Corn Stove ash

[Cliff Timmons]

My wife and I just bought a corn stove for heating our home back in November. We are tickled to death with the results. First, no more hauling and splitting wood and cleaning out the woodstove everyday. Second, it's more enviromentally friendly. Third, it's cheaper than wood, coal, electric, or gas. Our home is all electric and during the cold winter months we have gone over $250. to $300 a month with our electric bill. This month with the cold snap and all we owed $80.00. Wooooo Hoooo!

Now my question.
When you dump the "clinker" or burned corn ash, where do you put it. I've heard it's good for gardens but I'm afraid that too much of a good thing,... well, you know. I've been puting the little bricks of ash along the fence line but I have dumped a little in our flower garden.

How much is enough or too much? Does anyone have any good ideas for the ash? I have a pile of old chicken manure, would it be good to mix with my coop trash?

My luck is that I'm tossing away a good thing. :confused:

[Ohiogal]

I don't know about the clinker, Cliff. I'll ask where I board my horse at - that farmer has a corn stove and he has to dispose of it too.

I am curious, what type of stove did you buy and how expensive was it to install? I'm considering putting a stove in my house to cut NG expenses. This year the heating bills have been $$$ and I have a fuel efficient insulated house. Plus, the TAXES!!!!!!

I'm also looking at other properties and will want to install something like a corn stove when I get it. I'm looking to "country size" and get out of the city.

[Cliff Timmons]

We bought a St. Croix Greenfield model. It ran us about $2, 600. not including the stainless steal pipes we had to run down our flew. That ran another $300. If we would have run it out the side of the house, we could have saved on that. Your looking at about 3 grand.

http://www.eventempinc.com/stcroix/stoves/greenfield/greenfield.html

We set it up ourselves. Most dealers will set it up for free but we live in the boonies so I have to wrestle it out of my truck and put it inside myself. Other than the weight of the stove, it was a simple process. We go to the feed store and buy 50 lb bags of whole corn and mix it with 1 part wood pellets to 2 parts corn. You don't have to do that but we like the way it burns mixing the two. We get corn in the bags for about $6 to $7 per 100 lb.

I'm wanting to get a grain bin trailer so I can just pull up to a grain silo and have them dump it in and drive home and save about 1/2 to 1/3 the price of bagged corn. We would be cutting out the middleman that way. :)

[Ohiogal]

Cliff;
The farmer where I board my horse just throws his in the garden. Apparently its fairly inert stuff - not a lot of acid or alkaline properties.

[Cliff Timmons]

Cool. Thanks. I'll try it on my radish area. That way if it goes terribly wrong, I can grow more real quick. :)

[donsgal]

We bought a St. Croix Greenfield model. It ran us about $2, 600. not including the stainless steal pipes we had to run down our flew. That ran another $300. If we would have run it out the side of the house, we could have saved on that. Your looking at about 3 grand.

http://www.eventempinc.com/stcroix/stoves/greenfield/greenfield.html

We set it up ourselves. Most dealers will set it up for free but we live in the boonies so I have to wrestle it out of my truck and put it inside myself. Other than the weight of the stove, it was a simple process. We go to the feed store and buy 50 lb bags of whole corn and mix it with 1 part wood pellets to 2 parts corn. You don't have to do that but we like the way it burns mixing the two. We get corn in the bags for about $6 to $7 per 100 lb.

I'm wanting to get a grain bin trailer so I can just pull up to a grain silo and have them dump it in and drive home and save about 1/2 to 1/3 the price of bagged corn. We would be cutting out the middleman that way. :)


We were thinking about one too, but a friend of ours, who has a pellet stove said that they do not operate if the power is off. Apparently, (correct me if I am wrong here), in order to burn the pellets/corn you have to have a blower on them, sort of like a bellows, to make the fire hot enough to burn them. If you don't have electricity, no blower. No blower, no fire. Is that right? I would hate to have to depend on the electricity. Not after the ice storm of 2006 when the power was out for four days....

donsgal

[Cliff Timmons]

You're right.

You need power to run the blower and the auger.
We were given a battery back-up by our son-in-law who is into that stuff. When the power goes off we keep on cookin' corn.

The good side to the electricy aspect is that each St Croix stove has sensors. If it gets too hot it slows down or shuts off. If it gets too cold it speeds up or shuts down. If it isn't getting rid of the smoke correctly, it shuts down. Many many saftey features.

Our wood stove was nice but, they can be dangerous too. This corn stove is warm to the touch but not hot. You only need a 3 inch clearance from the wall to give you an idea of how cool they are.

It's a give and take thing I guess. :)

[deb65802]

I have found a stove I think we are going to buy this summer. It is a Comfort Glow cast iron stove. It is 99.9 per cent effiecent. Does not need electricty to start it o keep it going. uses natural gas and is ventless. It heats a 1000 sq ft with 16,000 to 30,000 btus. It has a dual system pilot to prevent oxygen depletion.

Has anyone heard of this brand?? It looks really interesting.

deb

[rjzatyko@yahoo.com]

Hi, Mr. timmons why don't you go to rodale.com and check their site about the ash's. You will have to do some clicking around(their site).To find out if too much corn ash's will hurt your garden or not hurt it.Also ask for their free newsletter.I have read that too much of wood ash's do harm,but never heard about the corn ash's. richard from ky.

[Cliff Timmons]

Hi, Mr. timmons why don't you go to rodale.com and check their site about the ash's. You will have to do some clicking around(their site).To find out if too much corn ash's will hurt your garden or not hurt it.Also ask for their free newsletter.I have read that too much of wood ash's do harm,but never heard about the corn ash's. richard from ky.
Thanks buddy, I will.

[Ohiogal]

Cliff;
When you bought your stove, did you compete other models? I'm getting close to making a decision. I can possibly run this outside of the house - position it central to the living room on an outside wall.
I'm interested to know how you went about choosing that model.
Ohiogal

[Cliff Timmons]

Cliff;
When you bought your stove, did you compete other models? I'm getting close to making a decision. I can possibly run this outside of the house - position it central to the living room on an outside wall.
I'm interested to know how you went about choosing that model.
Ohiogal
We picked the St Croix because they seemed to be the best quality. That model because we liked how it looked.<grin>

Once we got a back-up battery system we were set and love it. We've lost power and it keeps on chugging along.

Our next project is figuring out how to haul corn in a trailer or stow it in bulk so we can save about 1/3 to 1/2 on price by buying it directly from the farmer.

Ain't I cheap?

[Ohiogal]

The word is "thrifty". Why pay more for something you can get for less? :D
I'm going to do the same thing. I recently learned that the corn must be 14% moisture or less to burn properly. I'm am also trying to figure out how to store 1 ton of whole corn and keep it dry. ;)
I have an F250 which can handle 1/2 a ton in the bed, the trouble is, once I get it home, where do I store it?
Did you come up with a solution on that yet?

[Cliff Timmons]

You can keep it in a garage or barn of you get the 50lb bags.
I'm thinking of getting some bog trash cans from Lowe's or Walmart and keeping the lid on and wheelbarrowing them in one at a time as we need it.

Keeping corn in the house, I think, is asking for mouse problems.

[bluelacedredhead]

Cliff, how much corn does it burn say in a 24 hour period? a Bushel maybe? or less than that?

[Cliff Timmons]

It has 5 settings if I remember right, "It's July yanno", on high or setting 5 it would burn a 50 lb bag a 24 hour period. On setting 2 it would burn a 50 lb bag every 48 hours or so.

[bluelacedredhead]

Cliff, Okay, I was thinking it might burn less than that in a 24hour period.
With that in mind, I was trying to come up with a better solution for you than having to bring a wheelbarrow full in the house every day..
Sorry but I must go back to the Drawing Board...
But I will run this by my co-workers at the hardware store..Also, the feedstore sells pellets for stoves. Perhaps someone there has found their own solution to storage of wood pellets that will help you with your own situation??
I will report back as soon as I have an answer.

[Ohiogal]

I came to the same conclusion. I don't have room for 50 lb bags of corn or trundling it to the house everyday. I do have room for stacked wood. So I guess I'm going with a soapstone or cast iron/steel stove to heat the house this winter.
The new property has plenty of wood on it - I just have to learn to use a chainsaw. :eek:

[Cliff Timmons]

My wife likes to mix pellets with the corn 50/50. It works real well.

As far as wood goes, it's much more messy then corn. Yes you have to haul corn, but you do wood too. You don't have to cut corn, stack corn. You can't load a stove and leave for a couple days with a wood stove. You can't empty and clean a wood stove with a dustpan.

But, we live in a rual area where corn is easy to get so I can see where you might want to go wood.