My fiance and I decided to try pellets this season and managed to find a pellet basket that would fit through the fairly small door (prob 12"x13") in her 30 year old HearthMate . Got the basket here... http://pelletbasket.webs.com/ . Holds about 13lbs of pellets.
Tried it for the first time yesterday and had good results. A full basket burns for about 4-1/2 hours and kept the house (about 1750 sq ft, 2 story saltbox w/small sunroom addition on back) at 72 degrees. House is a center chimney and the stove sits just off the stairway to the upstairs so the bedrooms stayed nice and comfortable all night. Filled it last night about 11 EDT and just let it burn out over night. House was 68 when I got up at 6 EST so 8 hours later.
Main reason for trying pellets is that after 4 winters of storms taking down lots of trees on our 2 acres so we had plenty of firewood, last winter nothing and we didn't want to buy wood plus fiance never liked the mess and bugs w/wood. We figured we'd try a basket to see how pellets heated our house before making a decision on getting a good pellet stove probably next summer.
We usually run the stove Fri nite-Sun nite as we're gone most of the day during the work week and used the stove to augment the electric baseboard heat the house has.
Bought a ton of pellets at our local Home Depot for $208, probably going to get 1 more as that should cover all the weekends through March and some colder weekday nites. The pellets burn hot, very little ash.
Sam
Tried it for the first time yesterday and had good results. A full basket burns for about 4-1/2 hours and kept the house (about 1750 sq ft, 2 story saltbox w/small sunroom addition on back) at 72 degrees. House is a center chimney and the stove sits just off the stairway to the upstairs so the bedrooms stayed nice and comfortable all night. Filled it last night about 11 EDT and just let it burn out over night. House was 68 when I got up at 6 EST so 8 hours later.
Main reason for trying pellets is that after 4 winters of storms taking down lots of trees on our 2 acres so we had plenty of firewood, last winter nothing and we didn't want to buy wood plus fiance never liked the mess and bugs w/wood. We figured we'd try a basket to see how pellets heated our house before making a decision on getting a good pellet stove probably next summer.
We usually run the stove Fri nite-Sun nite as we're gone most of the day during the work week and used the stove to augment the electric baseboard heat the house has.
Bought a ton of pellets at our local Home Depot for $208, probably going to get 1 more as that should cover all the weekends through March and some colder weekday nites. The pellets burn hot, very little ash.
Sam