Corn burner pictures and information

Last Updated: 10/28/2011


burning pot solarized flame Solar heater

In July 2006 I purchased a US Stove 6039 Multi-fuel Corn/Pellet Stove to replace a Fireplace and to reduce my pro"pain" usage. My house is a sectional that is 13 years old. The house is 2000 square feet and other than the bedrooms is very open spaces.

Prior to using the corn burner I typically contracted 1500 gallons of propane a year. A portion of the propane is used to heat my shop which is a seperate building but close to 1000 gallons is consumed for heating the main residence. My water heater, clothes dryer and cook range/oven is also propane.

I started running the stove in early october. The gravity wagon was delivered around October 15 with 170 bushels of corn. the 170 bushels was just a guess. I am hoping to not have any leftover but I also would like to not have to run the furnace either.

US Stove sent the modified burn pot and 5 finger agitator along with the version 34 program. The stove generates a little more large ash than I would like but with oyster shell the clinkers have been brought under control.

2007-2008... Corn was delivered on Sept 28, 176 bushels and I ended up having about 6 bushels left over from last years. I did a test burn early in September with about 7 pounds of corn to see if the old stuff was still good enough to burn. It seems to burn okay, it will be a bit challenging to clean as the critters hatched out over the summer and at one point I had a garage full of corn millers of some sort flying around. The top of the tubs of corn have a lot of spiderwebs and caterpillar silks stuck to them, but I am going to try and burn it as i just dont want to throw it away.

This year I have taken a brave step to committing to being full corn heat on the house. I have always contracted a budget amount on the propane for the winter. This year my supplier always does a summer fill, I had them top both tanks up for the house and the shop and do not intend on filling them if I can avoid it. I will probably be sparing on heating the garage and that tank should be able to make it through the winter, if it goes empty then I will just have to have a cold shop, I might have to move a few chemicals in to the house that I cant let freeze but most of the contents doesnt care out there.

The house I plan on setting the thermostat for the furnace on 55 so that it will take a flame out in the stove before it will kick on. Will see if I can make it all winter w/o burning propane for heat. I still have the dryer, water heater and cook stove but surely 400 gallons will get me through to next summer...

October 7, 2008
My house propane tank was down to 23%(500 gallon tank) from 2007's summer fill of 400 gallons. I did a minimum fill of 200 gallons this time. Barring no problems with the corn stove This should again get me through to next summer.

November 2008
Corn is here. 215 bushels, I came up a little short last year and asked Darrell to fill the wagon a little fuller. Its a lot of corn and its dirtier than the last two years. I've been burning it for several weeks and no jams. Apparently the 6039 stove's auger has enough room and is short enough to be able to deal with most of the stalk sizes.

September 2009
A SolarsHeat 1500GS has been added to the house. This is a solar air heat collector with a built in 20 watt pv panel to power the fan. I'll be stocking a little less corn with the hope that on sunny days it will allow me to shut the stove down at least for part of the sunny daylight hours.

November 10, 2009
Corn has been delivered, 182 bushels.

October 13, 2010
Corn straight from my field, approximately 170 bushels. Late last spring I converted the stove to a clinker stove. Purchased a deep clinker burn pot and will be running without the agitator hopefully all winter. It runs so much cleaner as a clinker stove.

October 28, 2011
Corn delivered, 201 bushels, off and running.

2006-2007 Corn usage.   2007-2008 Corn usage.

2008-2009 Corn usage. 2009-2010 Corn usage.  

2010-2011 Corn usage. 2011-2012 Corn usage.  
This link is to a table that is updated daily showing my corn usage and high/low temps for each day. The script that updates this table runs hourly but at this time the hi/low temps are not available until midnight.

cleaning the corn cleaning the stove

Short running flame video(Windows media stream)    Short running flame video(mpg)

Other Corn burning related web sites
I Burn Corn
US Stove
My main personal homepage: personal page

email: Bob Evinger


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