jeffcoy

Hi, Has anyone any experience of wood pellet stoves for central heating and hot water. We are thinking of one in the cellar but our geometra says it is much more energy efficent to have the boiler plus fire in the sitting room. Would value anyone's advice. Thanks

Isakat

Hi,
having paid 2,000 euro in gas heating bills per year for the past 3 years( for 4/5 hrs heating per day), we decided to install a termocamino.
There are several makes on the market, such as Palazetti, Vulcano, etc.We went for a Vulcano 35S but there are smaller models depending on the square meters of your property.It is very simple to install and was highly reccommended by 3 of our friends.
It heats the house( we have old radiators in ghisa) and produces hot water.
Ours needs to be filled twice a day, but I have so far used it in the afternoons/evenings only.
Regarding the stuffa a pellet, one of our friends has one to heat the basement which is rather damp, however hers does not produce hot water.I spoke to her yesterday and she is installing the same termocamino in her living room to heat the rest of the house.Her gas bill was 4,000 last year.
I am not sure how the stuffa a pellet works regarding feeding it-I belive there is an automatic feeder?
With the termocamino all you see is the glass door as it can be fully integrated in any wall, providing there is a chimney near by, which also, has to be large enough.
It is also integrated with an existing gas boiler, so that when you are not using the camino, your gas boiler kicks in, the same if the hot water from the camino is used up.

http://www.vulcanocaldaie.it/index.php?pag=rivestimento


The only snag with the camino is bringing the wood in and a bit of dust, plus cleaning the glass and once a year sweeping the chimney.
You forget about this when you sit in front of the flames and the house is toasty, which never happened to us when we used gas heating.

Regards
Isakat

jeffcoy

Many Thanks - we had heard that gas was really expensive hence wanting wood pellets.

PAT M

Hi, we have two pellet stoves and are very pleased with them. We have metano gas central heating but soon realized that we would spend our whole pension on heating the house if we used it for more than 2/4 hours a day. We have an open log fire in the kitchen and use an old fashioned bracciera ( a round brazier to hold hot coals from the fire) to warm the other end of the kitchen. Had we done more research, we would certainly have had a termo camino too. The drawbacks with pellets? Make sure they are of good quality, there has been a scandal recently about wood pellets from radioactive sites! You have to clean out the ashbox and clean the glass and make sure you don't block the stove with dusty pellets, we seive ours before use. They have to be serviced once a year.

jeffcoy

Many Thanks, we did not know about the radioactive scare, how often do you have to refill it ?

PAT M

Of course it depends, a 15 kilo bag lasts us two days for 3/4 hours heating per day using two pellet stoves. A sack of pellets costs about 5 euro. We fill the pellet stoves up each afternoon but if we forget a buzzer sounds to remind us when /if the pellets have run out.

Isakat

Pat, could you tell me please how many square meters are you heating?
I would like to see the cost of pellets compared to the cost of wood.

Many thanks,

Isakat

PAT M

Hi Isakat, we have a small pellet stove (Nordica Extraflame "Isabella") in the living room/dining room and that heats up that area which measures approx. 40 sq metres, it's cosier down the end where the stove is where we keep it on 3 the heat can be increased to 5 but of course it would consume more pellets. We have a large Palazzetti pellet stove in the corridor and that's about 20 square metres, again the heat is adjustable, we keep it on 1 or 2. We have worked out for the open log fire in the kitchen we can get 25/30 hours of heat from a quintale (100 kilo) of olive logs (at a cost of 12 euro per quintale). Hope this helps. Pat

Isakat

Hi Pat,

Thank you for the information.
Kind regards,

Isakat

PS-I wondered where do you get olive logs from as I have never seen them being sold in the wood places where I live.I use oak and as we have chestnut trees that we cut, I mix those as well, but they do sprinkle a lot when burning.

PAT M

We live in Puglia so surrounded by olive groves, the trees are lopped every couple of years I believe so that they produce more olives, hence olive wood is abundant, there are wood yards in most towns but we get ours from a neighbour's friend and I think the wood is from his own trees. Regards Pat