Large pellet furnace needed to heat 3600 s.f.

[Lawnman323]

Most models appear to be designed for approx. 2,000 s.f. I see Harmon is a favorite brand around here. Can I find a single pellet furnace to heat my entire house? (New build, walk out basement, existing propane furnace). I would like to not burn propane at all for heat.

Thank you.

Scott

 

[kinsmanstoves]

Good luck. Your sqft is a lot. I would look into two "units".

Call me for more info.

Eric

 

[swimman]

I have a Lopi Yankee Bay on order for my first floor. I'm in almost 3800 sq ft (about 1500 on the first floor) and do not expect the stove to heat the whole house partially due to the home floor plan as well as the capacity of the stove. I am mainly concerned with heating the main living area and will use the gas furnace (forced hot air) upstairs when we sleep as I expect little of the stove heat to make it up there.

You could always add a second stove in another area if you are concerned about keeping the whole house warm but with the size of your house, and depending on the layout, I would not expect any single stove to be able to heat it sufficiently.

 

[Lawnman323]

Thank you for the responses. That's about the answer I was expecting.

A friend of mine has a USSC American Harvest 6100 pellet furnace locally for $2,000.00. It has about 12 hours of burn time on it. Rated to heat 2,000 s.f., 81,000 btu/hr. Again I know this brand is not a favorite around here, but it seems like a good deal and I do not have to pay shipping or tax. I currently have a new Vermont Castings wood stove for the basement if I need it, but would like to see what the pellett furnace can do.

Any further insight would be appreciated. Thank you again.

 

[DiggerJim]

Thank you for the responses. That's about the answer I was expecting.

A friend of mine has a USSC American Harvest 6100 pellet furnace locally for $2,000.00. It has about 12 hours of burn time on it. Rated to heat 2,000 s.f., 81,000 btu/hr. Again I know this brand is not a favorite around here, but it seems like a good deal and I do not have to pay shipping or tax. I currently have a new Vermont Castings wood stove for the basement if I need it, but would like to see what the pellett furnace can do.

Any further insight would be appreciated. Thank you again.

The BTU rating is pretty similar to an oil furnace - especially for a new tightly insulated house. The biggest issue you'd have is not the overall heat you get out of the stove but how to get that heat throughout the house. If you found a way to hook up to the heat exchanger for your hot air system (or are you doing hot water baseboard with propane?) then it would likely be just the ticket. Although you'd want to find some way to extend either the hopper or to automate the reloading of the hopper from a bulk supply - 81K/btu/hr = 10lbs of pellets so that's a bag every 4 hours of burn - way more than you'll want to be hauling in & dumping yourself. I recall some posts here over the summer about someone who was building some sort of auguring system to take the pellets out of a big hopper and dump them into the stove's hopper. Commercial units do it so it's not outside the realm of possibility for your install. Be a fun little project in fact

 

[slls]

81,000 BTU input would be about 60,000 BTU output. My oil furnace is about 70,000 BTU output for 1500 sq ft, does a good job heating.

 

[kinsmanstoves]

like Dig said 80,000 btu input divided by 8,200 btu per lbs = just under 10 lbs of pellets in one hour. I would like to see that unit do that much less run for 10 hour period. I think someone was smoking some corn stalks when they rated that unit.

Liar liar hopper on fire.

Eric

 

[Lawnman323]

First off, thank you for the responses. Not looking to dump that many pellets per hour.

Well, today had some new developments. I saw a Clayton 1800G wood furnace at a local store for $1899.00. This is rated at 160,000 BTU/hr, heat capacity of 3600 sf. This hulk can handle 35" logs and has a automatic blower tied to a thermostadt.

I may have to tend to it once or twice a day, but I'm still buring wood and think I have a chance of heating the house. Still not sure on how much it will cost to tie it into my ductwork.

What do you think?

 

[DiggerJim]

First off, thank you for the responses. Not looking to dump that many pellets per hour.

Well, today had some new developments. I saw a Clayton 1800G wood furnace at a local store for $1899.00. This is rated at 160,000 BTU/hr, heat capacity of 3600 sf. This hulk can handle 35" logs and has a automatic blower tied to a thermostadt.

I may have to tend to it once or twice a day, but I'm still buring wood and think I have a chance of heating the house. Still not sure on how much it will cost to tie it into my ductwork.

What do you think?

With this option you're just changing the form of the fuel - in this case it can burn 20 lbs of wood per hour. Non-pelletized wood takes up about 3 times the physical space as pellets. This one is seriously oversized in terms of BTU capacity per hour so it may be more difficult to manage - not sure about the "tend it once or twice a day" potential. You might want to wander over to the "Boiler Room" forum to see if you can find someone with a similar installation for real-life experiences.

 

[Lawnman323]

First off, thank you for the responses. Not looking to dump that many pellets per hour.

Well, today had some new developments. I saw a Clayton 1800G wood furnace at a local store for $1899.00. This is rated at 160,000 BTU/hr, heat capacity of 3600 sf. This hulk can handle 35" logs and has a automatic blower tied to a thermostadt.

I may have to tend to it once or twice a day, but I'm still buring wood and think I have a chance of heating the house. Still not sure on how much it will cost to tie it into my ductwork.

What do you think?

With this option you're just changing the form of the fuel - in this case it can burn 20 lbs of wood per hour. Non-pelletized wood takes up about 3 times the physical space as pellets. This one is seriously oversized in terms of BTU capacity per hour so it may be more difficult to manage - not sure about the "tend it once or twice a day" potential. You might want to wander over to the "Boiler Room" forum to see if you can find someone with a similar installation for real-life experiences.

What exactly do you mean by 'oversized in terms of BTU capacity'? How much wood do you think I'll burn per day? How many times to tend it?

I'll check out the boiler room. Thank you again. I appreciate the input.

 

[DiggerJim]

What exactly do you mean by 'oversized in terms of BTU capacity'? How much wood do you think I'll burn per day? How many times to tend it?

I'll check out the boiler room. Thank you again. I appreciate the input.

I think you'll find that 160K BTU is well larger than your house requires. You probably have a 100K furnace (you *might* have something bigger, but probably not). They're sized for the coldest night in a 100 years scenario. That's fine with oil or propane 'cause it fires up or down by itself - it's not the most efficient in that mode but isn't too much trouble. With a wood burning appliance - especially with logs, you have to tend the fire and would want one always going to provide some level of heat and to make stoking it up higher when it got cold in the house easier without having to restart the fire. I'd guess you might be tending it 3 or 4 times a day and trying to feed it much smaller loads than it can hold. You're probably looking at about 10-12 cu ft of wood/day.

 

[hoverfly]

Have you looked at Fahrenheit Technologies ?