Quadrafire 1000 pelletstove. Am I really saving Money?

[gimmeagig]

Hi,
I've been using the Quadrafire 1000 pellet stove in my house for the first season.The main heating comes from a radiant floor system. Last year that was all I used but it was quite expensive. So this year I was trying to save money and so I kept the radiant system at 60 degrees F and used the pellet stove to get it up to about 68 degrees during the daytime but shutting it off at night. It would come on about 6 times a day and go through almost a bag of pellets a day.
Seems cheap enough. But here's the thing.While my gas bill went down quite a bit in the last month, my electric bill is way up. It's not so straightforward to calculate the difference between my energy bill this year vs. the same time last year,because there are other factors involved but It seems like I'm really not saving any money at all.
So now I'm wondering how much electricity the quadrafire uses to operate the blowers. The are very powerful and maybe they are using so much electricity that they are eating up my savings.

 

[turbotech]

What kind of gas? Propane or Natural gas? Propane is the biggest scam there is for heat.
How many hours a day does the pellet stove run? If it ran 24 hrs per day and your cost per Kw is 15 cents then it cost you 82 cents a day with normal motors taking 1 amp each. The ignitor and start up uses a little more so call it $1 per day. I would think $1 per day is still cheaper, but could be wrong if you have cheap natural gas.

 

[SmokeyTheBear]

Stop watching all that football on the big screen plasma TV and your electrical consumption will drop. Pull the plugs on that and the DVR and/or Cable/Satellite box and it should just about go to zero ;-).

 

[gimmeagig]

What kind of gas? Propane or Natural gas? Propane is the biggest scam there is for heat.
How many hours a day does the pellet stove run? If it ran 24 hrs per day and your cost per Kw is 15 cents then it cost you 82 cents a day with normal motors taking 1 amp each. The ignitor and start up uses a little more so call it $1 per day. I would think $1 per day is still cheaper, but could be wrong if you have cheap natural gas.

I've got natural gas and the pellet stove starts up about 6 times a day and (I'm guessing here) probably runs 8 hrs ( not the burner itself but the fans) altogether. Like I mentioned I'm going through about a 40# page per day.
I was thinking that the blowers and the ignitor might use a whole lot of electricity and that that might be the reason why I have a huge electricity bill.But you make it sound like that is not the case.
I do have a little 1500W space heater in my carpet cleaning truck in my garage which is on a thermostat and does keep my machines from freezing.But it turns itself on at 30 and off at 45 degrees and the truck is very well insulated.So it doesn't come on very often.Still that might be the reason for my higher bill.
One dollar for a full day seems reaaly low though. Are you sure?
By the way I don't have a plasma TV and I don't watch football. But I do have a 225 W X 2 stereo power amp that I never shut off.It might be an energy hog too.

 

[turbotech]

I started running some air moving fans about the same time I plugged in the freezer when I filled it with venison. I look at the bill last month and think, wow, the fans are hogs. Then it dawns on me the freezer is the culprit.
I agree, TVs and stuff like that uses way more power.

 

[turbotech]

The ignitor is typically 300 watts
Each of the two motors is 115 watts on high (230 watts total)
Startup for the motors for a few seconds I will ignore.

So if it starts up 4 times and each time is 20 minutes then that is 300 watts for 1.33 hrs which is 400 w-hr
The motors running for 8 hrs at 230 watts is 1840 w-hr
Together that is a total of 2240 w-hr
Around here each kw-hr is 18 cents

So, .18*2.240 = $0.40 or 40 cents for 8 hrs of run time.............8 FULL HOURS costs 40 cents

Compare that to your 1.5kw heater. One hour of that running costs 27 cents .........ONLY 1 HOUR costs 27 cents

The stove isn't sucking up electricity dollars. It is sucking up wood dollars. It may be cheaper to use the natural gas. It is pretty cheap in some places and cheaper than burning wood pellets.