'specially if it smells like buttered popcorn.

 

I think this is sort of funny. A contractor stopped in today to give me some bricking estimates. When she got around to the side of the house where the exhaust sticks out, She asked what I was cooking. I asked her "why do ask". She said, it smells good. I asked her if she could put a finger on the smell. She said she couldn't but like the aroma. I showed her it was the exhuast, and told her it was a corn furnace. She had that shocked, "your kidding" look. I must admit, the aroma is much stronger on the exhaust side than in the house. I showed it to her, and she said she had no idea such a thing existed. I told her I thought it smelled like buttered popcorn. She said maybe BBQ, or just a hint of honey glazed ham. Either way, she said that the smell was far less noticable in the house, but nice.
The most important thing is my 3 month old son is sleeping further into the night, and not waking up so congested. He's had a cold for 3 weeks, and the warm air seems to help him sleep better and longer.
I'm picking up my adapter to turn this into a furnace tomorrow. I'll take a bunch of pictures. of the system and put them up here on Monday.

 

Didn't get it turned into a furnace. I have the adapter. It is a 14 inch tube that will plumb into the overhead, but I don't have the square ducting in place that I need. Hopefully, I'll find a place this week that will have the ducting in stock that I need.

 

I’ve been reading about your corn furnace because I’m thinking about one for our house. I’m trying to figure out if it is worth the time and effort to do the same. I think you wrote that your first estimates were approximately 2.5 tons of corn per heating season. I believe your posts indicated a use of 100 lbs a day in 40ish degree weather? If you have 5 months of heating season, would not your use be closer to 7.5 tons? (150 days X 100 lbs = 15,000 lbs or 7.5 tons). At $175 per ton, you costs would be close to $1,300 for the season. I have about twice the square footage of your house (3,500 s.f.) so if I double these costs mine would be about $2,600 for the season? Does it make economic sense for you to heat with corn?

 

not at that burn rate, but he just got the thing- a new toy. And his house is roasting at 78+deg!

His consumption will drop a lot once the convection output is hooked into the house ducting, distributing the heat more evenly.

I am curious to see what the steady-state consumption is in a month or so. He said he'll track it and post.

 

Challenger, I don't know how far out in NoVa you are, but apparently there's a corn co-op distributing corn to about 30 users. I think they're based near College Park. Might be useful to you?

Found this on www.chesapeakeclimate.org

To join the Corn Cooperative, call Sat Jiwan [sot 'jee vin] Khalsa, president of the Save Our Sky Home-Heating Cooperative in Takoma Park at 301-891.8891.

 

Thanks gonavy. I'll definitely check into it. I was thinking of starting a co-op, but hell, College park is in the realm of one of the hospitals I support. I'll give him a call.

Just like gonavy said corndreamer, I'm sort of just playing with this thing right now. I just did my first complete cleanout of the unit. That is take out the firepot, vacuum, and wipe down the window. My wife and I also just got the the ducting connected this evening about 2 hours ago.

What I must point out is, we have never ever heated our house in the winter at more than 70 degrees before. My wife is from Southern California, and has always hated winter out here. I'm perfectly comfortable with a house that is 65 to 70 degrees. However, she was helping me cut aluminum tonight to get the ducting done to keep the house in the mid to high 70's!

The adaptor pipe that sits over the top of the heat exchangers has an adapter port for a 14 inch diameter pipe. My main heating plenum, in that particular location of the house is only 14x8. My wife and I fabricated a cone that steps down to an 8 inch diameter tube, and connects to the plenum. I'll take the pictures so everyone that is interested can see how this is all connected. Currently the entire house is worming up nicely. Once it starts to really get cold, I'm sure the house will stay in the 70's, and my wife is extatic with the heat.

Quote:

I’ve been reading about your corn furnace because I’m thinking about one for our house. I’m trying to figure out if it is worth the time and effort to do the same. I think you wrote that your first estimates were approximately 2.5 tons of corn per heating season. I believe your posts indicated a use of 100 lbs a day in 40ish degree weather? If you have 5 months of heating season, would not your use be closer to 7.5 tons? (150 days X 100 lbs = 15,000 lbs or 7.5 tons). At $175 per ton, you costs would be close to $1,300 for the season. I have about twice the square footage of your house (3,500 s.f.) so if I double these costs mine would be about $2,600 for the season? Does it make economic sense for you to heat with corn?

I've been figuring my corn burn to keep my house at 70 degrees, and I'm confident that I should be able to stay in my estimates as the year goes on. Sounds like you have a huge house. They do make huge corn burners with 500 pound hoppers and 150,000 btu ratings. However, for a house your size, you might also want to look into outside wood burners. They are slightly popular in Canada, but work great. I know a guy in the upper penninsula of Michigan that has one. It looks like a shed with a furnace in it that boils water, and sends it underground to the house. He has no fear of his house burning down.

These are a couple of links:

http://www.year-a-round.com/corn_burning_furnace.html

http://www.pinnaclestove.com/

This is my personal favorite, but didn't fit well with what I was doing in my basement
http://www.kernelburner.com/

As for outdoor wood burners, check this out:

http://www.centralboiler.com/models.php

Hope this helps with some options.

 

Hi Challenger1:

___Thanks for all the detailed information on your Corn Furnace …

___I saw something that might interest you over at EVWorld. Your Corn Furnace appears to be a better then excellent purchase!

$13 NATURAL GAS VS $10 CORN

___Good Luck

___Wayne R. Gerdes

 

Thanks xcel! I got home tonight, and forgot to turn the thing off before I left for work. The house is a staggering80 degrees. The high for the day was 67 degrees, and it will get down to 39 tonight, but I'm turning the thing off, and letting the house cool a bit. Today was my official start date for tracking data for the corn stove.

The format is simple. I have a page for each month in xcel.

 

I'm glad I'm not the only one who makes Excel spreadsheets for this kind of stuff. I have the monthly electrical usage for my house going back to 2000 when I purchased my house and started reading my meter daily to track my day to day usage back at the start of September. I should post up my spreadsheet when I get home from work or something for group critique! It's amazing how motivational it is to hypermile when you track your fuel economy and to hyperwatt when you track your daily electrical consumption!