Thought I would post a few pics of my corn furnace installation...This is the main furnace itself.
You can tie it into existing ductwork, but I decided to run independent ductwork. It isn't done yet, so it just dumps heated air into the basement, which keeps the living room warm, and the main level floors warm...
it has a 14 bushel hopper that sits bedside it, and you can see the small auger that moves the corn into the bottom of the furnace. It feeds from the bottom, incinerates the corn, and the ash spills over the top of the burn pot, dropping into the ash bin in the bottom...
right above the hopper I installed a 4" transfer auger through the wall. Prior to this we had to load the hopper by hand, either with 5 gallon buckets, or using half a small trash can with two people. Either way it was a lot of work. When the furnace is running on high, it uses a hopper about every 3 days. It can really chew through the corn (at $4 a bushel) but it puts out a ton of heat. Very little ash, no soot, no stink. Once in a while you smell a sweet smell, thats about it...
the transfer auger is run into a rubbermaid box, with a lid. When I want to load corn, I simply take the lid off, fold down the hopper on the gravity wagon, and slide the side door up a bit. This fills the Rubbermaid with corn, it augers up into the house and drops into the hopper...
There is a bit of spillage, I haven't got everything adjusted quite right yet. In the spring, I can simply remove the transfer auger from the house, block off the small hole, and store the gravity wagon, auger and Rubbermaid in the lower shed. The gravity wagon holds 200 bushel, which should be enough for a winter. That's $800 for heating for one season, compared to 1000 gallons of propane at $1.98 a gallon...less than half the cost. And I have 7 acres to grow corn....
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