Feed Rate vs. Thermostat Temp

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P. Elettt

New Member
Hearth Supporter
Nov 13, 2008
16
Central Ma/NH Border
I'm trying to decide which is the best feed rate to keep my Lopi Pioneer on most of the time. We don't keep our house really warm, we'd like it to be 66-68 degrees tops and that's just in the evenings say from 5-11 when we go to bed.

So far I've been running the stove on low only and only getting up to 63-64 degrees throughout the day, the problem is that obviously on low in the morning it takes HOURS for it to reach that temperature, especially if we have the stove off at night which we usually do.

Our goal as we only bought 2 tons to heat our 1200(approx) 3 bedroom ranch was to use no more than 1/2 a bag a day. We have a thermostat and I was thinking, would it be more efficient and still in keeping with our usage goals to burn at a higher feed rate while using the thermostat? I was thinking that if in the morning, if it takes say 6 hours to bring the house up 5 degrees (I'm making that up) on low, I could bring the house up to that temperature even faster but running it on med or med-high for a shorter period of time. I'd theoretically use the same amount of pellets right? Say if Low burns 1lb an hour and Medium #3 burns 2lbs an hour, but can heat it up in half the time?

So I guess my question is, is it more efficient and would use the same amount of pellets or less for us to run a higher feed rate to reach a higher temperature, than trying to hit that temperature on low?

My plan is to not run the stove at night (we don't really care if it's cold in the morning), run the stove on High until it hits 64 or so, and then run on low to maintain that temp for the rest of the day until evening when I'd put it on medium until we go to bed. I figure on high at 3.5lbs an hour, we should be able to get the house up to temp in 1-2 hours and burn the same amount of pellets that it would take us in 6 or more hours on low to reach that temp.

Make sense? I hope so :)
 
I run my stove on med set at 71 deg stat has 2 gegree swing so stove will come on at 69 off at 73. I am using a bag every 2 days temps gets down in low 30's.
When it gets colder may have to go to high and burn a bag a day still better than price of propane. I think your going to need more than 2 tons.
 
good question, it seems like a lot of us have this question. I run my stove from 5pm to 7 am. At 5pm it has been about 60 degrees inside and is usually up to 69 by 10pm on a medium setting. (as it gets colder out I am sure that my interior temp will drop) Not sure how efficient this is but its what I have been doing so far. Only problem with this so far not running the stove during the day is that our bedroom hasn't got over 65.
 
azwormguy said:
I run my stove on med set at 71 deg stat has 2 gegree swing so stove will come on at 69 off at 73. I am using a bag every 2 days temps gets down in low 30's.
When it gets colder may have to go to high and burn a bag a day still better than price of propane. I think your going to need more than 2 tons.

I think we'll be fine. I'm only on bag #3 and by my calculations, if tomorrow I started burning a bag a day, by the end of March we'd only be short about 15 bags. But with our heating habits so far I'm sure we could make that up. I think 2 tons will be fine.

I'm definitely not a pellet pig (as I'm learning the term here). I'd much rather be a little chilly and get a blanket than burn 2 bags a day to stay comfortable if that's what it came down to. But I think the worse case scenario would be one bag a day and that's if I wanted it around 70 and that's far too warm for me. We're fine at about 65 degrees which should be manageable. We're trying to not burn at night and just wake up to a cold first floor but for a few days I'm running the stove on low with the thermostat at 50 (which would actually maintain temps of 58-60 degrees according to our furnace's digital thermostat...they're off by 8 degrees or so). I figure I can afford to experiment with a weeks worth of bags just to figure things out.

But from what I'm reading, apparently my calculations regarding lbs burned vs. each setting is wrong.
 
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