8 / Michigan Farmer November 2006
■
NewsWatch
Golden heat
Key Points
■ Corn furnace heats farm office, shop and
home.
■ Corn furnace burns at 1,500 degrees F
with a blue flame — hotter than wood.
■ Ash from the burnt corn is cleaned out
daily.
By JENNIFER VINCENT
W
hen most of us were picking
our jaws up off the ground
after opening the monthly
gas bill last winter, Pat and Becky
Feldpausch were enjoying a balmy 72
degrees inside their home in Fowler
— and smiling about it.
The forced-air heating system in their
2,900-square-foot house, their hot water
system, and the radiant floor heat in
their 1,344-square-foot office and 4,100square-foot farm shop are all supplied
by a corn furnace the family installed in
January 2005.
“We put the corn furnace in when we
had 86-cent-per-gallon furnace oil and 79cent-per-gallon propane and $3-bushel
corn,” Pat says. “And we had about a
30% savings in heat, then. Now, with fuel
being much higher, our savings are even
better. I haven’t run all the numbers yet,
but it’s a substantial savings.”
The Feldpausches farm about 1,400
acres of corn, soybeans and wheat, and
use their own corn for fuel.
Choose size wisely
When they bought the 500,000-Btu corn
furnace, it was the largest in the state.
“It’s been a very good investment for
us, and I would certainly do it again, but
I would caution others to really examine
what corn-burner size they need. Even
though we did a lot of research, ours
is really too big for what we need, and
could probably heat an area three times
the size of what we have now,” Pat explains.
And, while most of us have donned
an extra sweater and turned the
thermostat down a few degrees, the
Feldpausches have so much heat that,
to keep the furnace from getting too hot
and shutting down as a safety precaution, they have resorted to dumping the
extra heat into the farm shed.
“It burns incredibly hot — 1,500 de-
He said it
“CORN STOVES have
a future because there’s
finally enough angry
people out there that
want to do something
different than rely on
foreign countries for fuel.
There’s a lot of retired
people and young people that just can’t
pay their energy bills.”
Frank Robinson, owner
The Corn Crib LLC, Farwell
PAT FELDPAUSCH, with wife Becky and son Joe, says their corn furnace was a good investment, saving them more than 30%
on their heating bills.
grees with a blue flame,” Pat says. “It
certainly gets the job done.”
The Year-A-Round corn furnace they
bought for $8,340 did not include installation, the underground piping or the
heat converter that turns the hot water
from the furnace into warm air.
Maintenance required
The Feldpausches burn an average of
8.5 bushels of corn a day. For every 12
bushels of corn it burns, it produces
1 bushel of ash. “It does require maintenance, but it’s really not a big deal.
It takes me about 15 minutes a day to
clean out the ash,” Pat says.
It does, however, take about an hour
to start the furnace, Pat notes. “We use
a glow plug, which is a rod that is inserted in the corn and turns hot. You
just keep adding air and turning the corn
to make it ignite. Once it’s going, it’s
going. But like several winter days last
year, 35-degree days and sun can really
heat things up, and then it shuts down
and you have to reignite it. Technology
has really changed in the last couple of
years, and you can now buy units with
automatic ignition.”
Pat says to make sure, whomever
you buy the furnace from, to ask about
service. “We really haven’t had any
problems, but it’s good to know you
can contact someone if you do or if you
have questions.”
As for that extra heat, Becky smiles
at Pat and says, “It would be great to
install the piping in the future to heat
a pool.”
ZONE CONTROL allows Pat
Feldpausch to adjust temperatures for
the house, office and farm shop.
THE WHITICANS’ furnace (cover story)
needs ash removed from the backside
(above), burn pot and under the chimney.
Why burn corn?
■
■
■
■
Corn has a uniform size and shape, which provides controllable burn temperatures.
Corn is readily available, is easy to store and burns hotter than wood.
Corn can be grown on your farm, or bought from a neighbor or local grain elevator.
Corn can be stored in galvanized steel or poly-hoppered bins, which can be placed next to your
corn burner with a small 4-inch auger that will keep the corn burner full — automatically.
■ Corn burners do not smoke or emit any foul smells.
■ Corn is a renewable and affordable resource.
■ It takes millions of years to create fossil fuels (oil, gas, coal) and decades to grow mature
trees, but only four months to grow corn.