50,000 BTUs—Heats up to 2,300 square feet WHY DO WE SUFFER THESE EXAGGERATIONS

[OldBrit]

Don't get me wrong, I love my 2 pellet stoves and my wood burning stove. It's at least 10 under tonight and I would hate to be giving the oil tycoons my hard earned cash on a night like tonight. That said, the claims made by pellet stove manufacturer's just seem wildly excessive.

So my Harman XXV (50,000 BTU's) purchased a year ago was considered good for 1700 sq ft. The exact same stove is now good for 2300 sq ft. Interesting!

My 2nd stove, a Quadra Fire Classic Bay 1200 was rated at 40,000 BTU's @ 2500 sq ft a few years ago but now is rated at 47,300 BTUs (very precise) and is good for 2700 sq ft.

Both stoves are manufactured by the same company.

Of course the * by these numbers indicates that the figure quoted is for guidance only and may differ slightly due to climate, building construction, ....

What this really means is that only a complete idiot would actualy believe what they are telling you.

My home is about 2500 sq ft and has 10+" of insulation in the attic but being some 30 years old is probably not really well insulated by modern standards. With both pellet stoves running on Okanagans I can easily maintain mid 70's throughout the house with an even and pretty small temperature spread around the house. Of course my wife wants to fill the wood stove at night and jack the temperature into the 80's but that's another story.

I seem to have the correct heat output now but I very much doubt if either stove individually would meet the manufacturers current claims.

What do you think?

 

[John97]

Part of the reason I went for the Mt. Vernon was that I suspected that there was a considerable "bunk factor" in regards to all of these numbers. So, I wanted a unit where the "real world" numbers would be closer to my actual needs.

 

[DexterDay]

For yrs my CB 1200 (OAK'd) kept up with my home. Running it 24/7 on Low all last year kept 2,180 sq ft Ranch at 75*..

We added a Woodstove (cheap fuel and power outage heat) a Pellet furnace this season. But I used the Quad last night (got down to 12* here and I added a new room to room Aireshare fan) and the entire house is 72* right now (16* currently outside)

Home is 17 yrs old and since we have gotten the Quad, I have tightened and sealed the house up more and more every year. 2x6 construction with new windows (window film kits also). The Quad is located almost dead center in the house (helps a lot) and we have several ceiling fans that run on low (reverse/winter mode) constantly in the Winter.

Is it ideal??? Do people believe me? ? Lots of doubters out there.

Cheated a little last night. Had a Fire in the woodstove going. But didnt load it before bed. Hard to get the heat upstairs. The pellet furnace does a good job of distributing the trapped heat down there.

The Quad still will eat about 2 bags a day on Low with the feed plate open (thats about par) and when temps get to right where they are now, It needs to be bumped up to Medium for a bit (or Overnight depending on low temp).

But all in all. Until this year. It has been what we used for heat. $3,800 a yr in LP wasn't cuttin it. Installed a new Trane LP furnace before the pellet stove (efficient? ? Yeah right! ) Wasted time and money... Oh well, live and learn.

Have through the wall fans in all bedrooms. Reason for the even temps in the bedrooms (big fan of the fans ;-P ) The last temp (blue thermo) is in the stove room. Black one with Red wall is kitchen and the other is all 3 bedroom temps. All taken this morning.

 

[helismash]

Bought a Quad Classic Bay 1200i in early October this year. My house is an older farm house with an addition added to it. The layout is a little odd as all the bedrooms and the living room are upstairs. The 1200i does a nice job keeping the living room and 2 of the 3 bedrooms warm. The other 2 rooms were a bit cool and I was using the oil furnace to keep the downstairs warm. I quickly figured out that needed a stove downstairs. Based on the specs for the stove I purchased a quad Santa Fe. The stove kept up fine until it got real cold. It ran all the time on high and just couldnt quite keep up. I spoke to my dealer and he gave me what I paid for it so I upgraded to the Quad Classic Bay. It was installed last Friday and works great. The lesson I learned is a little overkill never hurts when it comes to heating with pellet stoves. The whole house is now warm and toasty!

 

[Eatonpcat]

For yrs my CB 1200 (OAK'd) kept up with my home. Running it 24/7 on Low all last year kept 2,180 sq ft Ranch at 75*..

We added a Woodstove (cheap fuel and power outage heat) a Pellet furnace this season. But I used the Quad last night (got down to 12* here and I added a new room to room Aireshare fan) and the entire house is 72* right now (16* currently outside)

Home is 17 yrs old and since we have gotten the Quad, I have tightened and sealed the house up more and more every year. 2x6 construction with new windows (window film kits also). The Quad is located almost dead center in the house (helps a lot) and we have several ceiling fans that run on low (reverse/winter mode) constantly in the Winter.

Is it ideal??? Do people believe me? ? Lots of doubters out there.

Cheated a little last night. Had a Fire in the woodstove going. But didnt load it before bed. Hard to get the heat upstairs. The pellet furnace does a good job of distributing the trapped heat down there.

The Quad still will eat about 2 bags a day on Low with the feed plate open (thats about par) and when temps get to right where they are now, It needs to be bumped up to Medium for a bit (or Overnight depending on low temp).

But all in all. Until this year. It has been what we used for heat. $3,800 a yr in LP wasn't cuttin it. Installed a new Trane LP furnace before the pellet stove (efficient? ? Yeah right! ) Wasted time and money... Oh well, live and learn.

Have through the wall fans in all bedrooms. Reason for the even temps in the bedrooms (big fan of the fans ;-P ) The last temp (blue thermo) is in the stove room. Black one with Red wall is kitchen and the other is all 3 bedroom temps. All taken this morning.

I live twenty miles or so from Dex... If I step outside at night, I can see a glowing light in the distance and feel a warm breeze coming from the south!! I think it's the radiant heat coming from Dexter's crib

 

[1Dtml]

I'm new to the pellet world, but I can't believe I waited this long to be warm, and keep more of our hard earned $$$.

First I agree that the manufacturers are not very consistent with the BTU vs sq ft figures, but are other sources of heating much better?

I can tell you last night was 9* F here, and my Hampton GCI60 pellet insert kept my 2100sq ft home at the t-stat temp of 67* F. This is with shoulder pellets, and running on low most of the time, it kicked into high mode at 4.00 am to bring us up to 69* F, but just went back to low again. The upstairs is consistently 2* F lower than the t-stat on the downstairs.

The GCI60 is rated at 55,000 BTU, but my oil boiler is rated at 111,000 BTU. My oil boiler would be running constantly in this cold weather and use about 200gallons or more of oil a month, and the house was a chilly 66-68* F.

I'm very happy with the performance of my 55,000 BTU rated pellet stove vs my 111,000 BTU oil boiler.

I cycle the oil boiler twice a day to prevent potential basement freeze ups, and it runs when hot water is required.

FWIW, now that I keep track of heat recovery I can guarantee the 55000 BTU pellet stove has half the recovery time than my 111,000 BTU oil boiler, and this is with the pellet stove set to Hi/low med heat on shoulder pellets.

We are happy, and warm.
1D

 

[mepellet]

Of course the * by these numbers indicates that the figure quoted is for guidance only and may differ slightly due to climate, building construction, ....

I think you would be surprised how much climate (outside temps) and building construction changes your heat loss. I have a P61A (61,000 BTU) and last night got down to 3*F without wind chill and I left mine in room temp at 70 deg. Only used about half a bag of pellets from 10pm-6am (8 hours) If you assume 8,000 BTU/pound and average that out over the 8 hours thats about 20,000 BTU/hr or 9 BTU/hr per sq. ft.. Thats about 1/3 my stove capacity and I heat roughly 2200 sf. I know my attic insulation is not up to par so I will be taking care of that soon. Sounds like you might be able to tighten up your house a bit more though.

 

[St_Earl]

i know it's not up to code. (a lot in this town isn't.) but the oil furnace duct work termination under the register into my spare room (off of the living room) was boxed in in plywood in the basement.
i simply opened up that box (under the register) and on really cold nights i run a box fan laid flat over the register to warm the basement a bit.
i have a indoor outdoor thermometer w/ the outdoor probe running into the basement through a little hole that was used by the former homeowner to pass a cable line through.

i heat the whole upstairs and keep the basement from 46 to 50 f on the coldest nights ( 10 below for example) and use zero oil.
we have only one section of water pipe that connects to the outside. and that has a shut off valve and is connected w/ a piece of rubber line between the pipe inside and the spigot outside.
sensible for this area.
it amazes me how many people had burst pipes every year in portland oregon where it doesn't even get that cold.

i stuffed a little foam in the well of the register to restrict How much warm air the fan draws from the living space.
i am well pleased w/ this set up.

pellet power ftw.

it "warms my heart" to hear the same experiences of never really being warm with oil heat and still paying out the a** for that pleasure.
it was bad enough in portland oregon. i can hardly imagine what it would have been like here trying to make it through the winter w/ the dinosaur in the basement.

* just read your last post, mepellet.
and yes. next winter will be even better.
i was actually staggered by the price of blow in insulation. but we are getting new windows and siding w/ foam insulation behind it in the spring.

my plan is to insulate further the attic over the back bedroom.
doing very well now. plan on doing a lot better next winter.

 

[ironpony]

house construction and floor plan play a huge role in how much you can heat
my house is 4600 square feet, new construction, very open floor plan 2 story kind of
I can keep my house at 68-70 with my Harman Invincible on stove temp 5
with temps down into the high 20's, 2 bags a day
the bedrooms are a little cooler, which is great for sleeping
if it gets much above 70 in the house the wife opens the sliders and cools it down to 67 or so
run 2 floor fans to circulate air and furnace fan runs 10 min every 30 mins which
helps balance house
burn roughly 4 tons a year
and the stove is not in the ideal spot for the house
if I could move it where the gas "fireplace" is
I would not even have to run it that hard
the fireplace is half the BTU output and can keep the house just as warm by itself
I run it when shutdown for cleaning

 

[SmokeyTheBear]

Don't get me wrong, I love my 2 pellet stoves and my wood burning stove. It's at least 10 under tonight and I would hate to be giving the oil tycoons my hard earned cash on a night like tonight. That said, the claims made by pellet stove manufacturer's just seem wildly excessive.

So my Harman XXV (50,000 BTU's) purchased a year ago was considered good for 1700 sq ft. The exact same stove is now good for 2300 sq ft. Interesting!

My 2nd stove, a Quadra Fire Classic Bay 1200 was rated at 40,000 BTU's @ 2500 sq ft a few years ago but now is rated at 47,300 BTUs (very precise) and is good for 2700 sq ft.

Both stoves are manufactured by the same company.

Of course the * by these numbers indicates that the figure quoted is for guidance only and may differ slightly due to climate, building construction, ....

What this really means is that only a complete idiot would actualy believe what they are telling you.

My home is about 2500 sq ft and has 10+" of insulation in the attic but being some 30 years old is probably not really well insulated by modern standards. With both pellet stoves running on Okanagans I can easily maintain mid 70's throughout the house with an even and pretty small temperature spread around the house. Of course my wife wants to fill the wood stove at night and jack the temperature into the 80's but that's another story.

I seem to have the correct heat output now but I very much doubt if either stove individually would meet the manufacturers current claims.

What do you think?

Trust me, there are a lot of complete idiots out there.

You size a heating device by doing a detailed heat loss calculation that takes into consideration your building (nobody else's building), the climate at your location (heating degree days, coldest temperature), This is the figure you want the middle of the firing rates on your stove to be able to produce.

 

[smoke show]

If I had to run my stove wide open I'm pretty sure I wouldn't save any money.

Maximum btu output is a better gauge then square footage ratings.

just sayin.

 

[mepellet]

Maximum btu output is a better gauge then square footage ratings.

VERY TRUE
Square footage ratings should not be allowed to be posted for stoves. Doesn't mean too much...

 

[Bank]

I think you gotta take those statements at arms length and with a big grain of salt. How can they state it will heat "x" sqaure feet. I mean all the types of houses, with and without "x" insulation, doors, windows. There are so many variables it's impossible to state, unless they list assumptions, i.e. a new ranch home with "x" amount of insulation, triple pane windows, vinyl doors, no cathederal ceilings, open floor plan etc. And they never say at what temp it will keep your house!

 

[ironpony]

I think you gotta take those statements at arms length and with a big grain of salt. How can they state it will heat "x" sqaure feet. I mean all the types of houses, with and without "x" insulation, doors, windows. There are so many variables it's impossible to state, unless they list assumptions, i.e. a new ranch home with "x" amount of insulation, triple pane windows, vinyl doors, no cathederal ceilings, open floor plan etc. And they never say at what temp it will keep your house!

How true............
as I stated above, my house gets above 70 we open windows
so it is all relevant
now if we wanted 75-80 it would not be possible with pellets alone.

 

[briggsy13]

We went with a stove rated to 2000 feet because of this very thing. Our house is only a bit over 1000 feet. We figured worse case we keep the stove running on low all the time if its cooking us out. It isn't although it keeps us plenty warm. If we had 2000 feet it would probably work extra hard to heat that. Depending on the layout of course.

 

[St_Earl]

We went with a stove rated to 2000 feet because of this very thing. Our house is only a bit over 1000 feet. We figured worse case we keep the stove running on low all the time if its cooking us out. It isn't although it keeps us plenty warm. If we had 2000 feet it would probably work extra hard to heat that. Depending on the layout of course.

the dealer i bought from actually gave me a much more realistic valuation of the capacity of this stove than apparently the company literature now states.

just now reading this thread i remember how i came up with the 1500 sq foot number.
i think the heatilator site claims 2,200 sq feet or better for the ps50.

but when shopping at mcvety's in bangor, the question of the ps35 or the ps50 had the dealer saying that the ps50 was comfortably oversized for our 925 sq. feet and that the ps35 would have to work all out in really cold conditions to heat our house front to back.

i love my stove.
but i am damn glad i'm not trying to heat 2,500 sq feet with it.

* edit- i see in the first post the 50,000 btu unit that was initially rated at 1,700 sq. feet.
sounds comparable to what my dealer was telling me with this 50,000 btu model.

 

[OldBrit]

if it gets much above 70 in the house the wife opens the sliders and cools it down to 67 or so

Any chance of your wife having a few words with mine? It could save me a bundle!

 

[Eatonpcat]

if it gets much above 70 in the house the wife opens the sliders and cools it down to 67 or so

Any chance of your wife having a few words with mine? It could save me a bundle!

Your wife sounds hot LOL

 

[pastera]

My house requires about 25kBTU/hr at design temp to hold at 65 - calculated from oil consumption over four years versus degree day data

That is for about 2400sf with another 600 only heated to 50. Even my tiny wood insert can keep up as long as someone isaround to feed it.

My pellet stove could could handle the house load easily if it was located better. Where it is in my family room it can hit the 90's before i give up.

 

[OldBrit]

My house requires about 25kBTU/hr at design temp to hold at 65 - calculated from oil consumption over four years versus degree day data

That is for about 2400sf with another 600 only heated to 50. Even my tiny wood insert can keep up as long as someone isaround to feed it.

My pellet stove could could handle the house load easily if it was located better. Where it is in my family room it can hit the 90's before i give up.

Sounds very familiar. My wood insert can definately kick out the heat but as you say it needs someone to feed it. When I put in my first pellet stove the idea was that it would cover the opposite end of the house to the wood stove and thereby 1) take the chill out of the house when we were not either sleeping or at work 2) allow us not to have to crank the wood stove in a vain attempt to heat the whole house. This is pretty much what we got and so I was generally pleased. I was never anticipating that this stove would be a replacement for our old oil system.

The down side was that we had become pampered with oil heat to the extent that we were accustomed to the whole house being at an even temperature. This is what led to installing a 2nd pellet stove. After 2 weeks use in some of the coldest weather we have had this season I have to say my plan seems to be working. We certainly have a nice even temperature around the house particularly in the mornings when we need to get that extra boost. The pellet usage is about the same since our original pellet stove is no longer trying to heat our cathedral ceiling living room to a higher temperature than required because we were trying to get heat into other parts of the house.

Obviously I have the extra cost and maintenace of 2 stoves but the 2nd one was a used stove that I installed myself so the initial outlay was not very high. Not the solution for everyone but in my case it's working well.

As they say in Realty world it's all about LOCATION, LOCATION, LOCATION

 

[drken567]

Don't get me wrong, I love my 2 pellet stoves and my wood burning stove. It's at least 10 under tonight and I would hate to be giving the oil tycoons my hard earned cash on a night like tonight. That said, the claims made by pellet stove manufacturer's just seem wildly excessive.

So my Harman XXV (50,000 BTU's) purchased a year ago was considered good for 1700 sq ft. The exact same stove is now good for 2300 sq ft. Interesting!

My 2nd stove, a Quadra Fire Classic Bay 1200 was rated at 40,000 BTU's @ 2500 sq ft a few years ago but now is rated at 47,300 BTUs (very precise) and is good for 2700 sq ft.

Both stoves are manufactured by the same company.

What do you think?

Hi,
I'd think that 50K BTUs should be fine for a 2300 ft home, if you get good distribution throughout the house. If your XXV is stuffed in a closet where it doesn't get the heat out to the rest of the house, it's likely to be running at way less than full capacity, so it wouldn't matter if you had a million-BTU stove.

My own 24-yr old house is 3200+ sq. ft., open design, 3 floors and 27 ft. tall cathedral ceiling, average insulation. The other night it got to 1*F out here in NH, and my XXV did the trick perfectly, with temps throughout steady at around 68-71, and no furnace activity. I can't imagine what kind of weather I'd need to see to consider getting a second stove for this space. It sounds like you could have heated with 2 rather smaller stoves than you ended up with, and that maybe distribution is more the problem in your case? In any case, more stove capacity than you need is likely better than less, but at least based on my experience, the XXV is quite conservatively rated at 2300 ft. for a house of average construction and open enough to allow heat flow. Whether your space will allow the heat to distribute is another matter.
Ken

 

[webbie]

I seem to have the correct heat output now but I very much doubt if either stove individually would meet the manufacturers current claims.

What do you think?

Whether wood or pellets - STOVES DON'T HEAT - the fuel does!

The only way to get heat out is to get fuel through. If you are running at 50,000 BTU output (doubtful), that would be almost 10 lbs per hour....which would be a bag in 4 or 5 hours. This would, of course, be as high or higher than the stove can go.

Some stoves are rated on input-the same as an oil burner often is!

In that case, 50K BTU's would be about 6 pounds of pellets per hour. That would be a bag in about 6.5 hours. I suspect that is about the max. of most stoves.

Square feet is a very difficult measurement. But it is true that in "normal" weather in the mid-atlantic region, a house of 2,000 or so square feet could be heated with perhaps 30K BTU output, which should be in the range of those stoves. Normal weather there is about 25 as a low overnight and 36 as a high during the day.

When the weather gets too far below that, most bets are off.

In summary, I don't think most people would even want a stove that burned 10+ pounds per hour - so very few exist. Rather the pellets stoves are designed as "space and room heaters", which can do a good job at keeping you warm and cutting down the use of other fuels.

 

[SmokeyTheBear]

What most folks forget is that heat loss is different for every single house and it increases over time if you don't maintain the envelope.

You can loose far more heat via air leaks (infiltration) than through poorly insulated walls or attic.

Usually insulating will also help stop the air leaks as well as slowing conduction and radiation heat transfer.

Some houses will lose more heat through their walls than through their attic.

You don't want to even get into vast expanses of glass.

 

[mepellet]

What most folks forget is that heat loss is different for every single house and it increases over time if you don't maintain the envelope.

You can loose far more heat via air leaks (infiltration) than through poorly insulated walls or attic.

Usually insulating will also help stop the air leaks as well as slowing conduction and radiation heat transfer.

Some houses will lose more heat through their walls than through their attic.

You don't want to even get into vast expanses of glass.

Well said,

The usual culprits of heat loss (in order of greatest to least) in an older house are:

infiltration
glass
attic
walls
floors

Like Smokey said insulating walls properly can help slow down/stop air leaks.

Each 0.5 fresh air changes per hour in a 2000 sf house equals 7,200 BTU/hr of heat loss
The above assumes 8 foot ceilings and outdoor temp of 20*F and indoor desired temp of 70*F

This is why OAK help a lot. Assuming an exhaust blower handles 85 cfm and the above temperature conditions, the infiltration caused by the exhaust blower causes 4,590 BTU/hr of heat loss.

 

[jtakeman]

I seem to have the correct heat output now but I very much doubt if either stove individually would meet the manufacturers current claims.

What do you think?

Whether wood or pellets - STOVES DON'T HEAT - the fuel does!

The only way to get heat out is to get fuel through. If you are running at 50,000 BTU output (doubtful), that would be almost 10 lbs per hour....which would be a bag in 4 or 5 hours. This would, of course, be as high or higher than the stove can go.

Some stoves are rated on input-the same as an oil burner often is!

In that case, 50K BTU's would be about 6 pounds of pellets per hour. That would be a bag in about 6.5 hours. I suspect that is about the max. of most stoves.

Square feet is a very difficult measurement. But it is true that in "normal" weather in the mid-atlantic region, a house of 2,000 or so square feet could be heated with perhaps 30K BTU output, which should be in the range of those stoves. Normal weather there is about 25 as a low overnight and 36 as a high during the day.

When the weather gets too far below that, most bets are off.

In summary, I don't think most people would even want a stove that burned 10+ pounds per hour - so very few exist. Rather the pellets stoves are designed as "space and room heaters", which can do a good job at keeping you warm and cutting down the use of other fuels.

Actually web, There are some stoves out there that can eat pellets at close to 9 lbs/hr. Both Enviro and Harman have a 68K BTU plus model. Drotlet has a 65K model as well. There might be a few more. As we get more into this pellet thing we are seening more pellet furnaces getting into the game. Probably a better choice for heating larger homes.