what? ....you use 2 cord a month..??? I dont know the volume your heating but thats not negligible to me, maybe if I was in my 30,s but thats a lot of wood, and while I agree wood heating is a solid way to go, Over time that much wood is going to wear you down...I would be looking at what I am heating with, or how the house is constructed. That much wood sounds more typical of what a outdoor boiler would use. Whats that a year ..10 cord? I could go 3 years on that...2 if I also kept the downstairs fire going all winter...
I too dont understand the pellet idea, but I understand his point regarding the work of handeling wood, he can stock pile his winter supply ahead of time giving him some heating security, at least for the time he has stocked up for,and as he is not teathered to utillity company for heat, he does saves what would be a roughly 45 dollar a month charge (in alberta anyway)even if he use no gas, so in a way he could view that as 500.00 a year to buy pellets with (if he lived in alberta). Not what I would do but I understand it, still way better prepared than many, though It will hurt him if he moves further along into solar.
Speaking of which, I know the requirements you have listed for energy use, I have a hard time believing that...yes thats the specs given...but... Think we could get Knuckle to turn off utube and plug his unit into a killowatt meter for a realword account of what his pellet stove uses in a 24hr period...enquiring minds would like to know.. I will go out on a limb and quess not more than 1.5kwhrs a day,Only a WAG as I have never used a pellet stove, but understand a little about motors, and what I suspect are gear head ones ( and 300 watt motors for just moving pellets sounds like they should be called heaters, must be Duty cycle controled if 300 watts)......How about it Knuckle?..

what? ....you use 2 cord a month..??? I dont know the volume your heating but thats not negligible to me, maybe if I was in my 30,s but thats a lot of wood, and while I agree wood heating is a solid way to go, Over time that much wood is going to wear you down...I would be looking at what I am heating with, or how the house is constructed. That much wood sounds more typical of what a outdoor boiler would use. Whats that a year ..10 cord? I could go 3 years on that...2 if I also kept the downstairs fire going all winter...
I too dont understand the pellet idea, but I understand his point regarding the work of handeling wood, he can stock pile his winter supply ahead of time giving him some heating security, at least for the time he has stocked up for,and as he is not teathered to utillity company for heat, he does saves what would be a roughly 45 dollar a month charge (in alberta anyway)even if he use no gas, so in a way he could view that as 500.00 a year to buy pellets with (if he lived in alberta). Not what I would do but I understand it, still way better prepared than many, though It will hurt him if he moves further along into solar.
Speaking of which, I know the requirements you have listed for energy use, I have a hard time believing that...yes thats the specs given...but... Think we could get Knuckle to turn off utube and plug his unit into a killowatt meter for a realword account of what his pellet stove uses in a 24hr period...enquiring minds would like to know.. I will go out on a limb and quess not more than 1.5kwhrs a day,Only a WAG as I have never used a pellet stove, but understand a little about motors, and what I suspect are gear heat ones ( and 300 watt motors for just moving pellets sounds like they should be called heaters)......How about it Knuckle?

just to make sure we are all on the same page...the cord I refer to is what is sold as a cord around here...4' x 8' x 16"...really it's a run or 1/3 of a real cord.
If you use the 4' x 4' x 8' measurement for a cord then I use 1/6 of a cord per week...average.
Most of my issue comes from the power requirement of pelet stoves, but ya...I'd love to see what it uses in January, when it is the sole source of heat for the house.

Glad you said that, sounds way better.......I was going to say you should close your doors in the winter.

Glad you said that, sounds way better.......I was going to say you should close your doors in the winter.

What? you mean I should close the doors in the winter?
Keeping the windows open is OK though right?

I am going to revise my estimate...below 1kwhr a day, again a wag, but think about it, a horsepower is 750 watts. there is no way it would take the entire power of a horse to move a 20 30 pound bag of pellets...a union horse maybe.
So how about it knuckle will you measure your draw with a killowatt meter for 24 hrs and let us know... You have the power to either make me look all wrong or Denob...I am sure there are people who would love such a chance

Thanks to this post, I now have a MUCH better idea of indoor emergency heating. Thanks all. If I had my choice, I'd have wood heat. One day, when I live in the country, I will. In the meantime, I plan on buying one of the Mr. Heater Buddy heaters, which is propane. I will take extra safety precautions by buying a battery-operated CO detector and ensuring ventilation. Hopefully I'll never need to use it more than a couple of hours here or there, if that.

As I think more about this pellet heating way, different as it is from conventinal wood heating, if there isnt a great penalty to pay power wise that could inhibit, or drive costs high to further go off grid and supply you own power then it can have merrit, if you have stock pilled you own supply, and he said he has.
He is skilled I bet a hour in the shop, or a hour repairing computers can very likely earn him more than if he is out cutting and hauling wood, if a more serious longer term situating is developing, he will have a cushion of time to develop a alternate means of heating...such as wood in log form. Even in pellet form the wood is renewable....I watched my neibour feeding branches into a wood chipper this summer and little pieces the size of my thumb nail came out, I wonder if those could be used as well in a pellet stove....need to know the power requirements...real world..

If you are buying a pellet stove , please be sure to do some research and buy a
MULTI-FUEL source type . Then you can use a variety of different things.

Meanwhile , I have come home today with x2 kerosene heaters. $ 159.99 model and the $ 199.99
model, on sale this week at CrappyT . I did not buy any kerosene, as I think they have poor quality there.
I seem to recall that possibly Home-Hardware carries better quality ?

What do I look for in Kerosene ?
And where and how do you store Kerosene ?
How long does the Kerosne last ?

I might only keep one of these kerosene heaters but I brought both home so I can decide after looking at them.

Doesnt matter where I bought it ...I have found it all to be crap, I even tried industrial suppy places where its sold in 5 gallon steel drums, maybe its different on your side of the country and you will get lucky...dont just try it for a hour, its after a few that you really begin to notice how unpleasant it is, then thy it again the next day for a few hours and I bet it seems more unpleasant sooner....better to find out now than later.

Yes need to find out how much it stinks, and is bothersome, but still would keep as it is nice to have plans B, C , D

I would like pellet stove but hoping they will improve them and have a manual auger option for
power outtages, and also a ready to go solar battery pack for them.

My first heat source is Oil. Then I have a whole house generator, so if the power goes out, it
can still run. But the propane would run out after say 10 days or if really stingy with the propane 14 days .
I am assuming to plan for an event where you can not even get any propane refills. Which actually happened this past winter where many
places ran out of propane . I think however, if the use of this would be for an emergency , one
might be only too grateful to have it in the event it was needed. However it is only going to last
as long as one still has some kerosene. It is possible that kerosene might be available but the
kerosene heaters would be all sold out .

However, many people would also run out of wood to burn and pellets .

I do love the Rocket Stove , I have an EcoZoom Versa ,we need a similar indoor heater properly vented like a
pellet stove than can burn anything .

interesting article

http://www.endtimesreport.com/kerosene_heaters.html

Question : the kerosene for heaters is different than the No Smoke / No odor Lamp oil , correct ?

I've been giving serious consideration to building one of these. Its a bit to much of a serious commitment to add one in our home but the idea came up to build one into the next (Third) greenhouse. (Some people recommend building one in your yard to start. Its a warm place to park your but on)
http://www.richsoil.com/rocket-stove-mass-heater.jsp

Hi Peppercorn,
I heat with wood, upstairs, and a pellet stove, downstairs. I always have 3+ years of firewood, cut and split, at home. I buy pellets by the pallet: one and a half tons all nicely packaged in (reusable) 40 lb. bags, which last one heating season. Many pellet stoves can be hooked up to a battery to run during a power outage - the battery will need to be recharged daily. However, this is not ideal. Pellet stoves have very sensitive electronic components and a circuit board. But, pellets are easy to burn (don't use homemade wood chips because they will clog the auger). I have had some issues with my pellet stove, like faulty electronic components that I've had to replace, and the biggest problem is that I can't use it during a power outage. It requires more maintenance than my wood stove too. My wood cookstove upstairs is by far the best.
I just wanted to share my experience with you so you have more information to add to your knowledge.

Goldie, it lasts if sealed, pretty much for ever..decades ....if stored in plastic jugs that are in sunlight I have found that the kerosene can take on a yellow colour, could be the sunlight and sulfur reacting, or plastic and sulfur/ sunlight reaction, still works though. best to just store it in a cool dark place...
even if you dont use it for heat or light, it can be burned in diesel engines, just add maybe half a teaspoon of oil per liter to it for lubricity (is that a word). When I first fire up a new diesel (genset), I might run it under hard load for 10 maybe 20 hours using kerosene (without oil added) to accelerate wear and seat the rings...some will say thats crazzy, and it is a little harder on the injector (without the added oil)...but it works for me..

I think that endtimes site is so out of date........I wouldnt trust info from it.

PrepHer..First if you have had failures of motor drive boards, thats not a problem with a pellet stove, rather with the manufacturer buying a cheap junnky motor drive board out of China..I suspect 99% of these motors to just be dc permanent magnet gear heads Solid 100 year old motor designs, and they had reliable ways to drive and vary the speed of them 100 years ago..now that we dont build anything in NA anymore people have low expectations.
You can drive that motor at least 3 ways, Pulse width modulation, duty cycle control, scr motor drives(Voltage control) or even just drop voltage resistivly..I quess thats 4 ways im just making this up as I go along....anyway I wish I knew someone close buy so I could look at one instead of speculating..Do you have your old board still? if so drop it by a place that fixes tv's or such and look for the oldest guy in the shop and ask him to look at your board and what he thinks....50 bucks says you will hear him mumble no damper diode, a .50 cent part. that would protect your board from back emf when the dc motor is turned off, or maybe mumble "no heat sink" when looking at the control element....

I've been giving serious consideration to building one of these. Its a bit to much of a serious commitment to add one in our home but the idea came up to build one into the next (Third) greenhouse. (Some people recommend building one in your yard to start. Its a warm place to park your but on)
http://www.richsoil.com/rocket-stove-mass-heater.jsp

I looked into rocket mass heaters, funded their kickstarter for the video, bought the plans.
In the end though it's very specialized to obtain the absolute cleanest burn, best thermal efficiency and more of a "gee whiz look what I got" thing than practical. It's finicky to get downdraft stoves to burn perfectly but if you're desperately short of wood to burn... maybe.
If you have plenty of fuel available (and in Canada who doesn't?) I would take a small wood burner and set up some kind of thermosiphon system to heat a large water storage reservoir. One or two (or more) 55 gal water drums of warmed water (or salt brine, or antifreeze mix, oil?) will do just as well for the "mass" as tons of immovable rocks.
Or a thicker skinned tank like a water heater as the top (or one wall ) of a small wood burner. There's a few ways to go about this depending if you have a wood stove already and how comfortable you are with welding stuff up yourself.
Greenhouses are tough to heat with all the glass, so use your best windows here. Wet earth sucks heat out too. Plastic sheet on the ground surrounding the greenhouse makes a dry zone under the greenhouse itself and is it's own insulator from the frozen ground.