One of the most talked about questions in the alternative energy and renewable heating fields is:

“How much can I expect to save if I switch to an alternative heat source like a corn or pellet stove?”

Everyone’s story will be different but you can expect to save 60% or more on your heating expenses. I look at it two different ways.

1. If I took a couple thousand dollars and invested it in savings I would make maybe 3-5 percent on my money.
2. If I take that same money and invest in a corn stove or furnace I will get a 40-60 percent return on my money every year.

The frosting on the cake is that while saving money my home will be warmer than when my primary unit was heating my home, and I get the added benefit of the ROMANCE that a fire creates. We have story after story about how the corn stove became the focal point of the home bringing families together.

Do you have a story to share about your corn stove? We’d love to hear from you.

photo credit: Casey Serin photo

photo credit: norwichnuts

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.

Click here to view the embedded video.

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, as highlighted in this story of another mom’s journey to saving money with a corn stove.

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

Click here to view the embedded video.

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