Intoduction to Wood Pellet Stoves

Warm, cozy homes are becoming more difficult to manage and maintain during the cold months with the continued rise of the prices of oil, natural gas, and electricity. But don’t fret. There is another option: pellet stoves.

How Do Pellet Stoves Work?

Pellet stoves are hearth products that make use of electrically-controlled blowers, combustion systems, and heat exchangers. In layman’s terms, this means that pellet stoves burn fuel slowly, release as much energy as they can from the pellets, and draw in cool air and release it out as hot air.

To use a pellet stove, pour the pellets into a holding area, which is called the hopper. If the hopper is very big, enough fuel that can burn for several days can be accommodated. Most pellet stoves can produce heat for one to two days on just one loading of pellets.

Within the stove is an auger, which is an automated feeding system. It controls the pace at which the pellets are fed to the fire. For instance, if the rate is one pound an hour, a slow fire is generated, thus heating the room for a long time. If the rate is higher, say, four to five pounds per hour, the fire will be bigger so the room will be warmer.

Some pellet stoves are self-lit, while some are needed to be manually lit. Regardless of the method of how it is lit, the heat exchanger is heated to about 250 degrees Fahrenheit. The cool air from the room is warmed as it is passed through heat exchanger. The blower then releases back the warm air into the room.

Cost-efficiency of Pellet Stoves

Pellet stoves are the perfect heating alternative for people that have expensive home heating bills because of the fluctuation in energy prices. In fact, more and more people are installing them in their homes as a secondary heat source in order to help reduce their heating expenses.

The main reason behind this huge savings is the fuel that is being used. Pellet stoves burn cheap pellets that are produced from recycled sawdust. Because of the efficiency of the production process and the low price of the materials used, pellets are very economical. Moreover, pellet stoves are extremely efficient at generating heat. They may look like traditional wood stoves but they are engineered to burn the pellets in such a way that they squeeze all of the heat of it, thus warming your homes at a less expensive cost.

Thanks to their feature that helps manage the fuel-to-air ratio, an almost full combustion of the pellets is guaranteed. That same feature also helps minimize wood smoke, making them the solid-fuel burning heating products with the least emission. This is very important especially in places where the quality of winter air is an issue.

Once you have tried using a pellet stove, you would most probably refuse to go back to using the traditional wood stove. Because they’re economical, environment-friendly, and automated, they provide a convenient way of warming your home.

No Comments »

More and more people are looking for better ways to keep their homes warm and cozy during the cold season. Some are still using traditional wood stoves, while others have resorted to using pellet stoves. The pellets used as fuel for these stoves come with a cheap price tag because of the low cost of the raw materials used in making them and the low cost of the manufacturing process. Thus, it does not cost that much to operate pellet stoves. But cost-efficiency is only one feature of pellet stoves that many people have come to love. Pellet stoves are also environment-friendly hearth products.

Nowadays, caring for Mother Nature through using green product alternatives is among the big issues that are being advocated by environmentalists. As such, an increased awareness in how we could go about protecting the environment has prompted a lot of people to evaluate the commercial products that they are using and switch to those that are safer for the earth. Pellet stoves are one of those environment-friendly products. Here are some of their green features:

1.    The wood pellets used to fuel pellet stoves are produced from recycled sawdust. This sawdust would otherwise have been dumped in landfills, thus creating more waste that has no other use. It could also have been incinerated in the waste burners of sawmills. Wood is a natural renewable resource. By utilizing wood pellets as your fuel source, in a way you are helping recycling the waste or by-products of forestry activities.

2.    Pellet stoves are a clean-burning home heating product. As opposed to wood stoves that produce a substantial amount of soot and ash even just after a use, pellet stoves can burn for several days at a time and still not create as much residual ash as what wood stoves make in one day.

3.    Pellet stoves are very easy to clean. They have ash pans that need to be removed and cleaned every few weeks. Moreover, you don’t have to sweep huge piles of ash and bark scraps.

4.    Pellet stoves have an auger that delivers the pellets into the combustible chamber on a consistent and regular basis. This means that your source of heat is steady and consistent for up to three days before you must refill the hopper, which is the holding area of the pellets. Pellet stoves are not like wood stoves that you have to feed chopped wood every few hours with no guaranteed steadiness of the heat, having volatile hot and cold heating cycles.

5.    Pellet stoves are efficient home heating products. An average pellet stove has a burning efficiency rating higher than 85%. Because of a pellet stove’s state-of-the-art technology, the fuel-to-air ratio is controlled so a full combustion of its fuel source is guaranteed. It is designed to burn the wood pellets in such a way that it would squeeze all of the heat that it possibly can out of those pellets.

6.    Pellet stoves produce minimal wood smoke emissions. A lot of the pellet stoves out in the market nowadays have no problems in meeting strict air quality standards, both local and federal.

No Comments »