• E-mail
• Print
• Comment
• Font Size
• Digg
• del.icio.us
• Discuss article

Burning Corn for Heat

Posted on: Tuesday, 7 March 2006, 00:00 CST

By Steve Tarter, Journal Star, Peoria, Ill.

Mar. 7--PEORIA -- Some Peorians are doing more than burning corn in their cars.

While using gasoline blended with corn-based ethanol remains a common practice, Mike Calabro is now burning corn to heat his home.

Calabro, a manager with the U.S. Postal Service in Peoria, said he and his wife Kathleen used corn this winter to heat their home at 206 Spring St.

"It was my wife's grandmother's house. Built in 1876, it's one of those old shotgun houses (a long, narrow home design)," said Calabro.

An ancient gravity furnace failed to provide much warmth in the house, he said.

So Calabro decided to buy a corn-burning stove. He estimates he spent about $4,000 to have the stove he purchased from Hearth and Patio installed in his home.

"They had to go through a wall and vented it out through the attic. The stove sits in a little nook in the kitchen. It looks like an old cast-iron wood stove with a glass front," said Calabro.

Buying shelled corn in 50-pound bags that sell for about $2.50 a bag from the Roth Grain Co. in Morton, Calabro figured he's gone through 10,000 pounds of corn this winter.

"It was a mild winter but the corn stove probably saved me over $100 a month in heating bills," he said.

Heating homes with corn is nothing new, said Mel Repscher, owner of A-Maiz-ing Heat, a Taylorville firm manufacturing corn furnaces since 1992.

"The concept of burning corn goes back to the Depression era when farmers would burn corn in coal furnaces," he said.

"In the 1980s, universities did research on coal furnaces and found that corn burns like coal," said Repscher, who said his company, which employs eight people, produced 1,000 stoves this winter. "Sales have been dramatically higher this past winter," he said.

The four different types of corn stoves Repscher produces sell for between $3,200 and $5,000. "Sales is not the problem. It's building them quick enough that's the challenge," he said.

Repscher said his firm expects to sell 3,000 units this coming winter.

"Farmers are our primary customers because of the availability of corn, but it's a good deal for people who have to buy the corn, too," he said.

Callabro said he drives to Morton to pick up the corn. "I've got a bin in my garage that holds about 300 pounds of grain. If I had more room, I'd buy in bulk and save even more," he said.

Roth employee John Alford said six customers now buy corn regularly from the Morton firm. A year earlier, there was just one person buying corn for heat, he said.

One reason for the growing interest in corn stoves is the efficiency of the units, reported the University of Illinois Extension, noting that only a geothermal heat pump has a lower cost for heating a home.

-----

To see more of the Journal Star, or to subscribe to the newspaper, go to http://www.PJStar.com.

Copyright (c) 2006, Journal Star, Peoria, Ill.

Distributed by Knight Ridder/Tribune Business News.

For information on republishing this content, contact us at (800) 661-2511 (U.S.), (213) 237-4914 (worldwide), fax (213) 237-6515, or e-mail reprints@krtinfo.com.

Source: Journal Star

More News in this Category