With fuel prices continuing to soar, a growing number of Montgomery County residents are joining the ranks of those who won’t worry about the cost of heating fuel this winter.

This group won’t worry about the cost of electricity, either. Nor will they worry about finding places to cut down trees.

Instead they will buy some corn and be set for the winter.

Corn boilers are catching on more and more and if the cost of heating oil continues to more in the direction it has been headed in the past few weeks, more and more people may lean toward this method of heating.

Corn boilers work very similar to wood boilers which have been on the market for quite some time. The only difference is you don’t have to have access to a large wood supply. With a corn boiler you need access to 200 to 300 bushels of corn.

Don Mills has been heating his home the past two winters with a corn boiler and it has cost him approximately $600, the cost of the corn. Currently home heating oil prices are running anywhere from $1.29 to $2.30 a gallon for suppliers here in Montgomery County.

According to Mills he became interested in the corn boiler about three years ago. He did all the research he could and when he was out in Iowa for the Farm Progress Show he purchased his unit. He said the unit was about $4,500 or somewhat comparable to a new furnace.

For the past two winters, Mills has heated his 1,600 square foot home with the corn. The cost of corn is around $2 per bushel and Mills estimates it costs about 31 bushels a month to heat his house which comes out to about $65 per month. He was paying roughly $190 per month for traditional heating. That gives Mills a saving of approximately $125 per month or nearly $1,500 per year.

"Originally, I thought it would take four years or so to pay for itself," Mills said. "However, it has nearly paid for itself already because of the high fuel prices."

There are corn furnaces, corn boilers and now corn inserts. Each is different in its own way, but the principal is the same – using corn for fuel.

Actually, Mills said his boiler can burn corn, soybeans, wood pellets. For him the corn is the most cost effective since he farms and produces his own corn.

"It’s not like we are taking a big loss on the corn crop either," Mills said. "A lot of the corn I burn is ‘bad corn’ or corn I couldn’t sell or really use for anything else."

Mills does have a backup furnace just in case his boiler would run into problems.

"It’s catching on," Mills said. "There are several versions of the boiler and I know more and more people are starting to look into this. It takes a little time to get used to filling the hopper, but for someone like me, it takes about 30 seconds a day and I do it on the way to feed the cows."

Other than filling the hopper with corn kernels, Mills said it takes him about 30 minutes a month to clean his boiler and so far he hasn’t really had any major problems."

The corn boiler burns down to about 1 percent so there isn’t that much of a waste to have to worry about.

While wood boilers are another option, using very similar characteristics, Mills points out that you would need to have access to wood or be willing to buy it. Proponents of using corn for fuel point out wood could eventually become a little harder to secure as to where corn can be planted year-after-year on the same plot of land.

"For us this was the way to go," Mills said. "We wanted something different and this has worked well for us. Some people might not like it, but for us it works and I would recommend it."