feet is quite a lot of btu per square foot. 770 per square foot if 345000 per 40lbs is correct.

So I started installing electric heat. It took 14 feet of baseboard to duplicate the results of the pellet stove. By this I mean the same temperature in every room.

Turns out that now I have some numbers to work with. Electric baseboard uses 250 watts per foot. 14 feet of baseboard equals 3500 watts or 3.5 kilowatt's. Take that 3.5 kw and multiply by 3,412 and the btu potential is 11942 btu per hour.

So I started reading the electric meter over the last few days. The last two days I have used 55kw per day to heat the place.

At .16 per kw that is $8.80 per day. Pellets are 5.98 per bag.

That 55 kw represents 119560 btu used per day to heat 672 square feet and the electric heat is 100% efficient. The Sante Fe using 1.5 bags for the same time frame would use up 517000 btu and at the rated 80% efficiency would toss 103500 up the chimney. If the stove is only operating at 75% then that is 155250 btu up the chimney.

I can heat the place for the amount of heat lost up the chimney.

The the 3500 watts of baseboard represent 17.77 btu per square foot and would equal a stove with a high output of 11942 btu.

I am going to mix the numbers with degree days and see what that looks like.

So can this be correct?

The QuadraFire Sante Fe is properly installed with the outside air kit (OAK for those who wonder what that means). The stove is cleaned daily and the fuel (pennington hardwood) completely burns leaving just ash and no clinkers.

The first time if plugged the Sante Fe in and watched it burn my first thought were that it was shoving way to much heat up the chimney. With the control board on number six setting for the Sante Fe I can hold my hand a quarter inch from the heat exchager tubes indefinately.

In addition to the Sante Fe and the electric heat I have a Rinnai 1001f in the same room as the pellet stove. The Rinnai is rated between 15000 and 38400 btus. The Rinnai on the lowest setting possible will just idle and keep the place at 70. I would rather use the electric than pay the propane supplier an inflated rate for propane.

One of the reasons for installing the electric was to create something I can measure. My space is so small that it works out that I have created what is termed a "caloric bomb test".

A "Caloric Bomb Test" is used to test the efficiency of different types of heating systems. The electric heat is used to give a baseline measurement. Then another heat source is used to heat to the same temperatures.

The electric has given me a baseline on how many btus it actually takes to heat the space. 17.77 btus per square foot is the number to duplicate the Sante Fe in everyway.

The fuel calculators do not apply to a space that requires so few btus per foot. The Sante Fe would need to put out 25 btus per square foot at 30000 btus to heat 1200 square feet. As Craig likes to say a btu is a btu.

My son has a Castille in his home and it exceeds what I would expect.

Maybe it is the stove of the fuel or a combination of both.

I now have a way to measure and figure out which it is.