Pellet stove question from a woodstove guy...

[kevinmoelk]

I know very little about woodstoves, but know even less about pellet stoves. I've been thinking however, why are pellet stoves so complex? Couldn't there be a way to make them fully manual and not dependant upon electricity?

I've read recently about pellet stoves not being able to be used without electricity. Is this primarily because of the electric auger? If so, could a manual override be incorporated?

I know from my auto background that pop-up headlights and sunroofs have a manual override. Pop off a panel and you can insert a screwdriver or socket and manually move the component. Seems logical that a pellet stove could have a similar backup mechanism. Or am I just completely in the dark on this one?

-Kevin

 

[begreen]

Modern pellet stoves are essentially efficient wood furnaces. They share many of the same components and technology found in gas/oil warm air furnaces to acheive high efficiencies. Some, like the Quad 1200i, are pretty simple and require virtually no user settings.

A pellet stove could be made that didn't use electricity. It would require more manual operation, perhap once an hour to crank up a mechnical spring for the feed mechanism and strong draft. My guess is that it would work about as well as the old style oil heaters. That is, not very efficient and relatively dirty burning. But perhaps that could be improved upon. Of course, without a blower, it might not distribute the heat too well. But that is a problem with many woodstoves also.

 

[GVA]

Us pellet owners all need one thing at a minimum Combustion air... without it the pellets smolder and smoke...

Next comes The distribution blower, with out it it put's out as much heat as standing next to a coffee pot, But that's good because of clearance issues. And when the room gets up to temp the blower shuts down and the flame is reduced, so you don't have a thermal mass in the corner still pumping out heat when it's already 80* in the room.

Last is the auger motor which controls how fast you feed the pellets into the fire.

Some stoves can have an additional battery backup installed to take you through short power outages, and for the longer ones That's where My generator comes in. ;-)

Unfortunatly if they were to add stuff to make you be able to do something like wind it up like a clock and get those motors to last a reasonable amout of time the size and price of these things would be astronomical