Looking at Harmon Pellet stove/inserts/coal stokers ?

[alternativeheat]

I've gotten myself a bit confused here ( also new at this forum but not to heating my house by stove). We have come down to two options and I'm wondering how controllable each may be. Also wanting to radiate some heat not just blow it. I currently have a coal stove on the hearth that I built more than 30 years ago now but coal is under attach and prices soaring and we are aging . So that's the background !

Looking at a Harmon 52i insert and a Harmon P61a. The house is 1800sq ft cape, the stove is in the living room. The living room has two entrances, one from a hall across the room from the stove and that leads to the upstairs or out into the kitchen area. The other is to the left of the stove and leads to the dining room. My current stove with no blower keeps that dinging room at 70-73 deg. In the coldest weather or as the stove dies down the heat may come on. Upstairs is probably in the upper 60s. being on cape Cod , this is New England. I like some radiant heat in that living room at age 63.

Which option do you think has the most potential here ? Or is there another and perhaps better option ?

Thanks much and hello !

 

[john193]

You will get very little in the form of radiant heat with a pellet stove; however, have you considered the maintenance on a pellet stove? You site your age as being a reason to switch to pellets, but pellet stoves require (generally) weekly cleanings and lugging 40 lb bags. Most inserts hold a bag and a half at most, so you will need to tend to it daily.

The 61a will give you more hopper capacity, slightly more radiant heat, easier access for cleaning, and finally a higher btu output.

 

[rickwai]

If you are looking for some radiant heat the free standing P61 would be the choice. The insert puts off minimal radiant heat. Dont expect the radiant to be like your old coal stove these stoves were not designed for much radiant heat. Surface temp of these stoves are probably 1/2 of the temp of your coal stove. Exhaust temp is 300-400 deg as opposed to 500-600 deg w/ coal I am guessing. You will get more heat out of a free standing stove in my opinion.

 

[Hoot23]

I get some radiant heat from the 61, but not near enough to feel it if your sitting more the 3 feet away. Although when the temps outside are in the low 40's, the blower will shut off and the only heat you get is radiating from the stove.

Won't get that from an insert i would think since most of the stove is inside the hearth.

 

[Lousyweather]

I usually tend to prefer the freestanding units as well, as long as you have the floor and clearance real estate to make it happen. Also easier to clean, and put out more heat.

 

[Hoot23]

Agreed with Lousy, the P series stove is very easy to clean. And with this past week the temps were frigid and the stove held up way past my expectations.

 

[alternativeheat]

Agreed with Lousy, the P series stove is very easy to clean. And with this past week the temps were frigid and the stove held up way past my expectations.

Ok, thanks guys. So do you think in New England the P61 would cut it in general compared with the coal stove aside from the radiating situation. Hard to answer I know but also there is the P68. I thought that nay be too much stove for my house. We do need to push air around and use just a small 6" fan now which is not optimal but makes adofference.

The sizing of the coal stove was geared to a 40lb grate, we use just about, or bring into the house, 50lb per day. Coal now around here is $8.50-$10 a bag or $350ish per ton. How ever my oil bill if to use no stove is $3000 per year incidentally.

 

[MikeNH]

If you are looking for some radiant heat the free standing P61 would be the choice.

I second this. Our P61a throws off some decent radiant heat...nothing compared to a wood stove though, but it keeps our first floor at 72 with no problem on the coldest days. It's also very easy to maintain and clean.

 

[P38X2]

Another vote for a P series Harman. Assuming you have adequate insulation in your cape, the 61 should be more than adequate, but like in most pellet stove applications, a small fan or two will make a big difference.

The stove is very easy to clean. Burn low ash pellets and aside from a quick 5 second daily burn pot scraping, you'll likely find going 3 weeks between cleanings is no problem.

 

[alternativeheat]

Yes the dealer ran us through the daily scraping, pretty simple. With coal I tend the stove every 12 hours and dump an entire pan of ash daily. We burned wood 35 years ago and when switching to coal could not believe the amount of daily ash. I read the comments about some pellets producing too much ash and just think you guys ain't seen nothing, as the saying goes. However, I am all new too pellets, resisting all these years and still question the move from an angle or two.

Thanks again for the input thus far.

 

[alternativeheat]

So minister of fire, I see you are using a P68 in a much colder neighborhood than mine. How is that on fuel consumption compared with the 61a do you think ? What kind of square footage are you heating if I might ask ?

See, the thing is our Cape is 1800 sq ft. But included in that is the fact that the kitchen has a 12'x12' addition. Though a straight shot through the kitchen and super insulated out there, it is the furthest point from the stove. Some days we get that pretty comfy and some days we don't with not having a blower.

Finally, the fact that the free standing P61 ( or 68) is less radiant than our coal stove is fine, I'd just like some radiant presence from a stove. We have a grand piano in the living room and don't need to totally dry that out. Done enough damage to it with the coal stove !

 

[P38X2]

I'm assuming I'm the minister of fire you're referring to....

My guess is the 61 and 68 would be very close in pellet consumption, assuming either stove would be adequate in your application...which, IMO, they both would be....does that make sense? In other words, take either stove on an average cold day and they'll both burn about the same amount of pellets. If you needed more than the 61 can provide, obviously the 68 is gonna use more pellets. With, generally, not much of a price increase to the 68, I think you'd be better off driving the bigger stove less hard. I think you'd have less heat being wasted out the vent with the 68 on say 3/4 vs the 61 going 100%, although I think I'd be surprised if the 61 ran at 100% output for any significant length of time heating your space. The 68 also has a very slight advantage in radiant surface area. Before switching to my P68, I used a P38. That 38 is now in my uncles cape which is also about 1800sq'. He has zero problems keeping his house warm with it, including during the -15 degree temps we had the other day. He only uses one fan at the bottom of his stairs blowing back towards the stove. He admits the back bathroom isn't as warm as rooms closer to the stove, but that's due to a lack of air movement, rather than a lack of stove output I'm sure. I'm 99% sure his house has nothing more than "code approved" insulation. R19 in the walls and probably R38 in the roof. Late 80's construction. For a couple months now I've been asking about his pellet consumption, and every time I'm baffled by his answer because it's quite low, at least according to what I'm expecting to hear him say.

I'm heating a 2400sq' colonial. My first floor ranges from 72 to 80 depending on where you are and what the stove is doing at the time. My upstairs stays between 70-72 with the exception of my office above the garage which I keep around 64 by keeping the door open only a few inches. My stove could easily heat that room as well, but I'm rarely in there. This is my first year with this stove, so I can't really say what my total consumption will be. Since heating season started, I'm at about the 2 ton point and expect to use another 3. I think my "unk" is right around the ton mark.

I think you'd be more than happy with a P61, but for the reasons listed above, I'd be tempted to go with the bigger stove. Another advantage of going bigger is the fact you'll likely be able to turn the blower speed down a bit. On high, it can be a bit noisy. Nothing you won't get used to as it becomes background noise, but when the blower shuts off, you'll probably notice how loud you have the volume on your TV

If you don't already have a humidifier, I'd strongly recommend one, especially since you have what is likely a very nice piano in there.

 

[chken]

http://pelletheat.org/pellets/compare-fuel-costs/

Using a fuel cost calculator, it seems like coal and pellets are about equal in cost per btu, assuming $200 a ton for pellets and $350 a ton for coal. If you are currently using 50 lbs of coal a day, then you probably need 85 lbs of pellets a day, or just over 2 bags. Based upon that, I'd say you probably need a 47k btu unit minimum, which can burn almost 3 and a half bags on maximum.

However, based upon $3000 in oil if no stove, then it sounds like your needs might be greater. $3000 would be 850 gallons in my neck of the woods, which is an average home's use in New England. Based on that, you'd need to burn 7.5 tons of pellets to get the equivalent btus. That sounds like a 4 bag a day habit. Of course, an oil furnace is heating your whole house, while the pellet stove would heat a part of your house.

 

[Micmann]

http://pelletheat.org/pellets/compare-fuel-costs/

Using a fuel cost calculator, it seems like coal and pellets are about equal in cost per btu, assuming $200 a ton for pellets and $350 a ton for coal. If you are currently using 50 lbs of coal a day, then you probably need 85 lbs of pellets a day, or just over 2 bags. Based upon that, I'd say you probably need a 47k btu unit minimum, which can burn almost 3 and a half bags on maximum.

However, based upon $3000 in oil if no stove, then it sounds like your needs might be greater. $3000 would be 850 gallons in my neck of the woods, which is an average home's use in New England. Based on that, you'd need to burn 7.5 tons of pellets to get the equivalent btus. That sounds like a 4 bag a day habit. Of course, an oil furnace is heating your whole house, while the pellet stove would heat a part of your house.

Holy cow. I have an 1500 sqft cape with a P61. If i burned four bags a day I'd have palm trees growing in my back yard! I can't believe he would use that much. I know the calcs say otherwise, but true daily usage will say different i do believe.

I agree bigger is better, but if you're putting this on the main level a P61 should be plenty big and a P43 might be just fine. With my P61 I can maintain 87 degrees in my basement and 70-72 on my main floor on 3 ton a year, bag to bag&1/3rd a day on cold days. Definitely go with a P series, but i would not go bigger than a P61.

 

[alternativeheat]

Thanks again guys.

chken, I've not supplied you with all information regarding oil heat. We have an apartment on the house with a tenant. It's not a large apartment and he is not a heat hog but the boiler is big enough to accommodate that apartment. It's only 550 sq ft. over there and less than ten year old construction, very tight ( it's oil only over there). Over here in the main house( built in the 1940s) the coal supplements oil, since on the coldest days the heat will come on but the reduction in oil use is huge. In the main house the burner runs a good part of the time the circulator runs, in the apartment the circulator runs very very long with short bursts of burner running. We have to heat up these old radiators over here and over there it's baseboard. He tells me he only keeps his heat on 64 over there as he isn't home during the day.

On the coal front, the stove has just so much control and I definitely burn it on days when it isn't needed because once I light it I like to keep it going. The stove also serves to keep the heat where I feel comfortable ( the wife can take it colder than me these days, too many meds in my blood). On those warmer days though we are burning coal, which wasn't bad back in the Jimmy Carter years . Here on Cape Cod is a little different than some parts of New England because of the ocean we jut out into. Long story short, a pellet stove can shut down on those days and like the coal, supplement heat in the coldest weather and do the whole house minus apartment in between . We get a lot of days in the 20s and even low 30s when up north is in single digits or worse. 0 or -2 would be a super rare year here, with Jan bringing 10 deg to 12 deg night and upper teen days for a couple of week. We have a very long transition into winter from fall, a lot of days we don't need to burn a stove, December is time to start thinking more seriously along those lines.

You guys are great at this forum !

 

[alternativeheat]

Holy cow. I have an 1500 sqft cape with a P61. If i burned four bags a day I'd have palm trees growing in my back yard! I can't believe he would use that much. I know the calcs say otherwise, but true daily usage will say different i do believe.

I agree bigger is better, but if you're putting this on the main level a P61 should be plenty big and a P43 might be just fine. With my P61 I can maintain 87 degrees in my basement and 70-72 on my main floor on 3 ton a year, bag to bag&1/3rd a day on cold days. Definitely go with a P series, but i would not go bigger than a P61.

This is all part of what I am trying to get a handle on. If I try to sort of mimic the coal output with pellets you may be right. Actually the dealer suggested we would use 3 tons but who believes dealers really. It depends on the winter, this year has started early here. Last year was warm and I basically went with oil, that was a mistake ! Using the coal stove as supplement heat we use on average two tons of a coal. I can crank it up but I can't crank it down a whole lot, just to a point and if it goes out you are into a whole clean out and relight which doesn't go like pellets or wood, even though I have it down to a fine science.

I thought of going with a coal stoker but the wife has come to be very leery of coal in the current political and eco friendly environment. She feels it's going to price out and maybe get hard to get as time moves on. If we invest in something now right before retiring or actually semi retiring, we want it to be around for the next 20 years, work well and give nice heat.

 

[SmokeEater]

I am not heating with a Harman pellet insert nor a free-standing P series, but do heat a cape in some colder climate that Cape Cod. Using a Harman pellet boiler and heating about 3000 square feet, the cellar, main floor, and upstairs. Normally using about 3 bags per day on a 20-30 degrees day. Pick up the wind and drop the temps down to 0 and the Harman will burn 4 bags in 24 hours. Last week we had an official temperature of -25 nearby and that day, which never went above 0 with moderate winds the Harman burned 5 bags. I keep the cellar at 75, main floor at 72 during the day but set back to 68 at night. The upstairs will stay around 68 to 70. Imagine the oil costs!!

 

[chken]

I am not heating with a Harman pellet insert nor a free-standing P series, but do heat a cape in some colder climate that Cape Cod. Using a Harman pellet boiler and heating about 3000 square feet, the cellar, main floor, and upstairs. Normally using about 3 bags per day on a 20-30 degrees day. Pick up the wind and drop the temps down to 0 and the Harman will burn 4 bags in 24 hours. Last week we had an official temperature of -25 nearby and that day, which never went above 0 with moderate winds the Harman burned 5 bags. I keep the cellar at 75, main floor at 72 during the day but set back to 68 at night. The upstairs will stay around 68 to 70. Imagine the oil costs!!

How many tons do you use in a year? 7 or so?

 

[SmokeEater]

How many tons do you use in a year? 7 or so?

I start the boiler in October and need heat until into May. I plan on burning 8 tons this heating season and this is my DHW also. I will cut this by maybe a ton or two by better insulation of my radiant heat on the main floor and lowering the heat in the cellar to 50 next year.

 

[chken]

I start the boiler in October and need heat until into May. I plan on burning 8 tons this heating season and this is my DHW also. I will cut this by maybe a ton or two by better insulation of my radiant heat on the main floor and lowering the heat in the cellar to 50 next year.

Thanks, do you load the bags by hand, or do you have a bulk bag loader? And, if you don't have a bulk loader auguring system, what do you do when you go away?

 

[alternativeheat]

I start the boiler in October and need heat until into May. I plan on burning 8 tons this heating season and this is my DHW also. I will cut this by maybe a ton or two by better insulation of my radiant heat on the main floor and lowering the heat in the cellar to 50 next year.

We had an old American Standard boiler in the basement before this new fancy digitally controlled thing and I converted that to coal for a time decades ago. Pellet boils are cool. It's an interesting concept and I'm glad it's working well for you ! We want a fire upstairs though, we just don't want to go backwards from where we are at in heat potential, if anything forward would be nice ! In your case, no I would not want to see that oil bill.

My heat is running right now and it's killing me to hear it. My stove is off because yesterday went to 44 deg, today and tomorrow supposed to be near 50 and Sunday again, Mon we crash back down to earth . But at night the heat is running as it's dropping into the 30s. In this case I could be burning pellets overnight. With coal when the temp hits 45 outside I get a lazy draft, if the stove burns set on low it burns uneven, if I crank it up the house is too hot. We have just been through a run of mid and upper 20s weather and had a couple of 10 and low teen mornings and several around 18 deg here, the stove was running just marvelous keeping that oil burner off and the house very comfortable. Now and for the next couple of nights I'm listening to that burner chew into the expensive oil down stairs.

 

[Lousyweather]

http://pelletheat.org/pellets/compare-fuel-costs/

Using a fuel cost calculator, it seems like coal and pellets are about equal in cost per btu, assuming $200 a ton for pellets and $350 a ton for coal. If you are currently using 50 lbs of coal a day, then you probably need 85 lbs of pellets a day, or just over 2 bags. Based upon that, I'd say you probably need a 47k btu unit minimum, which can burn almost 3 and a half bags on maximum.

However, based upon $3000 in oil if no stove, then it sounds like your needs might be greater. $3000 would be 850 gallons in my neck of the woods, which is an average home's use in New England. Based on that, you'd need to burn 7.5 tons of pellets to get the equivalent btus. That sounds like a 4 bag a day habit. Of course, an oil furnace is heating your whole house, while the pellet stove would heat a part of your house.

we are all somewhat prisoners to our locales, but $350/ton for coal on the Cape is somewhat aberrational....normally around $300/ton. My father heats with coal, and yes, the amount of ash is orders of magnitudes greater than pellets, but the raw heat output of coal is pretty amazing!

 

[Lousyweather]

We had an old American Standard boiler in the basement before this new fancy digitally controlled thing and I converted that to coal for a time decades ago. Pellet boils are cool. It's an interesting concept and I'm glad it's working well for you ! We want a fire upstairs though, we just don't want to go backwards from where we are at in heat potential, if anything forward would be nice ! In your case, no I would not want to see that oil bill.

My heat is running right now and it's killing me to hear it. My stove is off because yesterday went to 44 deg, today and tomorrow supposed to be near 50 and Sunday again, Mon we crash back down to earth . But at night the heat is running as it's dropping into the 30s. In this case I could be burning pellets overnight. With coal when the temp hits 45 outside I get a lazy draft, if the stove burns set on low it burns uneven, if I crank it up the house is too hot. We have just been through a run of mid and upper 20s weather and had a couple of 10 and low teen mornings and several around 18 deg here, the stove was running just marvelous keeping that oil burner off and the house very comfortable. Now and for the next couple of nights I'm listening to that burner chew into the expensive oil down stairs.

yup, the curse of coal being it has a certain minimum burn....too low a burn and the draft wont support the fire, turn it up and the heat output will chase you out of the house.....and of course too low a draft, then the coal gas......it takes about a year to learn how to burn coal, but once you get it figured out, you're good. We've sold coal since before your granddaddy had a sparkle in his eye for your grandmother (well before the advent of the internal combustion engine), and we've quite the collection of coal "experts" around....all I can tell you is to not overshake the grates and have patience.....

 

[Hoot23]

My father-in-law has a biasi wood/coal burner. It took him two years to get the coal to burn right for him. This year he seems to have gotten in down, but his oil is still kicking on sometimes and he hates that. He wants to throw a pellet insert in the gas fireplace on the first floor, but the opening is to small. Thinking of putting a free stand ting unit in front of it.

He paid $760 for two pallets of coal here in Maine. Plus 3 cord of wood down there too.

 

[alternativeheat]

I've been burning coal for 30 years, I built the stove I'm using 30 years ago. I have decent handle on burning coal, when the weather warms up I just let it go out, otherwise I tend it on 12 hour intervals. Coal heat is very even throughout its burn cycle.

Not sure where the Dad in the post above bought his coal but I was quoted 319 a ton in bulk deliveries of 2 tons or more. I'm buying bags at the moment at 8.99 which is 359 a ton if my math is right. And I've been quoted 379 for a ton of bags. The average then is around 350. The delivered bulk comes out of Hyde park with an added 35 buck delivery charge.