Is it normal for a pellet stove to use 40 lbs of pellets in two days?

I used to live in Ohio and I used a pellet stove to heat a 1700 sq. ft. house with a 900 sq. ft. basement.

As I recall, even putting the stove on its lowest setting I would go through a 40 lb. bag of pellets in about 16 hours. We used about 3 tons of pellets (150 bags) for the entire winter.

I used to fight with my ex-wife about the setting on the stove. I wanted the house warm, she wanted it hot like a tropical rain forest, and the lowest setting made the whole house, excluding the basement, warm enough to wear jeans and t-shirts.

She would put it up to a 2 or 3 (out of 9) some nights and the house felt like an oven by morning, so I would shut it down till evening if I could get away with it.

We have a 1600sf house. Our stove is a very efficiant Harmon.When the outside temp is in the 30's or less we burn a bag a day.The room that the stove is in is about 70 with the farthest bedroom getting down to 60. This is comfortable for us. We do have oil backup if needed.Cleaning the stove once a week will improve its efficientcy .

We expect to burn 3.5 pallets per season here in New England. One pallet is 50 ,40 lb bags.At a cost of $239 perpallet of New England Hardwood pellets ( Hardwood burns at a higher BTU then softwood).We can go through a season for about $900. A full tank of oil is about $1200 and they come more than once per season for sure.Our feed rate is just under 4 on our stove.

Bottom line pellet stoves are great.And your friends seem to be burning what they should : )

That sounds like a lot of pellets to me, but I don't have experience with those stoves. I'd look at the ash and see if there's unburnt pellets in the mix. If so then the stove isn't burning all the pellets, it's wasting some.

But like I said, I don't have experience with such stoves.

Hope this helps.

'av'a g'day mate.

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How large a space is being heated, and how cold were those two days?

How well insulated ids the space concerned?

40# of pellets is roughly equivalent to about 6 gallons of heating oil.

How much did you burn in those two days?

If running full time/high heat that could be expected, ask them to turn down the heat a few degrees or renege on your donation.

yes if you put it on low