When Pellets Attack

I noted yesterday how busy I’ve been feeling. Imagine the joy I felt, then, when I came home from work yesterday to find two tons of pellets stacked in front of my garage door, blocking my entrance. There was nothing to be done but get to stacking them. Thankfully, Tomas and Denisa were on hand, and we churned through the stack in about a half hour. A few thoughts:

  • Stacking two tons of pellets is much, much easier than stacking two cord of wood. Or even one cord of wood. A ton of pellets is 50 bags, each of which clock in at 40 pounds. When you divide that up by three people, even two tons is just around 33 bags a person moved. There’s no need for a wheelbarrow, each person can take a bag on every trip, and that stack almost as easily as legos.
  • We bought the nicer grade of pellets this time, after using the cheaper ones for two years. I loaded them into the stove last night, and I can’t tell any visual difference between the two. Supposedly these burn hotter and create less ash, but I’m skeptical. Not skeptical enough not to try them for a year, but we’ll see. In the end, it was only like an extra $50 a ton, or something like that.
  • Running a pellet stove is much, much easier than running a wood stove. There’s less maintenance, and less moving the combustibles. You bring in a bag once a day and fill up the hopper. End of story. There’s no mess from having dirt and leaves and pieces of wood tracked all over the place, either. You can set the stove to keep the room at a certain temperature as well, so you automatically use fewer pellets when it’s warmer outside.
  • Why, then, do we not just switch out our wood stove to a pellet stove? A number of reasons
    • Pellet stoves need electricity to run. If we want our house to be warm in a power outage, we either need to get a generator, or we need a wood stove. When the power goes out and the pellet stove is running, smoke has a tendency to go into the house. That’s a bad thing, in case you were wondering.
    • I like the look and feel of a wood stove. A real fire with logs just looks more homey. Plus, the heat feels stronger and more pervasive to me. It’s a much, much bigger flame.
    • I can’t help thinking wood stoves are cheaper. Pellets are $250 a ton, give or take, and we go through 2.5 tons to keep our addition warm. Wood is like $200 a cord, and we go through around 3 cord to keep the rest of our house warm. I think we’d have to get at least 4 more tons to keep the house going.

In any case, the pellets are in now, and we should be good for the rest of the year. Yay!

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