Wood Stove vs. Pellet Stove

I am in the wood stove camp.

To me it makes no sense to cut the wood, grind the wood, process the wood w/ glue (or what ever), then you buy the wood pellets, store the pellets (can't get them wet), to burn, all so as to not have to get up early in the morning to stoke the stove, but only when the electric is on?
That's why you need to go to the outhouse first thing, to do your job and bring in more fire wood. (wood pile between the out-house and the house)

If you have electricity why all the screwing around?
If not just burn the wood.

I am a bit confused about why people would want corn/pellet stoves.

Apparently the feed auger is noisy to some extent. From what I can gather, it costs just as much to heat with as electricty, or fossil fuels. Some would say that fossil fuels are limited and that wood pellets and corn are a renewable rescource. That would be a good point if it didn't take so much fossil fuel to produce them. Presently, it takes more oil/gas to produce a gallon of ethanol, than the oil/gas it replaces. This is in the form of fertilizer and fuel for the tractors/combines/grain dryers etc., so not only is their not a positive environmental effect, there is a negative one.

I guess my point is, if you are going to get a corn stove, why not just get a gas or fuel oil stove?

If one lives in an area with abundant wood, there is very little fossil fuel energy used to harvest it. In our area, at least, the (chainsaw) fuel would be used anyway, because there is always enough icestorm/windthrow/and land clearing going on that it is simply a matter of "cleaning up".

My husband says there is someone around here (amish) that has created a wind up auger for pellet stoves. I am tring to find him but hubby can't remember how he heard about him just that someone had bought a stove off him and was telling hubby about his greta pellet stove! Grr men cannot see the reasoning to write something liek that down!

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I have both a wood stove and a pellet stove. I like them both for different reasons. The pellet stove runs all night long. Plus, it can be installed almost anywhere. But it is noisy, uses electricity, and has a lot of parts that can break down.
My woodstove does not burn all night long, but it does not use electricity, never breaks down, and it gives that hot comfort heat, almost like a sauna.
If I had to choose between the two, it would be the woodstove hands down.

We have a pellet stove, but are installing a woodstove this summer. Not to replace the pellet stove, but have as a backup when the power goes out, and use during the coldest part of winter. We love our pellet stove, but pellets are getting ridiculously expensive. This years early buy cost (buy before the end of April) will be $250.00/ton...last year it was $187.00/ton. This past winter some places were selling them at $350.00/ton, and many couldn't get pellets. I burn 3 to 3 1/2 ton per season, and purchase 4 ton each year.

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Dave

"Be ye strong therefore, and let not your hands be weak: for your work shall be rewarded" (2 Chronicles 15:7)

I bought a house once that had a pellet stove.It drove me crazy;it was always breaking down,getting clogged up,the smaller pipe needed cleaning more often,and the pellits where so exspensive and at least as cumbersome as wood.We replaced it with a wood cook stove and where much happier.The irony was that the guy we bought the place from was a wood worker and the out buildings where overflowing with enough scrape wood (he neaver threw anything away)to burn for the next couple of years.

I too vote for a wood stove over a pellet. Had some elderly friends who had a pellet stove, and when I visited, it needed cleaning out and vacuuming multiple times.

When looking at a wood stove, it is worth the investment to purchase a good quality airtight stove that does NOT use a catalytic converter.The newer stoves use reburning of the wood gases for a high effeciency, so you don't end up with a big pile of ash. Also, you use less wood than if youbuy a cheaper non-airtight stove. They are cheaper at first, but cost more in time and effort in the long run.

Newer pellet stoves have quiet augers, I find the noisy thing is the pellets tink-tinking into the pan every couple seconds. Annoying.

It's a no-brainer (for me)...woodstove.

As long as you are exploring options, we talked about something along these lines a while back: 12 rocket heaters - burning wood 5 to 10 times more efficiently

And by "we talked about" it was more like me leaping up and yakking about the latest new wackiness I discovered.

The idea is that this is a wood burning contraption that you can make yourself in a weekend, so that instead of getting 10 cords of wood, you might need to get only one and a half cords of wood.

Maybe when you are out getting that fifth load of wood, this stuff might seem a little more worth looking into.

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[raising chickens] [diatomaceous earth] [permaculture] [rocket mass heater] [lawn care]

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Ever hear of a rocket stove? Easy and cheap to build, very efficient (a couple buckets of wood will produce lots of heat).
I built this one out of fire bricks on a poured concrete slab. The exhaust is buried in sand (that will be a "cob" bench soon) and by the time the exhaust hits the upright chimney, you can almost put your hand on it. I'm amazed at how well these things work.
Dancing rabbit.org has info that got me interested ( cob and rocket stoves).
Good luck!

Excellent pic Frank!

Have you seen the youtube vids on rocket stoves? They have a couple from dancingrabbit.

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[raising chickens] [diatomaceous earth] [permaculture] [rocket mass heater] [lawn care]

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As a back-up to a power outage, a generator will supply the 500 watts needed to run all your electrics to a pellet stove or a couple of fully charged deep cycle batteries and power inverter that suitable for the power needed will do the same thing in a pinch when the lights go out...

when we did our studies..we did this type of thinking..you can always find salvaged wood somewhere even if it is hauling in thrown out old pallets..but..Pellets ..well you gotta be able to BUY pellets and if jobs go out the window..i'd rather have a pick up truck and go haul in some free pallets or discarded branches then have to BUY pellets..so we chose an out door WOOD boiler..

when we ran out of wood ..we burned aspen scrap and old scrap lumber..got us through another month of cold