Pellet Burning Stoves

How Pellet Burning Stoves Work

Pellet burning stoves can look similair to normal wood burning stoves. With pellet stoves, the components are more sophisticated. Pellet burning stoves burn pellets for it's heat source. Wood pellets can be purchased for $3-6 per 40lbs bag. Typically, one would load between 30lbs to 130lbs of pellets into a device called a "hopper", which holds the pellets. Hoper will vary in size, depending on the pellet stove. Obviously the bigger the hopper, the more pellets you can load and the longer the stove will provide heat. Some stoves have automatic lighting and others may require you to light the stove. Once the pellets are loaded into the hopper, then a device will transfer the pellets to the heating chamber on a controlled and automatic system, using an internal thermostat to gauge the heat and when to add more pellets. Air from the room is then sucked in from a built in fan. which is then transferred through the heating chamber. The hot air is then distributed back into the room or through the vent system in your house, depending upon how you set it up.

Pellet Feeds

There are two types of feeds that are used to serve the wood pellets to the combustion chamber for them to be burned. The device that carries the pellets to the chamber is called an Auger. There are typically two types of pellet feeds:

Top feed - Pellets are served by the Auger from the top, this reduces the likely hood of a fire burning back into the hopper. Though, ash may get caught up in the firebox grate, which can build up and cause the fire to die

Bottom feed - A horizontal Auger. Pellets are moved in horizontally and the ash is moved to the sides, which fall into an ash pan and makes cleaning and maintenance much easier and safer.

Fueling the pellet burning stove is very simple and convenient. Normally, one would only need to fill it up in the morning for it to provide heat for the entire day. We recommend that you also read our article on the benefits of pellet stoves.