Originally published November 28 2005
Corn-burning stoves growing in popularity
by Mike Adams, the Health Ranger, NaturalNews Editor
The rising cost of natural and propane gas has promoted the use of corn and wood pellet burning stoves, especially among rural populations.
While many homeowners feel anxious about what their heating bills will be this winter, Earl Beasley of Taylor Ridge, Ill., feels at ease.
Four years ago, he bought a stove that burns corn --- not the cobs, but the kernels themselves --- to heat his two-story, 3,000-square-foot house.
Because he is willing to do his own log-splitting and cutting, his fuel is free: Tree service companies are happy to drop off their refuse without disposal costs.
Fisher pays for a small amount for electricity (about $3 a month) to power his furnace blower, but his natural gas bill is only about $18 per month for his cooking stove, water heater and clothes dryer.
Beasley and Fisher are two among a growing number of people who are eliminating or reducing their dependence on natural or propane gas --- and saving money --- by using alternative energy sources, such as corn, wood or wood pellets, in stoves or furnaces/boilers.
Keith Beyhl, owner of Fireplaces Plus in Bettendorf, says he already has sold five or six times the number of corn stoves he moved all of last year, and Winston Rock of Rock Plumbing, Heating & Electrical in Low Moor, Iowa, sold out his inventory last week.
"They're concerned," Mary Auliff, of LeClaire, Iowa, says of people calling for firewood.
Rock says interest in alternative fuels spikes every time conventional fuel takes a price leap.
Many homeowners "will need to pay considerably more for corn than the price that the elevator pays to farmers for the corn," says Dennis Buffington, a University of Pennsylvania professor in agricultural and biological engineering, who devised the following equivalency table.
MidAmerica's October 2005 charge per therm is $1.21, so you would spend $12.10 ($1.21 x 10) to get the heat energy of three bushels of corn.
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