At the chance that you will all consider me off my rocker, I have an abundant supply of press board pieces, or called aspenite. Maybe even refered to as partical board, they use it on the exterior of new homes nowadays. Could this be run through a limb sch edder and then run through a pellet stove? Just a thought. :bug:
Alternative fuel
- Thread starter kobiewhite
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Around here they use oriented strand board (OSB) on the sides of houses before the finished siding. I think it has a good amount of adhesive in the mix so even if you could shred it into 3/8" x 1" pieces they probably wouldn't burn in most pellet stoves. I wouldn't be surprised if they also mixed in something to keep the wood from burning as rapidly as normal.
Realizing I'm not smart enough to be a know it all, my best guess is that it will jam auger &/ or burn out auger motor.
I have used loose saw dust in my pellet stove & know it works, to an extent, buts makes a big mess in the fire pot & leads to clinkers and early clean up of stove & burns a bit dirty.Needs extra primary air manually set in, if your pellet stove has a manual primary air adjuster rod.
But if you were desperate for fuel & didn't mind the extra clean ups, you could add CLEAN (NO NAILS) loose saw dust to pellets.
Making sure the saw dust has no foriegn objects in it is worth the life of your auger.
The saw dust alone won't burn without the pellets to retain the fire, because the saw dust tends to fall through the slots & holes in the fire pot grate into the ash trap, while the pellets stay on top of the fire pot & burn.
CHAIN SAW SAW DUST, BEING LARGER CHIPS will probably work much better , since they are closer to the size of pellets ,won't be so prone to falling through the slots in the fire pot & not heavy enough to jam or damage the auger, I think, not having actually tried it yet.
I wonder what would happen if one tried mixing corn with pellets, in varing ratios, to find a proper ratio where the mix would burn well. I have no idea, aagain, never having tried it.
Last though, mix pellets with chain saw dust with corn, in varing ratios, looking for the mix that best supports clean conbustion. This would be experimentation & you would be the experimenter.
Some one, some where, has already done it, but I don't know who or what the outcome was.
Probably not completely sucessfull or they would already be marketing it as a cheaper alternative to pellets.
No doubt ,the mix leads to black window, early clean up of stove anf clinker formation in the fire pot and as most stove owners don't want to deal with it, as I don't, we gladly pay the extra $ for clean ,low ash pellets.
There is a cheaper grade of high ash content pellets called standard grade & most stove owners hate them & wont buy them, because the daily or twice daily clean up is more trouble than the $1.oo or the $1.50 that you save.
The lowest grade of pellets is made from compressed newspapers, is really ultra high ash & dirty burning and requires 4 clean ups of your pellet stove per day and cost about $2.50 for a 40 lb bag.
I don't know if anyone even still makes them, anymore, because most stove owners buy 1 bag, are so mad at the mess & clean up that they try to return the unopened bags back to the store and the store refuses to order more of them because of the cost of the returns & the cost of unsatisfied customers.
The free market weeds out unsatisfactory products rather ruthlessly & qiute quickly and the mith of paper pellets probably has its best commercial application in helping a pellet stove salesman persuade a cheap skate pellet stove customer to buy the pellet stove, telling him he can get paper pellets at $2.50 for a 40lb bag, well knowing that no one produces paper pellets anymore due to customer rejection of the product.
Even a master miser, a modern day scrouge, like me, will pay 4.50 a bag for clean burning pellets & then still complain about having to clean out the pellet stove once a day during a 24 hour continous burn session.
They say that my pellet stove is not susposed to be used as a primary source of heat, but I do use it as that, when I don't feel like setting & lighting a fire in my wood stove or running the money/oil burner.
I have used loose saw dust in my pellet stove & know it works, to an extent, buts makes a big mess in the fire pot & leads to clinkers and early clean up of stove & burns a bit dirty.Needs extra primary air manually set in, if your pellet stove has a manual primary air adjuster rod.
But if you were desperate for fuel & didn't mind the extra clean ups, you could add CLEAN (NO NAILS) loose saw dust to pellets.
Making sure the saw dust has no foriegn objects in it is worth the life of your auger.
The saw dust alone won't burn without the pellets to retain the fire, because the saw dust tends to fall through the slots & holes in the fire pot grate into the ash trap, while the pellets stay on top of the fire pot & burn.
CHAIN SAW SAW DUST, BEING LARGER CHIPS will probably work much better , since they are closer to the size of pellets ,won't be so prone to falling through the slots in the fire pot & not heavy enough to jam or damage the auger, I think, not having actually tried it yet.
I wonder what would happen if one tried mixing corn with pellets, in varing ratios, to find a proper ratio where the mix would burn well. I have no idea, aagain, never having tried it.
Last though, mix pellets with chain saw dust with corn, in varing ratios, looking for the mix that best supports clean conbustion. This would be experimentation & you would be the experimenter.
Some one, some where, has already done it, but I don't know who or what the outcome was.
Probably not completely sucessfull or they would already be marketing it as a cheaper alternative to pellets.
No doubt ,the mix leads to black window, early clean up of stove anf clinker formation in the fire pot and as most stove owners don't want to deal with it, as I don't, we gladly pay the extra $ for clean ,low ash pellets.
There is a cheaper grade of high ash content pellets called standard grade & most stove owners hate them & wont buy them, because the daily or twice daily clean up is more trouble than the $1.oo or the $1.50 that you save.
The lowest grade of pellets is made from compressed newspapers, is really ultra high ash & dirty burning and requires 4 clean ups of your pellet stove per day and cost about $2.50 for a 40 lb bag.
I don't know if anyone even still makes them, anymore, because most stove owners buy 1 bag, are so mad at the mess & clean up that they try to return the unopened bags back to the store and the store refuses to order more of them because of the cost of the returns & the cost of unsatisfied customers.
The free market weeds out unsatisfactory products rather ruthlessly & qiute quickly and the mith of paper pellets probably has its best commercial application in helping a pellet stove salesman persuade a cheap skate pellet stove customer to buy the pellet stove, telling him he can get paper pellets at $2.50 for a 40lb bag, well knowing that no one produces paper pellets anymore due to customer rejection of the product.
Even a master miser, a modern day scrouge, like me, will pay 4.50 a bag for clean burning pellets & then still complain about having to clean out the pellet stove once a day during a 24 hour continous burn session.
They say that my pellet stove is not susposed to be used as a primary source of heat, but I do use it as that, when I don't feel like setting & lighting a fire in my wood stove or running the money/oil burner.
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