Having the pellet stove going for several days means that you can comfortably have it keeping you and your house warm without much hassle, never having to start up and get hot. However, at the start of the winter season, or after proper cleaning, the stove will be cold. Many people dread cleaning their stove for the first time, assuming that it will take several hours for the stove to heat up.
Your pellet stove will take around 5 to 10 minutes to become too hot to touch and will make a difference in the temperature in the room within 20 minutes. The pellet stove burns extremely hot and the whole unit heats up, allowing all the heat from the fire to escape into your home instead of some heat being lost being transferred.
There are many ways to make your pellet stove burn hotter, and even to make it much hotter much faster. Having a pellet stove that is running at optimal efficiency means that you can enjoy having a warmer home for a much longer time, most people enjoy having a pellet stove that has been slightly upgraded.
How can you make the stove heat up faster?
Upgrading your pellet stove is nothing as complicated as upgrading other systems, with most people choosing to upgrade their pellet stoves on their own. This is owing to the ease with which you can do the process and the simplicity at which a pellet stove works. Doing most upgrades, or just using better materials will allow you to enjoy a much warmer stove easily and comfortably.
Just be sure that the upgrades you are choosing to do to your pellet stove will work on it, with most pellet stove enjoying a few basic upgrades. A common mistakes first-time upgraders do is using the wrong fan, while the fan used is similar to a computer fan, there are some things that you need to remember about the fans used as a default in pellet stoves.
- Softwood pellets: Softwood pellets are the best pellets on the market and if you have been shirking and using the cheapest pellets around, the first thing you should do is switch. Softwood pellets can burn a lot hotter than most other pellets while barely emitting any smoke, allowing you to enjoy several benefits, like having a fire that starts up and works much faster.
- Better ventilation: The instructions when installing your pellet stove has clear instructions, however, many people choose to ignore some key parts and place their stove too close to other things. However, if you want to increase the efficiency and power of your pellet stove you should simply ensure that it has enough space to ventilate properly, as well as moving away from any furniture that may be too close to the stove.
- Change temperature: You may be tempted to set the temperature and leave it for the stove to do its thing. However, if you want to increase the speed at which the stove gets hot, you can set its thermostat to be hotter than you need. This lets the stove burn hotter and therefore quickly heat the room and the stove itself to reach peak temperatures.
- Better fan: The first and best modification that you should always consider doing for your pellet stove, especially as it gets older, is installing a better fan. You can find fans that push through double the amount of air as the fan you have now, which will allow the fire in the pellet stove to burn easier and hotter when needed. This is a common adjustment that people make to their pellet stoves.
What can you do to increase the spread of the pellet stove heat?
Your pellet stove gets hot, the entire body works as a way of heating your pellet stove, which means that a lot of the heat from the pellet stove is lost to the ceiling of your home. There are common things that pellet stove owners start wondering about when they realize their pellet stoves could be a lot more effective.
Three things are recommended to do to increase the effectiveness of your pellet stove, all three of which can be used together to get the absolute maximum efficiency from your pellet stove. A common thing people forget to consider is that heat does not always like to move, so forcing hot air to move around an area is always more effective than simply having something hot in the corner of the room.
- Ceiling fans: A must for any heating system, most people forget that ceiling fans can help in heating any environment when used with something else. As the ceiling fan can either help to pull air from the floor or to push down hot air, it is a great addition to any room with a pellet stove. A ceiling fan will increase the efficiency of your pellet stove almost threefold.
- Floor fans: In addition to ceiling fans, many people have started using floor fans placed next to their pellet stoves. This is aimed at a pellet stove, usually just above the stove where most of the hot air escapes to. Adding a simple floor fan that forces the hot air to circulate greatly increases the total area reached by the hot air and makes it much better for your pellet stove heating.
- Open areas: The more open an area the more effective the pellet stove will be in heating it, with most people realizing pretty fast that their pellet stoves just seem to work better when there are fewer things next to it. Having the pellet stove heating a lot more air all at once means that it can comfortably heat the air and then circulate it, instead of furniture absorbing the heat.
Why is it better to have the stove running 24/7?
As great as a super-efficient pellet stove is, it cannot heat a whole room within seconds or minutes. This is why having your stove running 24/7 is much better for the overall effectiveness of your heating. As the stove is already hot, the air is already warm, and hopefully, the heat has spread to the rest of the house.
A stove running 24/7 may seem odd at first, but it is the only way to use the benefits of a pellet stove to their full. Unlike HVAC or other systems, it is not noticeable when using a pellet stove for so long as the operating costs are next to nothing. If the pellet stove has been lit properly it will mean the only energy draw is from the auger and fan.
If you ever wonder how people get their whole house to heat up with a pellet stove it is by having it running 24/7 and using smaller heating systems in rooms and far-off locations. This combination means that all the air in the house is circulated and constantly being heated up. A good combination for your pellet stove in the home is to have underfloor heating, as this heats the coldest part of your house, the floor.
What can you use to supplement the stove to the rest of the house?
There are three things you need to have in your home to supplement the heat properly, underfloor heating, oil heaters, and fan heaters that all work together. This may seem odd, but pellet stoves work best when there are more than just one heating system in your home, this is, fortunately, true for all heating systems.
By having a system that heats the entirety of the home with the pellet stove it means that less energy needs to be spent on heating cold air from rooms that are away from the stove. Pellet stoves work perfectly for large open areas where you and your family are constantly working. Other sources of heating mean that you don’t need to worry about getting the heat to flow to the home that no one is currently active in.
You must remember to keep doors and windows closed as well, a common mistake made by people is leaving every door in the house open to unused rooms. This means that they have cold air that constantly escapes and while the pellet stove may never be able to heat them, the cold air from those rooms can certainly cool your home down by several degrees.
Conclusion
Pellet stoves are good at heating your open areas and will easily allow you to enjoy the comfort of having everything heated in a few minutes. The trick of having your pellet stove working properly and efficiently is all about having it run 24/7 so that it does not need to heat up from room temperature to a level where it does become hot.
The best pellet stove is a running pellet stove, the only thing that comes close is a pellet stove that has been cleaned and is warming up!