Corn & Wood Pellet Furnace Review & Such

[McDonald, Jacob M.]

Hi All,

I just thought I'd chime in about my new corn furnace. I searched the
usenet archives and web for a long time doing research on corn/pellet
furnaces and finally decided to buy a Traeger furnace, the GBU70 (70
kBTU model), configured to burn corn and other biomass/grains.

It's great! I have a 2400 sqft house with average insulation and
windows, built in 1990. I could definitely go for better insulation and
windows in the new house! But this 70k unit still puts out enough heat
to keep the house warm this Winter (was 1 F, -17 C last night), and at a
fraction of the cost of natural gas! Woohoo!

I installed the furnace as an auxiliary furnace and tied it into my
existing Bryant gas furnace. I installed an automatic one-way damper
onto the corn unit and just put a block of plywood in place of the air
filter on the gas unit to act as a damper. I installed a switch that
allows my wife to switch between the two furnaces without messing with
wires from the thermostat in case she runs out of corn or has other
issues with the corn furnace while I'm away on business.

One thing I underestimated is how difficult it would be to procure corn
in central Ohio! I'm surrounded by corn and soybean fields, yet all of
the elevators are owned by the big companies that don't want to sell the
corn bagged, or for the dealers that do sell it in 50# bags, they want
$3.15 up to $3.85 per 50#! And when the market price is around $1.80
right now, that's highway robbery!

Luckily my dad called the local small-town elevator/dealer where he
lives (an hour north of Columbus) and they are willing to sell 100#
nylon bags for $2.18/bushel (56#). That's a great price, so I'm buying
two tons which should easily get me through the Winter and maybe even
the Spring. ;o)

I am working on taking photos of my setup, but haven't finished
installing the extra 3-bushel hopper extension I built. ;o) Once I
finish it I'll take some photos and reply to this thread with a link!

If anyone has any questions, please feel free to ask. I've had the
furnace for two weeks now and have had plenty of time and practice
playing with the damper settings, draft fan speed settings, starting,
feed rate, etc.

Jacob

["The Bald Ass Prairie Farm" planet.net>]

congratulations, sounds it's working for you. I'm trying to do the same with
horse manure, but the winter up till now has been so mild that I haven't
stabled them yet, so no test runs with the real thing.
Richard
"McDonald, Jacob M."

Post by McDonald, Jacob M.
Hi All,
I just thought I'd chime in about my new corn furnace. I searched the
usenet archives and web for a long time doing research on corn/pellet
furnaces and finally decided to buy a Traeger furnace, the GBU70 (70
kBTU model), configured to burn corn and other biomass/grains.
It's great! I have a 2400 sqft house with average insulation and
windows, built in 1990. I could definitely go for better insulation and
windows in the new house! But this 70k unit still puts out enough heat
to keep the house warm this Winter (was 1 F, -17 C last night), and at a
fraction of the cost of natural gas! Woohoo!
I installed the furnace as an auxiliary furnace and tied it into my
existing Bryant gas furnace. I installed an automatic one-way damper
onto the corn unit and just put a block of plywood in place of the air
filter on the gas unit to act as a damper. I installed a switch that
allows my wife to switch between the two furnaces without messing with
wires from the thermostat in case she runs out of corn or has other
issues with the corn furnace while I'm away on business.
One thing I underestimated is how difficult it would be to procure corn
in central Ohio! I'm surrounded by corn and soybean fields, yet all of
the elevators are owned by the big companies that don't want to sell the
corn bagged, or for the dealers that do sell it in 50# bags, they want
$3.15 up to $3.85 per 50#! And when the market price is around $1.80
right now, that's highway robbery!
Luckily my dad called the local small-town elevator/dealer where he
lives (an hour north of Columbus) and they are willing to sell 100#
nylon bags for $2.18/bushel (56#). That's a great price, so I'm buying
two tons which should easily get me through the Winter and maybe even
the Spring. ;o)
I am working on taking photos of my setup, but haven't finished
installing the extra 3-bushel hopper extension I built. ;o) Once I
finish it I'll take some photos and reply to this thread with a link!
If anyone has any questions, please feel free to ask. I've had the
furnace for two weeks now and have had plenty of time and practice
playing with the damper settings, draft fan speed settings, starting,
feed rate, etc.
Jacob

[Willcox]

McDonald, Jacob M.

Post by McDonald, Jacob M.
all of
the elevators are owned by the big companies that don't want to sell the
corn bagged, or for the dealers that do sell it in 50# bags, they want
$3.15 up to $3.85 per 50#! And when the market price is around $1.80
right now, that's highway robbery!

Some companies will have trailers for farmers to use. Maybe you could
build yourself a mini-silo so store it.

Post by McDonald, Jacob M.
Luckily my dad called the local small-town elevator/dealer where he
lives (an hour north of Columbus) and they are willing to sell 100#
nylon bags for $2.18/bushel (56#). That's a great price, so I'm buying
two tons which should easily get me through the Winter and maybe even
the Spring. ;o)

That's actually pretty good opportunity to maintain a huge, inexpensive
food stockpile for disaster insurance to get you through political
chaos, nuclear war, etc. Just one terrorist nuke going off in a major
city would cause the government to clamp down transportation and food
prices would go sky high.

The typical Morman/survivalist food stockpile strategy is to rotate your
stockpile, as in "store what you eat and eat what you store", but this
has you always eating old food. These stockpiles typically consist of
mostly canned and processed foods which have a shelflife of 3 to 5
years. Some people have spent $3000 on a one year supply of food only to
have the shelflife expire before it gets eaten, so to keep from making
themselves sick eating nutritionally deficient foods they just dump it
into the trash. OTOH dried grains like wheat and corn can still be
edible for 15 years. And it doesn't matter how old grain gets, it will
still burn in your furnace.

So you could have a huge food stockpile of grains that stayed fresh, yet
never got eaten because your furnace rotated your stockpile by always
burning the oldest grain. I wouldn't volentarily eat a diet of 100%
corn, but consider what kind of food you'd be happy to have when the
alternative was starvation, and it wouldn't stop you from finding more
food during a crisis, times when the only thing that can buy food is
other food, or save you big time when food prices go sky high during a
major crisis.

So at $2.18 per bushel, that's using some extra storage space and a one
time investment of maybe $100 to have a huge foodstockpile that stayed
fresh forever, and your both investment and storage space can forever be
refunded/reclaimed. No food stockpile ever stayed so fresh and was so
cheap.

Something to consider.

[Andy Baker]

"McDonald, Jacob M."

Post by McDonald, Jacob M.
Hi All,
I just thought I'd chime in about my new corn furnace. I searched the
usenet archives and web for a long time doing research on corn/pellet
furnaces and finally decided to buy a Traeger furnace, the GBU70 (70 kBTU
model), configured to burn corn and other biomass/grains.
It's great! I have a 2400 sqft house with average insulation and windows,
built in 1990. I could definitely go for better insulation and windows in
the new house! But this 70k unit still puts out enough heat to keep the
house warm this Winter (was 1 F, -17 C last night), and at a fraction of
the cost of natural gas! Woohoo!
I installed the furnace as an auxiliary furnace and tied it into my
existing Bryant gas furnace. I installed an automatic one-way damper onto
the corn unit and just put a block of plywood in place of the air filter
on the gas unit to act as a damper. I installed a switch that allows my
wife to switch between the two furnaces without messing with wires from
the thermostat in case she runs out of corn or has other issues with the
corn furnace while I'm away on business.
One thing I underestimated is how difficult it would be to procure corn in
central Ohio! I'm surrounded by corn and soybean fields, yet all of the
elevators are owned by the big companies that don't want to sell the corn
bagged, or for the dealers that do sell it in 50# bags, they want $3.15 up
to $3.85 per 50#! And when the market price is around $1.80 right now,
that's highway robbery!
Luckily my dad called the local small-town elevator/dealer where he lives
(an hour north of Columbus) and they are willing to sell 100# nylon bags
for $2.18/bushel (56#). That's a great price, so I'm buying two tons which
should easily get me through the Winter and maybe even the Spring. ;o)
I am working on taking photos of my setup, but haven't finished installing
the extra 3-bushel hopper extension I built. ;o) Once I finish it I'll
take some photos and reply to this thread with a link!
If anyone has any questions, please feel free to ask. I've had the furnace
for two weeks now and have had plenty of time and practice playing with
the damper settings, draft fan speed settings, starting, feed rate, etc.
Jacob

You gotta do what we do in the plastics industry, and get a vacuum system
set up. On top of the molding machines we have these little tiny hoppers
with a blower (sucker) and a proximity / level indicator switch. As the
machine eats up the resin, the switch kicks the suction on, and sucks resin
beads (just slightly smaller than corn) out of 3/4 ton boxes and up the tube
and in to the hopper. What's nice about that is you don't need to have 1500
lbs of product way up on top of the machine to gravity feed. You just have a
big pile or bin and throw the hose in it. Hell, you could even keep the bin
outdoors.

Andy

[Tim O'Flaherty]

Post by McDonald, Jacob M.
Luckily my dad called the local small-town elevator/dealer where he
lives (an hour north of Columbus) and they are willing to sell 100#
nylon bags for $2.18/bushel (56#). That's a great price, so I'm buying
two tons which should easily get me through the Winter and maybe even
the Spring. ;o)

Two tons of corn. You might want to invest in a few cats too :) My
experience has been that females are the best hunters but then you may end
up with two tons of cats! How many BTU's in a cat? I don't know what
measures silo operators take for rodent control but I would definitely look
into it.

Regards,
Tim O

[t***@cybermesa.net]

Newsgroups: alt.energy.renewable,alt.energy.homepower
Two tons of corn. You might want to invest in a few cats too :)
My experience has been that females are the best hunters but then
you may end up with two tons of cats! How many BTU's in a cat?
Tim O

Make that "BTU's per hour". Cats are heat generators, not fuel...

I bet Nick knows.



Tom Willmon
near Mountainair, (mid) New Mexico, USA

Dishonest Person - One who farts & blames the dog.

Net-Tamer V 1.12.0 - Registered

[n***@ece.villanova.edu]

Post by t***@cybermesa.net

Post by Tim O'Flaherty
How many BTU's in a cat?

Make that "BTU's per hour". Cats are heat generators, not fuel...

Could be...

Post by t***@cybermesa.net
I bet Nick knows.

An ASHRAE-standard 6.61 pound normally active cat makes 68.02 Btu/h.

Nick

[bw]

Post by n***@ece.villanova.edu

Post by t***@cybermesa.net

Post by Tim O'Flaherty
How many BTU's in a cat?

Make that "BTU's per hour". Cats are heat generators, not fuel...

Could be...

Post by t***@cybermesa.net
I bet Nick knows.

An ASHRAE-standard 6.61 pound normally active cat makes 68.02 Btu/h.
Nick

Ordinary cats around 20 watts basal. Canadian cats may be different.

[a***@yahoo.com]

Post by t***@cybermesa.net

Newsgroups: alt.energy.renewable,alt.energy.homepower
Two tons of corn. You might want to invest in a few cats too :)
My experience has been that females are the best hunters but then
you may end up with two tons of cats! How many BTU's in a cat?
Tim O

Make that "BTU's per hour". Cats are heat generators, not fuel...
I bet Nick knows.
Tom Willmon
near Mountainair, (mid) New Mexico, USA
Dishonest Person - One who farts & blames the dog.
Net-Tamer V 1.12.0 - Registered

I think the Egyptians kept cats for pets and mummified them and if you
believe Mark Twain. ;)

"The fuel [Egyptian railroaders] use for the locomotive is composed of
mummies three thousand years old, purchased by the ton or by the
graveyard for that purpose, and . . . sometimes one hears the profane
engineer call out pettishly, 'D--n these plebeians, they don't burn
worth a cent--pass out a King!'"
"Stated to me for a fact. I only tell it as I got it. I am willing to
believe it. I can believe anything."

Andre' B.