Save money, planet: Pop for corn stove

STETSON – If Maine’s entrepreneurs can make vodka from potatoes and season dog biscuits with blueberries, why not turn corn into fuel?

A Stetson businessman is banking that the soaring costs of traditional fuels will continue a surge of interest in alternative fuels and stoves, including the wide varieties of corn stoves he is selling. Frank Provencal, by night a corrections officer at Mountain View Correctional Center, can’t keep up with the orders for corn stoves at his fledgling business, Field to Flue.

Shell corn, the very same kernels used as cow feed, can burn cheaply with no air pollution or mess and is completely renewable. How would you like to heat your home efficiently for less than $80 a month?

That’s what Provencal has been doing for the past three years. He became so convinced that corn stoves were the way to heat that he now sells the stoves, and he isn’t the only one. All three of the corn stove manufacturers that Provencal deals with have been swamped with orders, so much so that an order placed today may take from now until December or March to fill.

There are about 25 companies producing corn stoves and sales are estimated at least 40 percent higher this year than last, said Provencal, with more than 100,000 corn stoves sold nationwide.

Sitting in his Stetson showroom recently, Provencal has only one model left on site – the one he heats his business with. Warm air blows out the front of the stove as a small fire burns in the firebox. Every few minutes, a barely noticeable “clink, clink, clink” signals that the hopper is dropping kernels into the fire.

“I began selling the stoves in August and the first weekend after I advertised, I had 30 calls,” Provencal said. “They all told me the same thing: ‘I’m tired of the high prices of oil.'”

Corn stoves have been used in the South and Southwest since 1969, when the stove was invented in North Carolina. The most famous demonstration of the stove was in the Oval Office, when a unit was installed during the administration of President Jimmy Carter. Still, there was minimal interest until this summer, when oil prices skyrocketed, followed quickly by propane prices.

Corn has 500,000 Btu per bushel while propane has 100,000 Btu per gallon, a 5-1 ratio, Provencal said. If corn is $2 a bushel, one would have to purchase propane at 40 cents a gallon to be comparable.

“Corn is even a better fuel than wood pellets for heating a home,” James Dulley of Cleveland, Ohio, a nationally syndicated environmental columnist said last week. “With the high efficiency – up to 82 percent – of corn stoves, they are the cheapest source of heat for a home.”

Dulley has been burning corn fuel in his own home for 15 years, dumping a 40-pound bag of kernels into the stove’s hopper every other day. He only has to empty the ash pan twice a month.

“Using renewable corn is Earth-friendly and good for our country,” Dulley said. “All corn is homegrown, so the money stays here and creates local jobs. It also burns very cleanly, causing little air pollution.”

The stove’s operation is simple: a draft blower draws combustion air through and over the kernels and forces it outdoors. This creates a slight vacuum inside the stove so no smoke gets indoors. The kernels burn so cleanly, no smoke is even visible coming from the pipe outdoors. Burning corn creates a popcorn-like, sweet scent outdoors, although it won’t pop in the stove – that’s another variety of corn.

Provencal said that wood pellets or other alternatives, such as wheat, rye, even cherry pits, can be burned in a corn stove, but that only wood pellets can burn in a wood pellet stove. Since corn stoves are so efficient, these stoves do not need a chimney nor does creosote build up in the piping. They are vented outdoors by a 4-inch pipe through an outside wall, so one can be located in any room.

Provencal is quick to say that he doesn’t recommend that anyone remove their conventional furnaces in favor of corn stoves. The blowers require electricity, and a battery backup only lasts about eight hours, so he suggests a backup furnace makes sense.

He also says that homeowners should keep abreast of changing prices. If wood pellets drop in price, it may be cheaper to burn them rather than corn.

Carl Smith of Corinna is one local farmer who grows kernel or shell corn and is benefiting from the increased interest in corn fuel.

“I put in about 500 acres,” Smith said this week, “but only a small percentage of that is for stoves. I sure hope it catches on. Anything that uses production from local farms is a good thing.”

Smith said any variety of feed corn is suitable for burning. “In the future, we may find that certain varieties are better than others, but right now they all work well.”

Once ready to harvest, Smith uses a combine to retrieve only the edible, or burnable, kernels. “We then dry them down to 15 percent moisture.” A small amount of the dried kernels are bagged for stove fuel, while the remainder of Smith’s corn is fed to cows.

“There certainly has been a lot more interest in corn fuel recently,” Smith said. “It is a renewable resource and grows fairly well in Maine.”