Corn Stove/Furnace

[Beast of Busco]

With all the attention that higher heating costs will be getting very shortly, I was curious if there is anyone using a corn burner for heating their home?

I have been researching them for about the past year or so, but as of yet I have not spent the $$ to invest in one. I am planning to get one next year (I am locked in at a decent propane price this heating season), and I know a lot of other people who are looking at them also. Ideally I want to get an add-on model that I can set in the basement next to the furnace.

The payback would be pretty quick, possibly as short as two years depending on heating prices. Plus I see that corn has dropped below $2 a bushel (a farmer I know sold some for $1.60 a bushel recently).

I also like the fact that it supports our farmers, burns very clean, and is a renewable resource!

 

[XS650]

quote:

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Originally posted by Beast of Busco:
With all the attention that higher heating costs will be getting very shortly, I was curious if there is anyone using a corn burner for heating their home?

I have been researching them for about the past year or so, but as of yet I have not spent the $$ to invest in one. I am planning to get one next year (I am locked in at a decent propane price this heating season), and I know a lot of other people who are looking at them also. Ideally I want to get an add-on model that I can set in the basement next to the furnace.

The payback would be pretty quick, possibly as short as two years depending on heating prices. Plus I see that corn has dropped below $2 a bushel (a farmer I know sold some for $1.60 a bushel recently).

I also like the fact that it supports our farmers, burns very clean, and is a renewable resource!

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I hadn't heard of that, but Mr. Google popped this interesting web page up.

Corn heat

It looks like at $2.50 bushel it would be competitive with natural gas at $0.80/therm in an 80% efficient heater.

That would be roughly like heating oil at $1.10/gallon.

If the farmers can make money while beating gas and oil prices per usable BTU, then it's good thing. If they are lsoing money on the deal, then it's flash in the pan...pun intended.

When I lived in San Jose during the earlier oil crisis, I calculated that 12 SJ Mercury News (a fat newspaper) paper supscriptions contained enough BTU to heat one house.

 

[oilyriser]

Make sure you're not burning popcorn by mistake. That could keep someone up all night.

There's a wood pellet stove maker in Quebec who's stoves use an oxygen sensor in the stack to control the combustion air supply.

 

[H2GURU]

Beast of Busco.
With all that happened in NOLA the price of corn is sure to drop because of shipping difficulties(strange, there's been no mention of this in our news?),making YOUR costs even lower!

 

[michaelc80]

Plan to order it early. There is a huge demand for any biomass stove right now and I don't see it slowing down soon. Most of the dealers around here are sold out.

I plan to put one in next year also. I won't hook it into the current HVAC system-I'll just get a free standing unit. Maybe one on the main floor and one in the family room in the basement.

 

[Al]

I have given it some thought. I have a free standing propane stove in an 18 x 20 foot well insulated addition to my house. 250 gallons of propane heats this room and a high peotion of the rest of the house. Next year I plan on installing a 500 gal propane tand which should drop Propane price about 30% . Even if (when)propane goes up, its not worth my while to junk what I have and move to something else. Before I do that I'll sell this shack and move to a smaller more efficient house

 

[Al]

I gave it a little more thought. At $2.30 /gal propane and $2.50 a bushel for corn my heating costs would drop from $575 bucks to $230 bucks So I would save $345 bucks per year Note..I used 60% efficiency and 87% for propane. If I could buy the propane for $1.50 with my own tank..my costs would go to $375 or or $145 bucks savings.

Buying a new propane tank would probably be about the same cost as the corn stove.

So for 145 bucks a year..I have no corn to haul, no ashes to remove, no chimney to clean, no storage problems with corn. Also corn was very cheap this year. Solution obvious.

 

[Pablo]

The oil "shortage" must be coming to an end. They are trotting out the corn stoves. Again.

No insult intended. If you live near a good fuel source - adapt to it.

 

[The_Jeff]

Pablo-- can you elaborate, historically? Old "Mother Earth News" clippings? This is my first "energy crunch" (my quotes) and I like rereading historical perspectives on things to rationalize current events.

A chunk of the ethanol-to-car-fuel debate is how much energy is required to distill corn into a useable liquid unleaded fuel. I see corn furnaces as helpful if they displace a fossil fuel, particularly if the corn is in one's backyard. Just have to keep the rats out of your fuel supply.

 

[Pablo]

jefe- first of all I am not against any logical energy source to replace fossil fuels. I also harbor no particular dislike of corn stoves. Lastly I am not an expert on energy resources or corn stoves and I don't fake it on TV news.

3 levels:

1st) I can't say how long corn stoves have been in existence, but I do get a lot of equipment catalogs with all sorts of burners for sale. It seems like my first spotting of such stove and even thinking about one, was about a week before the alleged shortage vaporized. Alas, the poor folks with the stoves in freight transit when they got back from their last gas station que for the next 10 years.

2nd) It seems to me that in a supply and demand marketplace, indeed "stuff" that used to seem expensive, suddenly is viable and not so expensive - but alas - corn stoves were originally advertised as (nearly) free feedstock. So what gives here? Is it really cheap or not?

3rd) The corn stove or rather the extension of the corn stove, the energy crises, to me, is like the Moby **** tale allegorically speaking and represents the whole falseness of "oil shortages". No the stoves aren't huge, nor are the filled with sperm oil. But one rarely sees one and they come only at times of a HUGE crisis (real or imagined.)

So, although, all I know is what I've read about corn stoves - the corn stove is just an icon of the energy shortage.

You can probably search around the web and not get that much BS in one place!

(but you can probably find out the workings and economics of the sperm whale........er........corn stove)

 

[XS650]

quote:

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Originally posted by Pablo:


2nd) It seems to me that in a supply and demand marketplace, indeed "stuff" that used to seem expensive, suddenly is viable and not so expensive - but alas - corn stoves were originally advertised as (nearly) free feedstock. So what gives here? Is it really cheap or not?

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Kind of a long those line....unless the corn being sold so cheaply now is profitable to the growers, it is temporary phenomena. I supect it is being sold at loss right now because there is glut of it.

If one is going to deveop a biomass heating system, it would make more sense to develop it around a plant that produces more BTUs per dollar. I suspect Hemp would be a more efficient souce fuel than corn.

 

[Al]

Might be worth looking at a stove that burns both corn and wood pellets. Possibly even coal also.

 

[Beast of Busco]

Al- a lot of the corn stoves do burn both wood pellets and corn.

Pablo asked how long corn stoves have been around, and I believe they have been around in some form for a while now (maybe as long as 20 years). From what I have seen, they claim to have made improvements to them so that they are more reliable and take less maintenance than the older ones. Of course, the more they are in demand (and the more $$ they can get for them), the more apt manufacturers are to improve their product and get a "leg up" on the competitors.

My family still has a farm, although most of it is cash-rented now to the neighbor. The price of corn has not changed much over the years, although I remember taking corn to the mill one year that we got $5 a bushel for. That was not the norm though!

Either we can just pay the gas man what he wants each year, or we can try to be self-sufficent a little more. I am far from an environmentalist (I am a right winger!), but it just makes sense to make to at least investigate this resource to heat my home.

 

[oilyriser]

Corn stores about 4% of the sun's energy. When you burn it, you recover about 75% of that, or 3% of the original sunlight. A good thermal window lets in maybe 75% of the sun's energy, and you recover 100% of that as heat.

 

[Al]

quote:

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Originally posted by oilyriser:
Corn stores about 4% of the sun's energy. When you burn it, you recover about 75% of that, or 3% of the original sunlight. A good thermal window lets in maybe 75% of the sun's energy, and you recover 100% of that as heat.

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But...assuming that corn is grown more for this demand. If you look at the whole picture: The cornstalk converts C02 to Oxygen which is a cooling process and the elimination of C02 helps combat global warming. I know windows are getting better. But I question if that 75% takes into account additional night time heat losses and summer increased cooling costs.

 

[doitmyself]

Not to rain on your environmental parade, AL, (I love green too)but don't forget the large amount of fertilizer and pesticides that are used now-a-days to grow corn. The soil erosion, ground water contamination (nitrates, etc.). Wood, harvested from "natural", long rotation forests are the true renewable resource.

Corn/pellet stoves (IMHO) are an excellent stop-gap alternative for a minority that have efficient/cheap access to the fuel.

When I installed a wood furnace in my Upper Peninsula home in the 70's, my father-in-law said "yea, but what would happen if everyone put in wood stoves?"

It made me think.

We really do need an integrated program to become less reliant on foreign energy sources.

 

[Al]

quote:

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Originally posted by doitmyself:
Corn/pellet stoves (IMHO) are an excellent stop-gap alternative for a minority that have efficient/cheap access to the fuel.

When I installed a wood furnace in my Upper Peninsula home in the 70's, my father-in-law said "yea, but what would happen if everyone put in wood stoves?"

It made me think.

We really do need an integrated program to become less reliant on foreign energy sources.

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True..the air quality in our suburb went downhill during the wood stove erea of the 70's.

I don't think there is the political understanding or the moxie by the masses to effect a transformation until its too late. The window of opportunity has continued to close since the 30's. The government is too busy trying to throw money at everything except where our real problems are. I have lost faith in the system long ago.

 

[oilyriser]

quote:

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Originally posted by Al:

quote:

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Originally posted by oilyriser:
Corn stores about 4% of the sun's energy. When you burn it, you recover about 75% of that, or 3% of the original sunlight. A good thermal window lets in maybe 75% of the sun's energy, and you recover 100% of that as heat.

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But...assuming that corn is grown more for this demand. If you look at the whole picture: The cornstalk converts C02 to Oxygen which is a cooling process and the elimination of C02 helps combat global warming. I know windows are getting better. But I question if that 75% takes into account additional night time heat losses and summer increased cooling costs.

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I wonder what the lifetime cost is for owning and operating a corn/pellet stove, other than the cost of fuel. It's probably a good choice if the corn is grown nearby, and you can get it below the commodity price.

A couple of good double paned windows can harvest the sun's energy, and you can make insulated shutters to close them at night, or in summer. Running a corn stove, you have to refuel it once a day, which would be a similar amount of work to operating the shutters on solar windows. The windows should last 20 years before the water gets in, and if you add a port for a vacuum pump, you could suck them dry again.

 

[Beast of Busco]

quote:

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When I installed a wood furnace in my Upper Peninsula home in the 70's, my father-in-law said "yea, but what would happen if everyone put in wood stoves?"

It made me think.

We really do need an integrated program to become less reliant on foreign energy sources.

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That is what's occurring now to numerous people around this area (NE Indiana). People are buying woodburners and taking the gas log out of their fireplaces and burning wood. It's caused the price of wood to increase (not to mention the cost of transporting the wood).

A friend of mine added a woodburning furnace apx 4-5 years ago. Every year he got his wood for free, just by his contractor friend who cleared woods or by knowing people (a lot of people just wanted it hauled away!). Now, he and others are finding it much tougher, and he's really thinking about a corn burner for next winter (he has enough wood for this year and his dad DOES farm).

I am all for reducing our dependancy on foreign sources of energy....

 

[1sttruck]

"Every year he got his wood for free, just by his contractor friend who cleared woods or by knowing people (a lot of people just wanted it hauled away!)."

Around here one can apply to the Forest Service to harvest wood for fuel, but that's real work :^)