Fuel Pellet Adapter for a Wood-burning Fireplace (or Stove)
Introduction: Fuel Pellet Adapter for a Wood-burning Fireplace (or Stove)
Welcome to another kick-ass Instructable from Disc Dog!
I have a wood-burning fireplace/stove in our house. By and large it supplies most of the heat for the house during during the evening in the colder months; it's a small house (about 850 sqft). When I bought the stove (about 4 years back) Pellet Stoves were coming out in full force, but [having an abundance of free wood lying about] I didn't savor the idea of having to buy a $5 bag of wood pellets every day just to have a fireplace. (MOst pellet stoves burn about 3/4 to a bag a day) True, they are efficient and, depending on where you live, cheaper than running most heating systems but still, it's hard to compete with 'free'.
Inevitably there would come a long-enough winter to exhaust my chopped, dried wood supply but I figured that we spend enough time outdoors during the day that I wouldn't see that long, indoor period for a number of years.
Then came Covid...and the quarantine that kept us indoors aaallll daaaaay looooong, months on end. This year I ran out of wood before we ran out of cold, wet days. Time to think outside the box...
(The other issue I have with pellet stoves is that they need electricity to run! A wood burning stove that needs electricity to work doesn't do you a lot of good during a power outage, especially when you need heat the most!)
I have a friend who welded up a cage [from expanded metal] to fit in his fireplace. (He has an open fireplace) He would just dump a 40 lb. bag of wood pellets on evenings when he wanted a fire, light it off and enjoy a nice fire. It was expensive [but as he put it] he "didn't have the hassle of cutting, storing, burning and dealing with the mess of burning cut wood in his fireplace". I did a little research and found that you can buy these wood baskets on line for anywhere from $20-$60, and that some of them are modified to deal with just wood pellets. I decided I could build a better, more efficient adapter that would only burn about 10 lbs. 842
of pellets every 4 hours and STILL put put out a good, steady amount of flame (and heat) to warm the house up very nicely.
Step 1: What You Need and What It Costs; <$8 and <2 Hours
You'll need a section of 'machine netting' (rabbit-hutch screen) big enough to fold up and fit inside your fireplace/stove. Your screen section should be made of steel, as stout as you can get, and should have very small holes (most rabbit-hutch screen has 1/4" holes, and that works fine). If you can find the smaller, 3/16" or 1/8" netting so much the better.
Measure your fireplace/stove floor. Get a piece of netting that is 1-1/2 times longer and wider than the floor of the fireplace. My wood-burner is very small, and only measures about 30 cm x 20 cm [on the inside], so I bought a piece of 60 cm wide netting. I needed about 90 cm for the box so I had the store cut me a piece about 1 meter (100 cm) long.
(I originally use a piece of steel sheet-rock corner bead but it didn't last long because I let the fire get too hot. Read more about that on the last step) Use heavy gage steel construction angle or shelving angle [as shown] to make the base of the pellet box. (Do not use plastic or aluminum). You will need to use a right-angle grinder with a metal cutting wheel to cut up your angle for the base
You'll also need some thin, pliable steel wire [typically used in construction work for temporarily tying up or securing things together].
That's it; less than $8 worth of supplies.
You'll need a measure, a felt-tip pen (for marking the netting wit) and a couple of pliers to weave, twist, bend and/or cut the wire with. Make sure you have a good pair of diagonal cutters (pictured above) to cut the netting with.
It took me a bit less than an hour to put the first version together and then another 30 minutes to modify it. All-in-all, It should take you less that 2 hours to put one together. It took me another hour to modify it with the better base. 56