Well, I'm all in on the XXV for the week

[Hitch]

I've never been happier that we decided to put in the pellet stove a couple years ago. To date, we have really only run it on nights and weekends to heat up the one room (it's on the back of the house, has lots of windows and is my wife's favorite room). Obviously, it ends up heating more than that one room.

Anyway, the main house heater broke on Friday. A new part was ordered, but it will be late next week or early the week after before it comes in and is installed. But for the pellet stove, we'd be trying to heat the house with a 10KW electric heating strip. Big $$$$$'s.

My bad luck continued today when I went to pick up some more pellets. I have about a ton that I pre-paid for. Went to get some and they were running low. They had a sign out which asked people to get no more than 5 bags. I was told they had 7 left. They recorded what I was going to take and some guy walked in behind me. Turns out he loaded his pellets before going into the store. He took all 7 and just grinned when the employees inside learned what he had done. Hope all 7 bags make HUGE clinkers....

The good news is that the XXV is heating the house just fine. It's 71* on the first floor and 68* upstairs. It's 34* outside. I don't think the Harman has broken a sweat yet. Fortunately, the fan in the main HVAC runs, so it's distributing the heat around the house.

My wife is warm and happy. Happy wife, good life!

 

[deercamp]

i am so glad that i came across this post. i was debating to put in an insert or freestanding at the end of my colonial in the family room. i know that the accentra
will look a lot nicer but i wanted the stove to heat the whole house. after reading your post i remembered that i put in a central air unit in the basement for the first floor and a unit in the attic for the second floor after my daughters bone marrow transplant. this will make it easier for me now to go with the accentra and be confident that it will help move the warm air around the house a lot better. is your hvac all one unti or is it split? i guess when i put the stove in i will have to experiment to see if i should run both untis or just the second floor that has a huge return at the top of the stairs on the second floor to suck the air through the house.
sorry to ramble on here but i am very excited that i came across this.

 

[Hitch]

No worries, Deercamp. That's one of the reasons I rambled with my post.

My HVAC is an all in one unit. It's a geothermal. The evap coil failed, but the fan still works. It has a "circulate" feature, where the fan runs at a pretty low speed. To give you somewhat of an idea, the unit has two stage cool and three stage heat. The first two stages are low and high. The third stage heat is resistance. Anyway, the circulate function runs at a speed a good bit lower than first stage.

As I mentioned, the room is an addition on the back of the house. It has high ceilings and we added, as you did, a couple of big returns. There is no second floor above it. In other words, my house is not being heated by just the heat rising. The HVAC fan is certainly helping to get the heat around the house.

It'll be interesting to see how many pellets we go through this week with full-time burning.