Too Big for 1500sq ft Ranch?

[Badwood]

Hello all,Newbie here living in the great pacific northwest! After searching this site the last few days I decided to join. What a great site this is! so much info its a little overwhelming at times.
I have decided to purchase a pellet stove and have narrowed it down to an Englander. I have a 1500sq ft Ranch home that has decent insulation. Our winters here are pretty mild with overnight temps generally in the 35-45 deg range. When it does freeze it never gets colder than say 10 deg.

Although It seems the 25-PDVC OR 25-EP models would fit my needs just fine I cant help but wonder if I could run something bigger like the 10cpm multi fuel. My main reason is to have other fuel alternatives besides just wood pellets. Would the 10cpm be too much stove for my house or could I run it on a lower setting most of the time?

 

[Dr.Faustus]

i cant say what will be right for your house but theres some general rules i go by.

stoves generally dont like to be run on their highest for long periods of time. so getting a bigger stove will let you run it on low most of the time. with most items you'll find that 90% of the wear comes from operating at 60% or higher of its rated capacity.

the other thing is, i am an englander fan myself, i have the 25pdvc and i kinda wish i had the multifuel unit primarily because it has the burn pot stirrer. it can from what i've read burn way longer than the 25pdvc without intervention. on the 25pdvc i have to open the door twice a day and clear the burn pot of ash when i'm running it on medium which is most of the time.

all in all the decision is yours, and you should ask yourself some questions like - does hopper size matter? the more the hopper holds the less times you'll have to refill it. your 1500 sq foot house... is it drafty? you'll want a bigger unit if it is. how cold does your area get?

my house is a drafty 1500 sq ft house and where i live it gets to the teens at night and 20s or 30s during day. stove does ok with it. recently it got well below 0 and i had to run the stove flat out high for a long period of time but it did keep the house warm enough to only have to use the oil for a very short amount of time. like an hour.

 

[Mr. Heat Miser]

Hi and welcome to the Pellet Mill!

I will try and address some of your questions as best I can. First off, the placement of your pellet stove and the air circulation in your home are very important pieces of the puzzle. With proper placement and good air movement you can use a stove rated at a lower btu rating. I am not familiar with the btu ratings of the Englander stove models you mentioned above, but I can tell you how my setup works.

My house is approx. 2400 sqft, 8 rooms, 4 bedrooms, 2-1/2 bath colonial with 2x6 construction and double pane windows, oil fired forced hot air furnace, 2 zones, located in North East, MA. It can get pretty cold here, we've seen -10 here this season.

I recently purchased a Harman P35i insert, whose btu rating is only 35,000. I was concerned that it was probably too small to even heat my downstairs floor, but I have been pleasantly surprised! I installed the stove (which is an insert) in my family room in the fireplace opening. The family room is on the North end of the house, the opposite end of the house from the furnace, has a high ceiling, a drafty fireplace opening, is located over an unheated garage, and has several large windows and a outside door in it. All this added up to making it the coldest room in the house. Fortunately, there is also a 6 foot wide doorway into my large central kitchen just 10 feet from the fireplace, and there is also a ceiling fan in the center of the room.

For the above reasons, I decided that installing an insert in the fireplace opening would be my best option. The insert itself had two advantages... 1) It did not take up any valuable floor space in my room, and 2) it turns a cold drafty fireplace opening into a heat source. I quickly discovered that by turning on the ceiling fan to the medium setting that the room temperature was very consistent from floor to ceiling (usually only about a 2 or 3 degree difference), and the ceiling fan also seems to circulate the air through the 6 foot wide door into my kitchen and throughout the rest of the first floor. I set the ceiling fan to draw the cool air from the floor up to the ceiling and mix it with the warm air. This avoids having a breeze blowing on you, which causes evaporation and makes you feel colder, even when warm air is blowing on you.

I have also found that an effective way to use this setup is to use the oil furnace to heat the first floor zone to a few degrees less than what my target temperature is... say 66 degrees. This only takes a few minutes in the morning and uses very little oil. Then I light the pellet stove and turn the ceiling fan on and then set the thermostat in the first floor zone to 58 degrees. I find that my little 35,000 btu P35i can easily maintain the temperature in the zone and gradually raises it a few degrees in a few hours. The nicest thing is that the family room is now the warmest room in the house, which is nice because this is where we spend most of our time in the evenings.

I keep the doors to the bedrooms upstairs closed in the morning and the thermostat in the upstairs zone set at 58 during the day. When it gets nice and warm on the first floor, I open the door to the master bedroom which is right at the top of the stairs and let the heat begin to drift up there. The oil furnace never fires for the rest of the day on the first floor, and only occasionally fires on the second floor on the coldest of days. I have cut my oil usage by almost half so far this year as compared to last, and have only used 40 bags of pellets so far this season. I turn the stove off when we go to bed and keep the thermostat set to 58 in the downstairs zone. In the morning I give the stove a quick cleaning, let the oil warm it up to 66 and light the pellet stove, then turn the oil back down to 58.

One thing I would caution you against is getting too large of a stove. They tend to burn dirtier on the lower settings. There is definetly a sweet spot and on mine it seems to be an auger setting of between 2 and 3 and the blower on 55% or so. You also don't want to get too small of a stove either, but as you can see from my story here, with proper placement and air circulation (as well as a reasonably tight house) a lower btu rating stove can do a nice job, without cooking you out of the room.

As for the multi fuel stove, just be sure corn or whatever alternate fuel is locally available and makes sense. My stove is a dual fuel wood pellets and corn, but corn is not readily available here, and I have heard it leaves a somewhat sticky residue on the inside of the stove. I can't burn 100% corn either... the manual states it must be a 50/50 mix of corn and wood pellets I believe. Another disadvantage of corn is that it is also a food source, so you need to keep the critters from getting at it.

Hope that helps! Keep us informed on how you make out.

 

[Dr.Faustus]

One thing I would caution you against is getting too large of a stove. They tend to burn dirtier on the lower settings. There is definetly a sweet spot and on mine it seems to be an auger setting of between 2 and 3 and the blower on 55% or so. You also don’t want to get too small of a stove either, but as you can see from my story here, with proper placement and air circulation (as well as a reasonably tight house) a lower btu rating stove can do a nice job, without cooking you out of the room.

this is certainly true, however after some experience and tweaking most stoves can run just as good at the lowest setting as they can on medium. my stove is certainly happiest on medium but i do get a good burn on its lowest setting. my stove cycles between medium and low because its on a thermostat. when the house hits the temp i set the thermostat for, it pushes the stove to its lower setting until the stat calls for heat again and then ramps up the stove.

let us know what stove you buy and be sure to post pics of your install!

 

[Mr. Heat Miser]

One thing I would caution you against is getting too large of a stove. They tend to burn dirtier on the lower settings. There is definetly a sweet spot and on mine it seems to be an auger setting of between 2 and 3 and the blower on 55% or so. You also don’t want to get too small of a stove either, but as you can see from my story here, with proper placement and air circulation (as well as a reasonably tight house) a lower btu rating stove can do a nice job, without cooking you out of the room.

this is certainly true, however after some experience and tweaking most stoves can run just as good at the lowest setting as they can on medium. my stove is certainly happiest on medium but i do get a good burn on its lowest setting. my stove cycles between medium and low because its on a thermostat. when the house hits the temp i set the thermostat for, it pushes the stove to its lower setting until the stat calls for heat again and then ramps up the stove.

let us know what stove you buy and be sure to post pics of your install!

I agree, my Harman P35i burns great on all the settings as well, but it is a little dirtier, and somewhat harder to clean when it has been burning on low for several hours during the previous day. Another good point you make is the use of the thermostat. My stove has that feature as well. I find that I only use it when the weather is warmer though, like in the high 30's to low 40's outside. That is when my family room gets too hot if the stove is set on a constant burn rate, rather than adjusting the fire with the thermostat. When it's really cold outside I find that if I use the thermostat feature the rest of my downstairs zone is a bit cool, so I use the constant burn rate then. But it's great to have the option to run it either way.

 

[DexterDay]

Imacman on has the 10-CPM and cann tell u better than me. But from what I have learned of it, is that it can be ran on a thermostat either on/off or on/auto. Which does not shut stove off and just goes down to lowest setting (throttles down) when heat need is met. Great stove. There is a thread on here that tells how mant bags he burned in a row. Again he can tell you more. Do a search for it and it will boggle your mind. But as far as over doing it. I wouldn't think. Put it in a central area as stated above. Its a beautiful stove. That's for sure. And having techs such as Mike Holton (Englander) on here helps a lot too

 

[SmokeyTheBear]

If you get a stove that can be operated by a thermostat in on off mode, you really have no need to worry about the stove being too large or spending its time in a dirty low burn.

Even so if the stove is truly tunable it should be possible to dial in on the low burn settings and operate on high/low on a thermostat as well.

You should be thinking about something that can handle the heating requirements of your house at the stoves mid point. This will allow the stove to handle the extra cold stuff that comes along without spending its entire time maxed out, or during normal times to quickly recover temperature if things have been off for a while and temperatures in the house have dropped a lot.