Going natural for home heating

Q. I want to change my home heating system to something that uses biomass, to save money and energy, but I’m not sure it would be allowed in this area. I’d want to burn wood chips, animal pellets or corn. What’s your take on this idea?

A. Biomass is naturally occurring matter, such as the fuels you mentioned. It could make sense in the right place, but you need to consider several factors. First are the spaces you need to heat.

Any heating equipment must be sized to the square footage of the area, consideration of the materials in the space and their ability to hold heat. Well-insulated spaces without air seeping in are a must, since you don’t want to waste the energy you produce.

Dried animal waste is used in many third-world countries, but there’s much sickness and disease spread due to the lack of sanitary means of handling it. I saw a unit that ran on rabbit pellets years ago. There was no smell, and it ran efficiently. The owner bought large quantities of the bagged product and stored it in a shed. The pellets were dropped into an outside covered hopper and a turning screw mechanism (run by an electric motor) gravity-fed pellets into a heating chamber.

There was a constant plume of chimney smoke and an ash pile in the yard. Air and soil pollution were byproducts of the money-saving venture, leading me to believe that somebody would see the problem and experiment with a solution.
Your municipality would want to know how you intend to reduce or eliminate pollution before approving your system.

Manufacturing plants that produce massive quantities of wood waste, such as window and furniture makers, have not only been using their natural waste product for fuel for years, but have recently adapted their boilers to clean air and energy credit standards in order to be more environmentally friendly and code compliant.

Andersen Windows just built a facility using biomass wood sawdust, but they also spent millions for the heating plant upgrade and still utilize natural gas and oil for backup.