I have a 1600 Sq Ft manufactured home out in the country with a little bit of wind block. Home is 19 yrs old with windows that are mediocre at best. I am running a St Croix Lancaster on a thermostat. It idles on low (1.7#/hr.-9520 btu)then when stat calls for heat it kicks up to whatever I have it set at # 2 (2.25#/hr- 12,600 btu)which is plenty most of the time. It is 14f with a clear sky and no wind and it is keeping up with house at 73f on 2. If it gets in the teens or less and wind is blowing I will have to turn it up to 3(3.1#/hr-17,300 btu) . (5 is as high as it goes. ) I am burning corn so it does not like to go over 3. Pellets it will burn at 4 no problem and I never had any reason to use 5. If it is above 30f or above 25f and sunny, idling on low during the day the house gets to hot. I have to shut it down for a few hours. This is where a Harman or a different stove with smart ignition/tstat would be nice. To be able to shut itself down then relight when it calls for heat. But I get corn for $4.03/bu (56#). Around here pellets are approx. $4.00/40# bag. Calculations done using corn at 7000btu per bu. at 15% moisture and stove efficiency at 80%. Stove may not be that efficient. From experience I have found that my home very rarely requires more that 17,300 btu/hr to keep the home a comfortable 72-73f in central Ohio
Stove Sizing Example
- Thread starter rickwai
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For me, corn has distinct advantage, mainly, it's free, other than picking it up which is most times bagged on skids that weight about 2300 pounds per or in Supersacks (2500 pounds) and then mixing it with pellets at a 2-1 ratio, 2 scoops of corn to one scoop of pellets in 4 30 gallon plastic garbage cans which get set on a skid and run up to the hose with one of my front end loader tractors. That lasts me about a week and a half.
I prefer mixing the pellets and corn because it eliminates the corn clinker issue entirely and one skid of pellets will last me an entire heating season so 210 bucks for pellets and free corn = 210 bucks spent plus my time (worth nothing) a bit of diesel fuel (farm expense) and a bit of electri8city to run the stove, maybe 10 bucks a month, so it's very economical for us.
The issue with the corn I burn is it's extremely dry. Elevator purchased corn usually runs around 15% RM (which is the accepted standard for corn storage without a molding issue) but the corn I run is typically dried down to 10%RM and even less at times so it burns extremely hot and like you, I cannot run my feed rate up or the stove will go into overfire and the high limit will shut it down. About the best I can do is a medium HR burn on the OEM algorithm and I set the induced draft with the HR level and let the stove decide. Other nice thing about the corn I burn is, it's extremely clean. Nothing but corn kernels. No earwings, no metallic trash, no dirt of any kind. Just corn and I get all I want. In fact I probably have 2 years on hand right now in the barn and grain tank and there is more to be picked up. I'm swimming in corn right now.....
I prefer mixing the pellets and corn because it eliminates the corn clinker issue entirely and one skid of pellets will last me an entire heating season so 210 bucks for pellets and free corn = 210 bucks spent plus my time (worth nothing) a bit of diesel fuel (farm expense) and a bit of electri8city to run the stove, maybe 10 bucks a month, so it's very economical for us.
The issue with the corn I burn is it's extremely dry. Elevator purchased corn usually runs around 15% RM (which is the accepted standard for corn storage without a molding issue) but the corn I run is typically dried down to 10%RM and even less at times so it burns extremely hot and like you, I cannot run my feed rate up or the stove will go into overfire and the high limit will shut it down. About the best I can do is a medium HR burn on the OEM algorithm and I set the induced draft with the HR level and let the stove decide. Other nice thing about the corn I burn is, it's extremely clean. Nothing but corn kernels. No earwings, no metallic trash, no dirt of any kind. Just corn and I get all I want. In fact I probably have 2 years on hand right now in the barn and grain tank and there is more to be picked up. I'm swimming in corn right now.....
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