Some questions.............

[valentine92]

Hi we are seriously thinking about putting a stove in our home since we heat with oil.

We live in ranch with a partially finished basement. We want to put the pellet stove in the unfinished part of the basement since we dont have any insulation in the ceiling we are hoping the heat will rise through the floor.

So we are looking at heating approximately 1700 square feet of living space. We also have a son that is asthmatic and was wondering if anyone here has a pellet stove and whether or not it aggrevates your asthma. We do have a wood burning fireplace and use that a lot and it never bothered him.

We are hoping to get a direct vent model since we dont have a chimmney to use. What concerns me is what would happen if we have a power outage. I know the pellet stove will go out but will it smoke up the house at all? If I get the battery backup how long will the battery last? Any ideas? Are they really as easy to operate an clean as I have been hearing. Do they break down often?

We are looking at the harman p68 do you think that stove is tooo big for our house?

Any information would be greatly appreciated.

 

[gw2kpro]

If there is a power outage, the stove WILL smoke up the house if you do not put a rise in your vent (i.e. if you simply vent it out straight through a wall and do not put in a T with a vertical rise). We lost power twice last winter and I did not get any smoke in the house.

Be careful putting it in an unfinished room / basement, you will likely lose a significant amount of heat out through the concrete walls. You will get some heat up through the floor but I wouldn't expect it to heat the whole house when it's really cold.

I don't have a Harman, but I clean my breckwell 2-4 times/week, depending on how much it's burning. Clean out the ash, scprape the por and burn chamber, clean the glass, takes about 20 min/time. Once or twice/year you will want to take it down further to clean the fan blades, etc.