Hi ,Im going to look at some corn stoves today .Has anyone used them .Can you really heat your whole house with one. I live up a long driveway with a northern exposure.The oil truck hasnt been able to get up our frozen driveway this week .In addition we are using 2 tanks full a month .So if these things are reliable it would really help us out. Frank
Do a forum search on corn stoves and pellet stoves. You will get lots of referrals to past threads as this has been a frequent topic. Seems like one of those where people either love them or hate them. Ken S. in WC TN
My DD has one in her living room. The only objection I have with them is that the corn is dusty and I'm allergic to dust. Also, it seems that her furniture as to be dusted a lot.
They use a lot of corn. Make sure that you get one big enought ( BTU's ) to heat the size house you have square footage. People selling the stove should be able to tell you how much corn it will burn an hour. Might be cheaper to buy an extra oil tank for your oil stove so you will not run out in the bad part of winter. Extra on hand.
A bushel of corn has about the same heat value as 1 1/2 gallons of fuel oil. I assume you are having to buy the fuel source instead of growing it. The price of corn and fuel oil both tend to be volatile depending on the circumstances. Fuel oil has many advantages and is easier to use. If the corn stove malfunctions and you get a clinker from h*ll to form in the stove you will appreciate the ease of burning fuel oil. Maintenance on a corn stove is greater and costs more than a fuel burner. I had what you may call 2 corn stoves, my first and my last. Yes, I am prejudice regarding corn stoves due to the problems I had.
Whole house heating with corn stoves and corn fireplace inserts is the lowest cost heat available in America today. Clean, safe, quiet, healthy, no smoke, convenient, almost no ash (5 gal per year), use very little corn. Like everything else, they's good ones and they's bad ones. Be sure to get a modern updated 98% efficient corn stove with NO clinker grinder. Stoves with 40-60% efficiency, like wood stoves, require removing about half the raw fuel as ash. There is less than 1% potash cake and no flyash produced by the 98% efficient corn stove. Corn stoves have recently been prefected. The older corn stoves with clinker grinders made lots of flyash, were noisy, burned lots of corn, and required high maintenance. For corn stove and fireplace details go to www.msnusers.com/clift or www.groups.yahoo.com/group/cornstoves. Contact haclift@yahoo.com for any questions and to find a supplier of a good corn stove. Always ask tough questions of recent users who depend on corn stoves as the primary heat source. Resolve any concerns before the price of natural gas per month cost more than the house payment.
We've considered a corn stove, but I'm curious about the cost factor. With feed costs going up so dramatically, isn't the cost of the corn for the stoves also going up dramatically? I keep wondering if it will prove to save any money at all or not; especially, since we aren't in a big corn producing area. Also, were do you all store all that corn?
when we lived in wisconsin , i could buy corn dirt cheap direct from the farmer, same with north dakota, now i live in missouri , and i dont think the price is worth it, i know there was moisture issues, the corn had to be very dry , and you almost required a hopper for keeping it filled, which with everyone i talked to was an accessory ..... while i wouldnt think about it now, i would have when i was living in the corn belt 5.00-10.00 for a ton of corn , it would have to be terribly inefficent to not make it worth it .....or suck a ton of electricity on the auger feed ..... i think its like everything , it has its propononants, and its detractors .... kind of like solar power versus water energy on a homestead
Living in Minnesota we need some real heat, so a corn 'stove' always seemed like a useless thing. Now, a corn 'furnace' that actually heats the house, and you can store the corn outside the livingroom - that seems like a good thing. For those with hot water heat, they even make corn boilers now. The new generation of furnaces has a lot less problems with clinkers & such. Oh, this appears to be an old message - I too was puzzled by the frozen driveway, until I saw it was written in February. --->Paul
