Frugal living at our home?

Absolutely!

We live frugally at our house, or at least, we try to. I love finding a good deal, shopping the sales rack, saving money, and having a coupon when I go out to eat. It is very, very seldom that I pay full price for anything.

We have a sun-room addition on our home that is our “family room” and pretty much the hub of our house. We added a Magnum Baby Countryside stove to the corner a few years and just love it. It helps to extremely reduce our heating bill.

How a Corn Stove Figures in to Our Frugal Mix

We purchase corn in the fall from a local farmer that is dried to the optimum level for our stove. He pulls the gravity box into our driveway late each fall, and we use a 5 gallon bucket, wheelbarrow and lots of arm power to put the corn into a hand made wooden box in our garage. This year we briefly used wood pellets in our stove, until our corn arrived. That is the beauty of a flex-fuel stove!

Last year, we spent about $400.00 to purchase enough corn to last us all winter. It even got us through October and November this past year (2009).

Minimum Maintenance

We pretty much run our corn stove day and night, shutting it down every other day to clean it out briefly. Maybe once a week we shut it down for a more thorough clean.

Heat Distribution Through-Out Our Home

We have ceiling fans in the sun-room, adjoining kitchen, and then above our stairway which rotates the warm air and keeps the main level of our home warm. On a really windy, cold day, our furnace might kick-in a tiny bit, otherwise, our corn stove keeps us toasty warm.

Guest Post: The author of this post is Cindy Haugland, a frugal Minnesota Mom who is known by her friends as a tightwad. She started her own business, aptly called TidyTightwads, to help other people save money and live with less clutter and stress. She recommends a Magnum corn stove to those who want to save money on heating costs.

Many people are excited about the prospect of saving money and burning corn for heat, but have questions about how alternative heat and fuel accessibility works for people in larger cities. After all, they don’t necessarily have corn fields in their backyards like many mid-westerners.

So how do you access and/or buy corn if you live in an urban area and want to use a corn stove?

Corn and other Bio-Mass/Agri-Fuels have been distributed world wide for many years. The industry today is providing several alternatives for getting the fuel of choice right to your home or local distribution centers. Bulk delivery, bagged fuel, and personalized service are part of the package when purchasing a corn stove these days.

American Energy Systems was instrumental in putting a corn silo in downtown Tacoma Park, Maryland in full view of the White House to show that fuel can be supplied anywhere people want to conserve energy.

There was a great blog post written a while back in support of corn stoves, alternative energy, the corn silo project in Tacoma Park, and American Energy Systems by Mike Tidwell. You can read his article here, called “Maryland’s First 90% Renewable-Energy Home; The story of how one Takoma Park family is fighting global warming on a budget, and how you can do it too”

Here’s a quick video tutorial in helping you decide if heating with renewable energy is right for you and your home:

You’ve heard the stories from centenarians of living through the depression and other tough economies. Many of those stories revolve around saving money on food and getting by on cheap fuel to heat their homes. So many people tell stories about chopping wood and throwing corn cobs in their stoves to keep warm. With corn fields plentiful and corn cobs considered useless, why don’t flex fuel stoves burn corn cobs?

If you spend a little time on the Internet looking for information about this subject and search for articles about  burning corn, you’ll no doubt find a common question about burning corn cobs. Why is it recommended you burn shelled corn (or other approved fuels) in your flex fuel stove, and why wouldn’t you burn corn cobs?

Here’s the Answer

Corn/flex-fuel appliances today are designed to burn shelled corn instead of corn cobs. Farmers are harvesting their corn now with combines, shelling the corn right away, and chopping up the cobs to be returned to the earth. This is factored into the design. I know this, because I designed and built the first certified corn burning appliance in the industry.

Corn cobs carry a high level of starch in them which does not convert easily over to BTU’s. The shelled corn carries a level of starch and sugar which converts easier into usable heat units. The technology for using corn cobs is so much different from using shelled corn, that appliances can not easily adapt between the two.

Video Help on Choosing Your Corn and Other Flex Fuels

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American Energy Systems has a rich history of providing superior corn stoves and flex-fuel heating appliances; including fireplaces and furnaces. We are pleased to offer a blog community to people passionate about using alternative energy to heat their homes and offices.

If you want to shop online and skip directly to our extensive Magnum and Country Flame product lines, please jump over to our Main Website at Magnum Heat. To go directly to our Magnum E-com Store click here.

For specific questions or assistance with one of our appliances, you can participate in our online Magnum Forum -which is getting rave reviews for quick, easy access to all your technical needs. 

 Cme2heatitup on Ebay, one of American Energy System’s Resellers, sells overstock, scratch and dent, and  special promotion units for wholesale prices. These are one of a kind items and deals, as Cme2heatitup is the ONLY authorized AES online Reseller that can sell DEMO units for full factory warranty.

If a show room is more your style, and you’d love to see a corn or pellet stove in action, you can find a dealer near you! Just use our Magnum and Country Flame locator!

For a fun, new community of people passionate about heating their homes with alternative energy, you can join our Fan Page on Facebook at Facebook.magnumheat.com Be sure to leave us a comment so we can say “hi”!

We are active on Twitter now too, so follow us at Twitter.com/alternativeheat Be sure to @ reply so we can follow you back! We love the discussions on Twitter going on about green living, saving money, burning corn, and alternative energy for heat. Weigh in!

We are working hard to offer countless videos featuring all our our Magnum and Country Flame products. Dozens of easy to understand and helpful demonstrational videos are posted on Magnum Heat channel of YouTube. From trouble shooting and venting, to choosing your corn or wood pellets to buy, we’re here to help.