Harman P68 - Using 2 Bags a day - normal?

[bdaoust]

I have a Harman P68 in the basement of the 1,200 sqft Cape. House has new insulated windows and I believe decent insulation.

I usually keep the stove on around 68-70 degrees. Feed is on 3 or 4.

I am burning a bag on average every 12 hours. Is that a normal rate? Outside temp is on average 20 degrees at night here Western MA.

Pellets - I've burnt MWP, Warm Fronts, Heartlands (softwood), Clean Supreme and all seem to burn at the same rate. Softwoods maybe a little longer.

Thanks
Brian

 

[TheMightyMoe]

That sounds typical.

The only accurate measurement to really go by is a professional energy audit. They will provide you with how many homes your BTU should be using, and you can correlate that to pellets.

Likewise, if you know how much oil / gas you used last year, you can convert that to pellets.

A BTU is a BTU =)

 

[subsailor]

You must have a cold basement to average 2 bags a day. Temps get into even the low 30's and I only burn 1 with the temp set at 72.

 

[Dollabill]

my 3 bedroom log home has used less than 3 ton and weve been toasty all Fall/Winter long !

 

[stovelark]

Hi Brian, doesn't sound hard to believe- is this 1200 sqft in addition to warming basement too (another 1200sqft??) Heating from a basement always difficult... anyway 3 lbs per hr gives out about about 18000 btus of heat, all the numbers seem reasonable to me. I heat about 1600 sq ft from my basement in a raised ranch running two stoves and use about 50-65 lbs a day, do the math, it works. Sounds like your Harman is doing its job, espec heating a basement too. Good luck

 

[CTBossfan]

Brian on cold days which has been about all winter this year I use about 2bags a day. I'm heating about 2300 sqft located in CT. I've tried recently at night to cut the feed rate back to 1.5 to save pellets. I lose about 2 degrees in house temp but seems to save a little bit in pellet usage. That wouldn't have worked in the middle of winter. My guess is a lot of your heat might be absorbed by the basement the only thing about your usage that can see comparing to mine is the sq ft.. Mine is located on the main floor and heating 2 levels, on the other hand my basement was cold this year due to the furnace not running all the time.