1300sqft 5 year old double wide home

The answer to your question is what is the heat loss of your 5 year old double wide?

Then you stand a chance of sizing a pellet stove so its net output at its middle firing rate is at least equal to the heat loss figure.

What size is your furnace, does it meet the heat load, easily or just about?

cameran78 said:

i have no idea what my heat loss is. i usally burn about 3 to 4 hundred gallons of kero. a year.

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Is that the only fuel used to heat with and does this heat your entire house to a decent comfort level?

What is it burned in?

Kerosene is rated at 135,000 BTUs / gal.

400 gallons is 54,000,000 BTUs.

Do you know what the BTU rating of your kerosene heater is and its efficiency rating?

I have an almost 1700 sq ft ranch. It was built in 1958. We use every square inch of the house including the walkout basement which is finished.

My stove is in the basement and is rated for 1800 sq ft. I don't run it any higher than medium, and it does a great job. I can heat the whole basement and nearly the entire main floor, oil furnace only comes on for supplemental heat.

We were using about 600- 700 gallons of oil a winter, keeping the heat set at a warm chill. I am looking to finish the heating season this year using about 200 gallons and have been a lot more comfortable with the pellet stove.

If your house is only five years old it should be a lot better insulated than mine, especially since you are a bit more north than I am.

Mine is a 1978 Double Wide, 1250 SF.

My stove is not big enough (28,000 BTU's max) when it gets really cold. It keeps about 2/3rds of the house warm but doesn't move enough air to keep it warmer than about 68 or so when the temps drop below 24 degrees. It's run full-tilt and becomes inefficient. That should give you an idea of how big a Stove you need. The P43 will more than meet your needs without being excessive but you will be able to make it rip when you want it to.

I also like the Enviro Evolution as it has a high/low feature that will make it work better in your smaller dwelling. It also has a huge hopper.

Basically a larger stove than mine that is more sophisticated than just "On off" and that has a larger heat exchanger.

What ever unit you select, please make sure you get one that easily accepts outside air for combustion. Don't let anyone try to talk you out using OAK. It really can be easy to install and is absolutely needed in your double wide unit. Lots of stoves to choose from. Some pretty, others are big black boxes. Big bucks doesn't mean best heat. Size of stove and pellet choice does.
Look around for some local dealers and try to find out how well they support what they sell. If you put the name of the unit in the search box of this forum, you will get a lot of comments on most every unit that should shed some insight on what some have experienced.
Happy burning. If you can, send us some pic s when you get your unit up and running.

We live in a 13 y/o, 2000 sq. ft. doublewide. Except for the "these should be shoved up the purchasing agent's butt" windows, it's very engergy efficient. We have a US Stove Co. 6041 (~50,000 btu) and burn only pellets. I have not had the stove above the 3 setting and it will easily keep the family room/kitchen at 74-78 and the rest of the house no less than 68. I do run the furnace blower all the time.

I'm sure stoves vary widely and I'm pretty sure the ratings published by the makers vary even more. I would think anything rated around 40,000 would do the job for you. Buying a bigger stove to avoid running it on high seems unecessary to me.

Over the long haul, I think you'll save some money and you'll definitely be more confortable when it's cold out there.

Your furnace if equipped with the standard F3 nozzle is a 105,000 to 168,000 BTU/hour device.

The nozzle on the unit should be on the right hand portion of the burner plate under MFR'S SETTINGS.

You are going to need a stove that has at least a 25,000 BTU/hour rating at its middle firing rate. I'm not one to recommend that a stove be operated at its maximum burn rate as a normal occurrence.

If the two systems are about equal in efficiency (this may not be the case) you are looking at about 3.5 tons of pellets.

cameran78 said:

thanks for all the replies. so the harman p43 and the englander 25-pdvc. the harman is about 2000.00. and the englander is 650.oo. i know the company that sells the harman. they are 45 min from where i live and have factory certified techs. that and the feed style are just some of the pros. i see with the harman. what are the opions of other users. is it worth it to buy the harman or should i save some money and buy the cheaper stove?

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Maybe you can check out the two TimberRidge stoves listed below. (Englander-TimberRidge-Summers Heat are all the same)
They are on eBay, and the price includes FREE shipping to a local terminal or for an additional $50.oo they will have a lift gate truck deliver to your home. This guy very good to deal with, just read some of his feedback comments.

#1. TimberRidge 49-TRCPM Multi Fuel Stove
http://cgi.ebay.com/TimberRidge-Mul...330?pt=LH_DefaultDomain_0&hash=item3a63a16f42

#2. TimberRidge 55-TRP22 Pellet Stove
http://cgi.ebay.com/TimberRidge-pel...589?pt=LH_DefaultDomain_0&hash=item3f07bff265

p61 ia a graet stove. It seems to burn the best out of all of the harmans. That meets the average of 25k btu. With the room sensing probe on that stove it throttles up and down to keep the home at temp regardless of outsidetemps. If house does not call for anymore heat stove will turn it self off and restart when needed

grab a 50K or so btu stove. As far as an Englander or something from an actual fireplace shop goes..spending the extra on a "better" stove like a Harman (which I dont sell by the way) can sometimes only be as good as the dealer you buy it from. If you like to tinker with things and fix stuff on your own, save the money and go with the englander. Or, a nice wood stove and no need to worry about all the moving parts

I hope someone chimes in who lives in as cold of weather as you experience and uses the Englander. I've got an old uninsulated 2 story 1400 ish sq foot house and we'd freeze in temps of 30 below. Our lack of insulation is our killer though. We have to supplement with elect space heaters but your place is insulated and mine isn't.

I'm guessin this guy lives north of me, maybe near Clayton, Potsdam or so. If exposed to wind up there I'll oversize a stove, pellet, wood, gas just because sustained wind chills of well below zero for a week at a time are very accurate. Thats why I said a 50K btu heater. Get one that can run on a thermostat. You may cruise at 3-4lbs per hour most of the time, but when the big chill hits, you can up that to 6lbs per hour and still stay comfy.

I would think any thing less than 40,000 BTUs would not be enough to heat the Mobile of 1200 sqf alone, unless you just intend to help out heating the Mobile and still use the furnace along with it on very cold days. My Mini works very well however I found it's best efficacy is running in the middle setting and once in a while let my furnace come on. It also keeps me confident that the furnace will work when the pellet stove runs out when I am not home. You will also have issues spreading the heat around requiring to have fans placed to evenly heat the home. Having the furnace come on once in a while will help with that.

Hoverfly said:

I would think any thing less than 40,000 BTUs would not be enough to heat the Mobile of 1200 sqf alone, unless you just intend to help out heating the Mobile and still use the furnace along with it on very cold days. My Mini works very well however I found it's best efficacy is running in the middle setting and once in a while let my furnace come on. It also keeps me confident that the furnace will work when the pellet stove runs out when I am not home. You will also have issues spreading the heat around requiring to have fans placed to evenly heat the home. Having the furnace come on once in a while will help with that.

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My 28K BTU max stove with a smaller heat exchanger than the P43 is just barely enough when run full when the temperature is about 16 degrees.

I see no reason that a stove with 15K more BTU's would not get the job done in his newer Mobile which would have 2x6 construction etc.

A big stove running on low all the time has got to be just as inefficient as a little stove running on high all the time.

Checkthisout said:

Hoverfly said:

I would think any thing less than 40,000 BTUs would not be enough to heat the Mobile of 1200 sqf alone, unless you just intend to help out heating the Mobile and still use the furnace along with it on very cold days. My Mini works very well however I found it's best efficacy is running in the middle setting and once in a while let my furnace come on. It also keeps me confident that the furnace will work when the pellet stove runs out when I am not home. You will also have issues spreading the heat around requiring to have fans placed to evenly heat the home. Having the furnace come on once in a while will help with that.

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My 28K BTU max stove with a smaller heat exchanger than the P43 is just barely enough when run full when the temperature is about 16 degrees.

I see no reason that a stove with 15K more BTU's would not get the job done in his newer Mobile which would have 2x6 construction etc.

A big stove running on low all the time has got to be just as inefficient as a little stove running on high all the time.

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The Mini is rated at 30,000 BTUs, and covers up to 1200sqft. It barley keeps up on full when it's in single digits in a leaky 14" by 55' Mobil home with hard wood pellets alone. But in my case I indented for supplementing my oil heat not replacing it so being under size was not a big deal. However I feel if I was heating with out something else I would halved gone the next size up. Personally an extra 10,000 to 15,000Btus in not much of an over kill for a double wide, you may never use the top setting though.

If the big stove has sufficient adjustment capability it should be able to be tuned for mid point and left there to operate on a thermostat.

A stove's efficiency gets messed up by not having individual adjustable settings for each heat range setting and also by not being able to remove as much of the heat as possible from the heat exchanger with the convection blower settings.

A stove that at midpoint providing 25,000 BTUs should have a high end over 45,000 BTUs.

Some stoves can be driven at high rates for long times some can not so always be aware of that when operating whatever stove you get.

The OP also needs to pay attention to the efficiency ratings on the pellet stove. However like car sticker mileages, any semblance to real world operation can be lacking.

Do not take as gospel things like pounds per hour being fed or pounds of pellets the hopper can hold as both the feed system and storage system are actually volume devices. Pellets have varying density and will feed different different weights and the hopper will hold different weights depending upon the density.

Good luck and be sure to come back and let us know what you got and since there are plenty of picture lovers on here post a picture of the stove once it is up and running.

SmokeyTheBear said:

Do not take as gospel things like pounds per hour being fed or pounds of pellets the hopper can hold as both the feed system and storage system are actually volume devices. Pellets have varying density and will feed different different weights and the hopper will hold different weights depending upon the density.

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Smokey is dead on about pellet density. A bag of Greenway or Rockwood pellets barely fills three 5 gallon buckets while a bag of Carolina Wood Pellets (crap) almost fills 4 buckets! So if I'm burning the CWP, I have to open the feed gates all the way but if I put in Rockwood's, I close it all the way and even have to lower the feed rate to medium for the same flame height sometimes.

I just got off of craiglist, and there are a bunch of "New" used Englanders. Trying to CON the Wife into letting me get one. The PDVC, The people bought it this past September (6 months old), it wasnt big enough for the peoples needs. They have reciept for $1,159, just for the stove, and it comes with 4 ft of 3" flue and a cheapy HD black steel Hearth Pad. All for $700. Best deal I found. I must have seen 40 of them though. Granted I'm in Ohio, Dont limit yourself to your area. Look at the other major city listings in your state. Never know the deal you may find.