Home heating with sawdust, the feel-good fuel

I'm back at my local woodstove store, Hearth and Leisure, waiting behind a throng of customers to talk to enigmatic owner Al Thompson. I'm not here because I'm unhappy with my new woodstove. On the extreme contrary, I'm enjoying an intense emotional relationship with it. I tend it with the furrowed concentration of a new mother. I split and stack wood to sustain it through the cold months ahead. I check on it during the night to make sure it has plenty to eat, er, burn. I even got the bumper sticker - I LOVE MY WOODSTOVE.

But now that I've got the house cozy, I'm looking for ways to heat my garage/workshop. I plan to pick Al's brain about a home-heating device that's all the rage in Europe, B.C, Quebec and the Maritimes: The pellet stove.

Pellet stoves first appeared in the North American market about a decade ago. More than 400,000 North American homes have switched to the compelling advantages of pellet heat.

Available as freestanding stoves or fireplace inserts, pellet heaters are the totally automatic way to enjoy a wood fire. They look like traditional wood-burning devices, but they're way more convenient. They burn pellets comprised of waste sawdust from lumber mills and furniture manufacturing. The sawdust is compressed into tidy little pellets and packed into 40-lb. bags, which cost about $5.00 per bag, tax included.

"The longevity of the burn is great," says Al Thompson, nodding at a pellet heater on display at the back of his store. "It just cycles through pellets without you having to feed it constantly. You basically fire up your pellet heater at the end of September and run it continuously through to May."

Operating a pellet heater is easy. You load a bag of pellets into the back of the unit, press the "ON" button and walk away. That's it. No splitting, stacking, loading or sorting. One hopperful of pellets can last up to 36 hours, depending on the feed rate you select.

"The pellet stove owner's ability to control heat is fantastic," continues Al. "The feed control can be set high or low to compensate for BTU loss in the house. Most people are gone from their house for at least 10 hours a day, so you can adjust the feed rate lower while you're out, and then turn the rate up as soon as you get home."

I'm thinking that pellet heaters would work especially well for workshops where tools rust if the temperature roller-coasters up and down. A constant minimum temperature of 15 degrees Celsius seems to ward off rust. With a pellet heater set on low, I can keep the workshop warm enough to prevent rust throughout the winter, and then fire it up to high when I'm out there working.

Al opens the hopper of the pellet stove and we peer at the innards. "It's important to vacuum out the auger occasionally," says Al. "And brush off the heat exchanger for optimum heat transfer. Fuel is easy. The urban application for these units is valid. Any business in the city can set up a pellet supply."

Pellet Heat Advantages:

• You enjoy the soothing warmth of a wood fire with a minimum of physical effort
• Pellet heat is a cheap, convenient, allergy-free heat source
• Pellets take up one third the space of cord wood, so they're easy to store and handle
• Pellet fuel is stable, not subject to price variations caused by geopolitical tensions
• Pellets are totally organic, containing no additives, wax or binders
• Pellets are a renewable resource, reducing dependence on finite supplies of oil, gas and coal
• Pellet heaters produce virtually no particulate emissions or greenhouse gases; pellet fuel is the cleanest burn of any solid fuel
• Pellet fuel is made entirely from wood waste; nothing is taken from the environment to produce pellets
• Ash accumulation is minimal because of the efficient burn rate
• No creosote build-up, so no chimney sweeping
• Pellet heaters typically need to be filled only once a day
• Pellet appliances can be installed virtually anywhere in your home by a certified installer

A pellet heater is more like an electronic appliance than a woodstove. The feed mechanism and fans should be serviced once a year to keep the moving parts in good order. Because pellet heaters use a small amount of electricity to power the moving parts, a power outage interrupts your heat supply. This can be remedied with a battery backup system (an inverter, trickle charger and RV battery), which you can put together for roughly $250.

After researching the range of available pellet heaters, I asked Al to order me Enviro's "Windsor", a Canadian-made beauty with a Babe Red enamel finish.

I built a limestone base for the Windsor so it sits high enough to be seen from any part of the workshop. Al Thompson's installer, Kevin McKibbon of Certified Woodstoves, installed the unit in under two hours. He did a great job. He even vacuumed when he was done.

Now, my workshop is toasty. The pellet stove hums in the corner. My treasured tools are no longer in danger of rusting. A girl just can't get any happier than this.

Additional information:

• ecology.com - all about alternative energy sources
• Hearth and Leisure - Al Thompson - (519)925-5551
• Pellet Fuels Institute - articles and information about heating with pellets