Fuel for Thought Many seek heating alternatives
"Let it snow, let it snow, let it snow …"
So goes the familiar refrain. But with home heating bills reaching dizzying heights last winter, "snow" is a word that makes many consumers shiver. Shiver, that is, at the thought of paying hundreds of dollars a month to stay warm.
Instead of bracing for high heating bills or turning down the thermostat until ice cubes freeze on the counter, more and more people are turning to alternative fuels.
Although wood heat has been around for thousands of years, the newest generation of heating stoves can burn wood pellets as well as unlikely fuels such as dried corn, wheat and oats — even seeds and cherry pits.
"Our home never drops below 74 degrees. You don't have to keep your home at 68 degrees," said Ken Tejchman of Concord Township, who heats his home entirely by burning corn.
"There's a tremendous difference. You're comfortable in your house. You don't have to sit around with blankets on all night long."
Tejchman is an example of an enthusiastic customer. After buying a corn stove sight unseen through mail order several years ago, he became a dealer and has operated Teckman's Corn Stoves from his farm for the past six years."We live in a home that was built in the 1700s, and trying to heat it was very hard," Tejchman said. "We put in all new doors and windows, but we got a heating bill that was $250 and it wasn't even cold yet. I bought a small corn stove through a farm magazine. The next year, we were selling them.""We have no backup heat here," he added. "Our gas furnace was completely removed."Demand for heating stoves has been brisk, area dealers say. Dave Martin of B.F. Martin Sales and Service in Butler, says the multi-fuel stoves, which can burn manufactured wood pellets, dried corn or a variety of grains, have become very popular with his customers."In this area, with the farmers, everything's plentiful," he said. "Last year, when gas prices went sky high, we noticed an increase in the pellet and multi-fuel stoves.
This year, we've noticed they're all about equal. We sell a lot of wood stoves and wood inserts. Since natural gas has come down a little, people are going to the high efficiency natural gas."Martin's store is heated entirely with three wood pellet stoves. "We use no gas to heat, only for demonstration," he noted. Martin said a single pellet or corn stove can serve to heat an entire home "if you centralize it right."Amy Werner, one of the owners of Mars Agway, heats her own home with a wood pellet stove, which she installed last year."We love it," she said. "It's a constant heat. Not like a furnace that kicks on and off, and cools off before it runs again. This burns all the time so it's constant."After using a traditional wood burner for 25 years, she decided to get a pellet stove last year."Pellet stoves are much cleaner than a wood burner. When you open a wood burner, you have ash and smoke that blows out. With pellets, just dump them in the hopper and there's an auger that brings them to the burn area."Corn stoves work in much the same fashion: Dried, shelled corn is loaded into a hopper and the corn is fed into a combustion tray as needed. Most stoves have thermostatic controls to adjust the heat to personal comfort levels.In choosing a home heating alternative, cost savings is often a homeowner's biggest concern. Werner said her savings of $100 to $150 a month has already offset the initial $2,000 cost of her unit."We have a furnace," she said, "but it doesn't run very much. It keeps our consumption at around $30 a month, and probably most of that is my stove, dryer and hot water tank."Thomas Reynolds, director of the Robert A. Macoskey Center for Sustainable Systems Education and Research at Slippery Rock University, said the trends in home heating are not necessarily new."I'm a little cautious using the term 'alternative' because it implies it's something different," he said."A lot of these technologies have been around for thousands of years. They are just different from what people are using right now," he said.
For instance, the center burns wood in a masonry wood heater — "a 1,000-year-old technology" — but added the wood is burned in a way that boosts efficiency."On the other side of the coin, we also heat part of the house with electric baseboards. It's nice, clean and easy to use. But really it's creating a problem elsewhere because in Western Pennsylvania, we burn coal to produce electricity."Reynolds said the center is considering a geothermal system which would use the constant 50-degree underground temperature to heat and cool the building."There are basically two kinds of systems," said Reynolds. "One is the horizontal loop system, which tends to be the cheapest to install. It involves digging trenches from 3 to 5 feet deep, below the frost line. You need a fair amount of space to do it.Some trenches might be 500 to 1,000 feet long."The other system, you are essentially drilling a well. In some cases, you can use an existing well. Depending on the situation the homeowner is in, one will make more sense to use than another."He said there are several certified installers in the area, and homeowners may qualify for tax breaks and other federal benefits when installing such a system. ""To be honest," he said, "there is no silver bullet" for energy consumption. He noted the center chose wood as a "local renewable resource." He also said the center's heater, which looks like a traditional wood-burning fireplace, has some important design differences that extract 30 percent to 40 percent more heat from the wood and also lowers air pollution by burning the flue gasses.
The flue "goes up and down and up, snaking through the masonry mass to increase the contact time with the stone," he said. "The stone absorbs the heat and radiates that heat back into the building."John Gaillot of South Buffalo Township, Armstrong County, also uses wood as the primary heating source for his home. He and wife installed two wood-burning fireplace inserts in their all-electric home after winter heating bills began topping $500 a month. Gaillot said he now turns the furnace off completely during the winter months and the family relies solely on wood for their heat.That may not be a viable option for everyone, though. Gaillot said he manages to supply his own wood by cutting and removing trees. "It's beneficial if you know where you can get the wood and you can cut it yourself," he said. "In one winter, we paid for the stove."When choosing an alternative heating source, it's also important to consider the drawbacks as well. While many focus on the potential cost savings, others may not want to give up the convenience of a traditional furnace system. Any unit that burns a solid fuel such as wood, wood pellets or corn will require a bit more work and maintenance.
"The only drawback," Tejchman said, "is that you have to maintain a stove daily. It takes about five minutes a day with the unit. Once a month, you need to spend about 15 minutes doing a good cleaning. You have to do a little bit of something."He noted that while stoves must be filled daily, larger furnace units can hold several days' worth of fuel at a time.Wood pellets are a commercially manufactured fuel and cost about $250 per ton. The price of corn varies locally, but is generally less expensive than pellets.A homeowner can expect to use between two to three tons a season. Stove units can cost $1,400 and up, depending on features and the type of fuel.Area farmer Jeff Watterson of Kittanning started bagging and selling corn for stoves this year, and says he sees the demand going up.As a farmer for the past 40 years, he said offering his corn for heating stoves was "just common sense. … They can't produce enough pellets since last year, when the price of pellets went up by $100 a ton. I think corn produces a little more heat, so why not use corn?"Tejchman agrees. "The majority of corn is bought from the local neighborhood, so the money stays in the local community, and I think that's a huge thing, since I farm. It's a benefit all around."
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