Corn Stove Dryer

[garry]

Well I have never had a chance to discuss this with anyone...

I heat my house with a corn stove which runs 24/7 in the winter time.

Not sure if you are familiar with a corn stove but unlike a furnace that cuts in and out when the house reaches a certain heat and shuts off , the corn stove doesn't . It runs 24 hours a day 7 days a week kicking out very warm air at the same temperature consistently.

We run the stove on the lowest setting there is and still have to open the doors to the great out doors  to let the heat out of the house and cool the house down.
( Most of the winter )  ( cold February not so much  ) ( but we still don't get overly concerned about heat escaping )

Any way Id like to channel the heat through an old electric dryer just to do the tumbling with the elements disconnected .

I have worked on mechanical and electrical things all my life but never ever played with a dryer.

I am open to a discussion on how to do this and where to start .

I think the first thing is to ask you guys if you think its worth the time and trouble to experiment on this  .

what is the operating temperature of the forced air need to be to make this feasible ?

Thanks in advance 

Garry

This is my corn stove

[RegUS_PatOff]

I wouldn't personally recommend it, but the dryer temps are 130F - 150F

Depending on where you get your heat transfer from, is there any chance of embers entering the dryer ?

[BrntToast]

it would have to be a gas dryer, they intake through a combustion chamber so you could in theroy remove the burner assembly and attach a vent off the stove

i'd worry about a fire though, cause i bet there isn't an insurance company out there that would pay out a claim once they found a dryer attached to a wood stove

[garry]

I wouldn't personally recommend it, but the dryer temps are 130F - 150F

Depending on where you get your heat transfer from, is there any chance of embers entering the dryer ?

There are no embers in the hot air exchange . The corn burns in one chamber and heats a series of pipes which has air blowing through them . the heat is transfered to the moving air and blown out into the house.

[garry]

it would have to be a gas dryer, they intake through a combustion chamber so you could in theroy remove the burner assembly and attach a vent off the stove

i'd worry about a fire though, cause i bet there isn't an insurance company out there that would pay out a claim once they found a dryer attached to a wood stove

I do understand what your saying about the insurance company BT ,

This is a (game ) ( a playtoy ) so to speak , in the interest of reducing electricity usage .

BrntToast , where in Canada do you hail from, if I may ask

I would only have it hooked up to use when I am right there to monitor it.

If I don't do it I will never know if it will work and I will always wonder

[JWWebster]

You could remove the heat element and install a 4 inch flange.  Then run some 4 inch flex aluminum ducting back to the stove and tap off of the stove some kinda way.The dryer's blower motor would then pull the heat from the stove over into the drum, Then you could run the dryer on 120 volts by connecting only neutral and the black side of the terminal block. The timer and all would still work! only the red wiring would not be hooked up.The motor on most dryers is only 120 volts anyway.The clothes would not only get dry but the dryer would help boost the heat into the room.

[JWWebster]

I wouldn't personally recommend it, but the dryer temps are 130F - 150F

Depending on where you get your heat transfer from, is there any chance of embers entering the dryer ?

There are no embers in the hot air exchange . The corn burns in one chamber and heats a series of pipes which has air blowing through them . the heat is transfered to the moving air and blown out into the house.

[BrntToast]

winnipeg manitoba

[BrntToast]

this thing truely burns corn?

[RegUS_PatOff]

special corn pellets that are now rising in price (as I thought it would) soon after it became popular (along with regular corn).

[Repair-man]

That's what threw me at first...the reference to 'corn stove'. I always heard them called "pellet stoves". Naturally the price of the corn pellets went up to meet the demand. Bio-diesel and other implementations caused a lot of this.

Altering a clothes dryer to utilize the heat from such a stove might be a novel idea, but the cost of the fuel is going to be the same as propane or gas soon anyway, so why bother?

[BrntToast]

ok, pellet stoves i had heard of

never heard it called a corn stove, fuel made from corn sounds alot more workable then storing and loading cobs of corn

here i was wondering what kept the stove from exploding from all the popcorn