PELLET STOVES WOOD ENERGY FOR ALL
(Page 8 of 9)
October/November 1995
By John Vivian
If you have your pellet-burner installed by an experienced, licensed pro, you should have no venting problems. Just be sure the vent outlet is located high enough above the fire bed that the pipe will draw naturally even if electricity fails. And (as with any stove) avoid lengthy horizontal runs of pipe, and have any that you do install aiming up at a significant angle. Most smoky Canadian stoves had six foot or longer horizontal runs of pipe, some to avoid Code prohibitions against outletting smoke within a certain distance of a window.
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To avoid auger clogs and hopper fires you must treat a pellet stove for what it is, a hybrid between a hand-managed log stove and a fully automatic oil or gas burner. Problems arise when homeowners just keep dumping in fuel without maintaining the appliance. To function properly, the fuel-feed auger should run almost constantly, delivering a constant dribble of pellets so that a hot, super-clean fire burns continually. That first clog will hinder fuel-flow, heat output will fall, the thermometer will demand more fuel, and the problem will compound. Check, and if need be, clear the mechanism each time you add pellets. (And this goes double if you are burning corn!)
Another problem is inconsistency between batches of fuel. Some Canadian critics have charged that mills are adding chemicals or non-wood components. The jury is still out. (In Canada, wood pellets must be 100% wood; in the U.S. there is no regulation yet and "wood" pellets can be made from cardboard or paper or a mix of fibers, all of which will burn, though at different heats, efficiencies and ash residues.)
Also, to be honest, the home-scale pellet-making industry is relatively new and the technology untested. Raw material sources vary considerably. As any experienced wood burner will understand, even though dried and pulverized from chips or sawdust, pellets pressed from pine will vary in heat and ash content from pellets made from oak. I've burned cardboard, logs rolled and pressed out of newspaper as well as shaved-wood excelsior, Kraft paper rolls, leftover newsprint, and more. It all burned, but each type of fuel needed a different arrangement on the grate to supply needed air, and some of it simply had to be mixed with a more conventional fuel to burn at all. I had to experiment with each type to keep a satisfactory fire. The same is true of a pellet-burner.
I suppose there are some charlatans in the pellet-making business who'll misrepresent their product. There surely were some country rounders in the cordwood business down here in the Lower 48 before state legislatures laid down the law defining a cord as 128 cubic feet, and before wood-burners learned the hard way. Caveat emptor (buyer beware) as they say, and have been saying since J. Caesar's day.
So, get the best pure wood fuel you can. Taste it. Wood doesn't taste like cardboard or clay or old newsprint. Be sure it is freshly made, and dry—hasn't been sitting in a damp warehouse or in the rain for any time at all—lest it absorb more moisture than the 1 to 5 percent maximum the stove is designed to handle. A taste-test works here too; fresh, bone-dry pellets will absorb water and kind of vacuum-stick onto your wet tongue; wet pellets won't.
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