Pellet Stoves

My husband wants to put a pellet stove in the basement of our cabin.  We have a wall-mounted vented Rinnai heater in the basement, a second Rinnai on one end of the great room and a gas log stove on the other end of the great room.  They all run on propane.   He's thinking of getting some sort of adapter so that he can hook up the pellet stove to a marine battery in case we lose electricity.  We snowmobile and are always going to the cabin in the wintertime.   It's often below zero there.

We turn off the heat and drain the pipes when we're not there.  Our plow guy goes in and turns on the heat a couple of days before we arrive.  We're thinking the pellet stove will really warm things up and cut down on our LP consumption.   Has anyone else used this method of heat?  Is it a good idea?

Thanks for your help.

Cabin Girl,

                 We to have a pellet stove in our lake home, at one time it was a great and affordable method of heating and supplementing our heat pump. Unfortunately the cost of the pellets have become unrealistic. At $5 / bag minimum and a burn time of 24 hours maximum per bag it just isn't worth the time the hassel of cleaning and maintaining anymore. My suggestion for you and your husband is to purchaase a couple of  efficient electric heaters which are cleaner (no dust) are more economical to use.

              Just my opinion , good luck.

Thanks for the advice.  We'll maybe have to re-think the pellets.

I heat my house in Central PA with a pellet stove. If you do your homework and shop around you can buy pellets at a cheaper rate. You dont buy a car without shopping around, so do the samw with pellets. Where are you located, look in the phone book under fire places/wood stoves is a good place to start for pellet prices. Home Depot, Lowes sell pellets. The best time to buy them is now, store are dumping stock from last winter. Pellet stove stores have early buy programs, you buy your pellets in the summer and receive a early buy discount. I would do some more homework before you change your mind on not buying a pellet stove. I have used a marine battery for backup power for a pellet stove. You have to buy a power inverter, you plug in the pellet stove to the inverter and the clamps on the inverter go on the battery. Wal-Mart carried a inverter for my size stove for 75.00.

Actually my husband went ahead and had a pellet stove installed.   A Big E by  Breckwell --.. bought it locally in NH.    The dealer installed it also.  It was sort of an industrial model because it's not as pretty as some but it can hold about 4 bags of pellets in the hopper.  It was less expensive than the "pretty" model.  We got a good deal.  The dealer has a special in the fall where you can order up a ton of pellets - delivered - and we expect they might last a couple of years.  At least if we run low we can just run down to the feed store and not have to wait for the propane truck to make a delivery.  We always have to keep a close eye on the propane tank gauge during the winter.

We are still going to use the propane heaters - our plow guy turns on the heat for us several days before we go to the cabin.  When we arrive, we will just load up the pellet stove and use it for the rest of our stay.  Our Rinnai propane heaters were running constantly when it was below zero outside and it seems that the pellet stove heats the place more quickly than the Rinnais.  Our celler is only 5' tall.  We'll leave the cellar trap door open and put a few grates in the floor so the heat can come upstairs. 

We hadn't decided whether to get a generator or go the same route as you with the inverter and marine battery.    Thanks for the input.    We're looking forward to using it.  We only got to try it out for a weekend thus far.

I see nothing wrong with using pellet stoves.  I have been using it since winter started and so far I have been keeping my family warm at the same time saving myself from the huge energy bill.

I use one to heat my cabin and had one installed in our main home as well. It does heat the cabin pretty well, but does burn a bag in 24 hours if I have it set to its highest setting. The one at home is a smaller unit that we bought to supplement our propane furnace. It does a good job of heating the house, but it does not heat the basement, so we do use it for supplemental heat and not a main heat source. If you buy pellets by the ton, the cost is usually cheaper, I think I pay about $4 a bag.