Pellet Burning Furnace

[flametamer]

Does or has anyone had any experience with the Pellet burning furnaces that I see advertised?
When we build we want to be self-supportive within 5-10 years.

[glenn kangiser]

I have a friend with one and he likes it pretty well.

Not sure I understand what you mean by self supportive, but to me it would mean using real wood - not having to rely on some corporation or someone else to produce the pellets for me.  You would be dependent on them for your fuel and if it is not available you would not have heat.  To me that wouldn't be self supportive.

[flametamer]

Well most of the stoves (for lack of better words) also burn corn for fuel. Self supportive means going completely off grid. We do want to rely on anyone (electric company, Water company gas, etc..) for anything if we can help it. Want I have been looking for is something that will burn wood or corn and blow it throughout the whole house like a normal HVAC system would.\

[glenn kangiser]

Ones that rely on a blower for heat are harder to use than a standard non-powered stove when you are off grid.  A lady near here who was ripped off by a nearby solar contractor had a powered propane furnace and was unable to use it since the blower wouldn't work.  It was foggy - low power and he didn't install a generator - still got her $35000.00 though.

[MountainDon]

Conventional blowers use a lot more power than one might think. That might be a problem with a total solar PV system. The newer high efficiency gas furnaces use a DC motor, some variable speed, and are more energy efficient. Anything is possible, whether or not it's economical, that's another thing.

Before committing to any particular type of heating you should research the power requirements of the different possibilities.

There are propane heaters that have no blowers, using convection. However, they are not suitable for whole house heating. You'd need one in each "space". But then propane not exactly a self sufficient fuel.

Passive solar (without the air or liquid moving fans/pumps) could maybe work.

[glenn kangiser]

The wood heaters I used to build had double walls with fins - about 2x4 boxes all around.  They were lab tested at around 350 cfm convection air movement with no fan.

[flametamer]

Thanks for the information guys, It was a thought that I had.