Discussion as old as time -wood or pellet heat (last 30 years anyway)

We burned up all of our free wood around here last year & I am tired of cutting, chopping, stacking it. My wife is tired of the mess-bark, small pieces & ash. Plus she has trouble regulating the heat.
We've had pellet stoves in the past & enjoy the controlled heat, simple operation & efficient heat they put out. 
The only issue was finding a unit that fit in the big fireplace & still be able to add pellets. Could have gotten an insert which is built for that but then would need to fabricate the covering because none are big enough for this opening. Plus inserts are a lot more $$.  Found a nice 20 year old St Croix that is just low enough to open the pellet door but not quite enough. It's been re-furbished & should be a good unit.
Now to make some kind of pellet chute. I think I'll make a chute out of a new aluminum scoop shovel by cutting most of the handle off & making hook tabs on the end to hook it to the box when needed to add pellets. 
I sold the wood burner for $200 more than we bought it for 2 years ago so that was great. 
Old wood burner: 

St Croix:

Pellet hatch door:

I am firmly in team pellet stove. I wish I could have one here, oil is getting really pricey and wood is just a massive pain. 

Storing pellets isn't great, but the maintenance, or lack there of, certainly makes up for it

I like wood stoves because I live in the woods and there's trees everywhere.

I have considered adding some propane heat to make life a bit easier though

In reply to RevRico :

Ya storage is an issue. We bought a ton of pellets in 40 lb bags. 35 bags filled up the wood storage spot. 15 more are in an unused area.

A bunch of my coworkers had pellet stoves and all I ever heard them do was complain about "this store doesn't stock pellets", "I bought a bunch of these pellets and they're poor quality and don't burn well", "this whole pallet of pellets was soaked in water", "this brand doesn't work well with my stove". It seemed like a lot of headaches. I'm firmly in the camp of burning firewood, but we have access to a lot of land with trees that aren't good for anything but firewood (we selectively cut) and have the chainsaws, borrow my brother-in-law's tractor and have a wood splitter that my grandfather built 40 years ago that we inherited.

In reply to mdshaw :

We bought 3 tons every June, when they were cheapest, and usually another one in February. Takes up a lot of room, but less than cordwood. First morning NOT having to go dig wood out of a pile under snow makes up for giving up a substantial chunk of real estate to them.

Now what I paid for a year worth of pellets barely gets me 6 weeks worth of oil. BullE36 M3.

I burn wood because I can get it for "free" (the wood is free, getting it has a small cost in fuel, equipment and such). I don't think I'd pay for pellets, I'd just run my natural gas furnace or my heat pump instead. That said, I can store 4 cords under cover just outside my basement door, which makes it highly convenient, as I can go out and re-stock our upstairs supply in my slippers all winter. If this wasn't the case, that might change the equation.

Check what your energy bill and installation cost would be for a mini-split system. You might find that the payback time is only a couple of years. I was surprised by how fast it is and am considering moving over - and I have reasonably cheap natural gas, equivalent to oil at 75 cents a gallon. 

Our last house had a pellet stove. We'd watch the prices and buy a pallet when they bottomed out - we'd go through about one pallet per winter, so that's just over $200. Never had a bag get wet because I'd inspect the pallet before picking it up and we stored them in a dry shed. I'd have to fill the stove about every 24 hours or so and clean out the burn box every few weeks, but it was pretty low maintenance because the combustion was so complete. The only hassle was lighting, ours was old enough that you had to start the fire yourself so we'd just leave it running 24/7 in the middle of winter.

The visible flame/glow made my wife feel warmer than a more subtle heating type would. I'd do it again. Our new place has a gas insert so we again have the visible flame and I don't have to fill it up :)

Depending on stores to stock pellets is like going out to cut down a tree because the fire's getting low. Plan ahead and life is much simpler!

The real thing I would look at is the price of oil in your area vs the price of pellets.  Pellets are usually better than a log of wood, mostly because of the forced-air nature of the burner itself, but last time I checked (two years ago) no wood heat even came close to being as affordable as oil.  Dad wanted to upgrade to a pellet stove since he's 76 and can't really be carrying loads of wood down the stairs anymore.  He discovered that his upgraded oil furnace was far cheaper than pellets per BTU.  Your area might be different.  Depends on if you live somewhere near the wood base stock/manufacturing or if you live somewhere that doesn't tax oil as much.

Dad and I, however, have the advantage of about 200 acres of wooded land and the equipment to successfully extract it for ourselves.  While not free per se, it tips the scales greatly.

Timely discussion. 

I live someplace where wood is free and plentiful, and I'd be great to have a backup heat source to my gas fired hydronic radiant system. 

However, I've already got a gas fireplace, so tearing it out to build a fireplace for a pellet or wood burning stove would be a lot more money. 

From this discussion at least, I think I'll stick with gas. 

I ran a pellet stove for years. It's much easier than a wood stove. Easier cleanup.  Easier use with the thermostat. 
 

where I lived gas was r available and pellets were 1/2 the price of oil.  Yay Connecticut. 

I heat with wood because I can usually find it for free. Never used a pellet stove. 
What I came here to say is newer wood burners are more efficient and use less wood than a 40 year old burner. 
If I was considering pellet stove, I'd do my research before buying an old unit. I would think a new pellet would have improved efficiency just like a newer wood burner. 

When I heated my home with oil, I used an average of 800 gallons a year. I have found that I can keep comfortably warm for an entire winter with slightly over half that quantity of beer.

- Dave Barry

In reply to Curtis73 (Forum Supporter) :

That much price difference across the state? In June, pellets are $229/ ton, delivered, coming in around $700 for the whole winter.

My last oil fill up was $550, and last winter we got filled 5 times. That's a rather substantial price difference over the season. 

I have a woodstove.  I get my firewood for free, not counting labor and such.

The woodstove makes a mess.  It smokes at times.  And firewood is WORK.

I want a pellet stove instead, but have not found one for free.

And now some entertainment.

Good luck with the pellets. I know a lot of people that like to use them for the convenience factor as well. We burn a cord and a half of firewood every winter in our Jotul and it's usually about $350 delivered already split. Not sure how much a cord and a half in seasoned birch translates to in pellets but might be worth looking in to for us.  The wood saves us about $600 in our natural gas bill a year. Now that my wife works at him I'm assuming she's going to burn way more than normal this year since we've had snow since last week of September. We tend to burn 6 am- 6pm then let the baseboard gas heat take over at night. Pretty easy for us to maintain the temp inside with the damper shut down after an hour. Even at 0F, 12-13 pieces of birch will keep our temps inside about 70 until early morning when the gas takes over. Even if you just did pellet stove during the day, I'm sure you'll find some savings.  

RevRico said:

In reply to Curtis73 (Forum Supporter) :

That much price difference across the state? In June, pellets are $229/ ton, delivered, coming in around $700 for the whole winter.

My last oil fill up was $550, and last winter we got filled 5 times. That's a rather substantial price difference over the season. 

Well, like I said, this was two years ago before the Covidemic.  No idea what prices are like now.  Harrisburg has to go a further distance for sources of hardwood pellets, but natural gas is well-supplied.

Oil was the go-to around central PA up through the 60s/early 70s, but natural gas is taking over on the newer builds which has driven up prices of oil a bit around here.  Its no different than the reason Pittsburgh gasoline is way more expensive than here in Harrisburg.  Demand, ease of transport from the source, etc.  

According to this site, the dollar-per-KBTU has leveled off a bit between #2 oil and pellets on a national average.  But regionally I can see it still being wildly variable... and they change constantly.  The cheapest source of BTUs now might not be the cheapest source in 5 years... or 1 year.

Right now the national average looks to be $2.04/kbtu with a 78% efficiency ($2.62 per) for oil and $2.16/kbtu at 70% efficiency ($3.09 per) for pellet fuel.  So pellet fuel appears to be (per the national average) about 18% more expensive than oil.

Also... how big is your oil tank?  Sounds like you have some stuff going on with your furnace maybe?  $550 per tank times 5 tanks is something like 1000 gallons, assuming $3/gal.  1000 gallons is 1,400,000,000 BTUs... as in 1.4 Billion.  That's enough to heat the SuperDome for a week.  I'm just saying, that doesn't sound like a normal heating scenario.  Dad has a 3-story house, 3 bed, two bath, and he can do an entire winter in PA on one tank with plenty left to spare for the rest of the year running the water heater.  He usually calls in September for a refill and it easily lasts 12 months.