Corn Stoves

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Corn Stoves are relatively newcomers to the market of heating devices being available only for several years (commercially speaking as they were first introduced back in 1960s), but even for this short time they have proved themselves worthy and keep growing in popularity heating more houses every year. Corn stoves are the stoves that use corn as a fuel, but they're also the only type of a stove that can burn almost anything, including wood, grass, soy beans, orange or lemon seeds, cherry pits, rice – and more other biomass products and wastes. The best fuel with the best efficiency for corn stoves though is whole kernel shelled corn.

Corn stoves can come in different styles, including free standing models and built-in fireplaces suitable for residential use and furnaces and burners more suitable for central heating, HVAC, and heating other big spaces as workshops and commercial garages. Corn stoves can differ in size, heat output, the level of automation, and the size of a hopper. Smaller stoves nowadays can have very appealing designs and be similar in looks to wood or pellet stoves, serving not only for heating but for as an addition to the interior as well.

The principle of working of corn stoves is somewhat similar to pellet stoves, but not exactly the same. The corn is delivered to the burner, but unlike pellet stoves, corn kernels must be stirred in order to burn. Corn will not burn without stirring as it needs to release hydrogen contained inside the kernel. That's why corn stoves can burn wood pellets only, but pellet stoves can't burn only corn. Yet, quite often you can mix wood pellets and corn in some ratio to burn in a pellet stove.

When looking at brands of corn stoves, you can notice that many manufacturers who specialize in pellet stoves would be making corn stoves as well. The range of corn stoves available on the Stoves Only website is quite wide and some of the brands you'll find on our website are: Bixby, Golden Grain, Magnum, Englander, Snyder, Quadra Fire, Timberridge, and American Harvest.

There're several benefits of using corn stoves. The main one would be economy: running a corn stove can be up to 80% cheaper than running pellet or wood stoves to produce the same heat output. Efficiency of corn stoves is very high as well and can be up to 98%. We all worry about environment now and corn stoves are extremely environment-friendly – they don't produce any carbon dioxide. Moreover, corn stoves must be vented, but they produce zero opacity, zero smoke, and zero particulate matter. They're much safer than other stoves as they will never catch fire in a hopper if blazes somehow get into there, unlike wood pellet stoves, and there are no registered home fires caused by corn stoves so far.

There're a few disadvantages of using corn stoves and you should know about them as well before buying one for your house. First, corn stoves are quite complex devices. There's a lot of processing happening inside, comparing to wood or coal stoves for example, and that means more maintenance and possible repair works. Another downside is dependency on the electric power. All motors and fans in corn stoves are electric and if you have a power outage, you won't be able to use your pellet stove or at least use it properly.

If you're looking for a cost-effective, environment-friendly, and reliable source of heating for your house or for anything else, corn stoves can be a fine choice for you.