well, give it a bit....most retailers will be coming out with their "early-buy" numbers soon, that being between now and mid-April.....thats gonna be where the rubber meets the road!
Poll question- The truth, how much will you honestly pay for next seasons pellets?
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i bought my pellets from maine woods , and burned them all winter...no problems. i am 11 mile from the mill,so i gave 215 per ton direct.i started the winter with 3/4 of a tank oil, and ended with between 3/4 and 1/2 tank.i run the furnace once a week, when i am cleaning the stove.
i will replenish that oil supply thru out the summer at 5 gallons per week. that said, i will stick with the pellets, and put my money there as my home was never below 73 deg all winter and was consatant heat compared to the furnace. i'll keep my money in the usa as much as possible...pee on the arabs. if pellets become as bad as hho, i'll figure something else out. maybe go back to wood and complain about the work involved, and cleaning up the mess all the time.
mike
i will replenish that oil supply thru out the summer at 5 gallons per week. that said, i will stick with the pellets, and put my money there as my home was never below 73 deg all winter and was consatant heat compared to the furnace. i'll keep my money in the usa as much as possible...pee on the arabs. if pellets become as bad as hho, i'll figure something else out. maybe go back to wood and complain about the work involved, and cleaning up the mess all the time.
mike
I'm stuck with pellets (is corn an option?) I bought my OPB instead of a new oil burner, and I can't depend on the old oil burner to get me through the winter alone. I will be checking into corn soon.
Expect oil prices to go up, the change some voted for is going to put in energy taxes on oil, it is in the budget for this year. (I hate GREED)
Expect oil prices to go up, the change some voted for is going to put in energy taxes on oil, it is in the budget for this year. (I hate GREED)
I actually have almost two tons downstairs that I paid $285 a ton for this past fall. My stove hasn't been working right so I'll save them for next season. That said, I was "suckered" into locking in at $4.69 a gal for oil. So for most of the season, I've been going to the gas station with two 5 gal can's and dumping diesel in which was costing me $2.35 a gal thus saving half from my automatic delivery. I guess the best answer is I'll have to compare it to a gal of oil. I prefer to use the pellets as primary and oil as backup but it all comes down to dollars and cents.
I can buy harwood pellets all winter for $175.00 per ton... i expect my regular brand to be about that price for early buy in a few weeks.
I am willing to pay $250-275 a ton for a few reasons.
First of all I feel good in the fact that my money is not going to the oil companies or the Arab countries.
Second, the pellets are greener and I really like that idea.
Third, my house is a comfy 73 degrees right now even though it is 17 outside. Even with cheap oil, if I tried to keep my house at 73 with the boiler I would be filling the tank every three weeks. Even at $400 a tank that would work out to about $3000 for oil. 4 ton of pellets is $1100 delivered, plus the single tank of oil I will burn for basement heating and hot water, and add in the extra $300 in electricity to run the stove still only reaches $1800.
No brainer in my opinion.
Vinny
First of all I feel good in the fact that my money is not going to the oil companies or the Arab countries.
Second, the pellets are greener and I really like that idea.
Third, my house is a comfy 73 degrees right now even though it is 17 outside. Even with cheap oil, if I tried to keep my house at 73 with the boiler I would be filling the tank every three weeks. Even at $400 a tank that would work out to about $3000 for oil. 4 ton of pellets is $1100 delivered, plus the single tank of oil I will burn for basement heating and hot water, and add in the extra $300 in electricity to run the stove still only reaches $1800.
No brainer in my opinion.
Vinny
Oil is at under $2 a gal. now, but we'll call it $2/gal. So you're saying it takes only 4 tons of pellets (65.6 million btu) to replace 1500 gallons of oil (208.5 million btu) to keep you're house at the same temp? That's pretty good Vinny! Pellets really are amazing...
We heat with propane and last year we spent about 3500.00-3900.00 to heat our 2400 sf house. This year we bought the 25 pdvc from Englander and set our thermostat to 65. We have had our propane filled once since installing the pellet stove and that was 400.00 so for us it has been a huge savings for us. The propane guy estimated that we would only need it filled every 6 months with the usage we have had. I am excited. This stove keeps my house at 74-78 in the room that the stove is in and the rest of the house varies between 65-71. the most we spent for pellets this year was 300.00 in southern NH and that was the future fuel crap. We have just about gone through 3 tons and we are just going to start buying bags of the pennington from Wally World to finish of the season. We burned two bags of it and it seemed to burn much cleaner than the other pellets that we have burned.
Erin
Erin
I've broken it down to per day usage of each, oil & pellets vs. cost. Our home is 1800 sq. ft. during heating season, we use just under 3 gallons of oil per day w. house temp @ 68 degrees F. Pellet consumption has been approx. 2 bags per day, maintaining house temp @ 73- 78 degrees. (I have no clue what our oil consumption would be if we maintained average temp of 75 degrees using oil only.)
We pre-paid 400 gallons @ around $4.00 per gallon, bought pellets @ $260.00 per ton. So 4X3=$12.00 a day; no maintenance, relatively worry free, but uncomfortably chilly.... OR $10.40 a day, stove requires minimal supervision, needs to be fed 2X daily, thorough cleaning every 3 days.
I do make the decision on almost a daily basis, depending on the weather. In frigid cold, it's a no brainer. When it's 40 degrees out, chances are I'm outside anyway, so I might as well keep the house cool and burn oil.
Decision time is coming soon whether or not we will pre-buy pellets again. Oil prices will fluxuate, but with a cost analysis right in front of us, we know that our ceiling for pellets is $260.00 ( and I feel that number is even a bit high for my comfort zone). If I find them for $230.00 or lower, I'll jump on it.
We pre-paid 400 gallons @ around $4.00 per gallon, bought pellets @ $260.00 per ton. So 4X3=$12.00 a day; no maintenance, relatively worry free, but uncomfortably chilly.... OR $10.40 a day, stove requires minimal supervision, needs to be fed 2X daily, thorough cleaning every 3 days.
I do make the decision on almost a daily basis, depending on the weather. In frigid cold, it's a no brainer. When it's 40 degrees out, chances are I'm outside anyway, so I might as well keep the house cool and burn oil.
Decision time is coming soon whether or not we will pre-buy pellets again. Oil prices will fluxuate, but with a cost analysis right in front of us, we know that our ceiling for pellets is $260.00 ( and I feel that number is even a bit high for my comfort zone). If I find them for $230.00 or lower, I'll jump on it.
I won't pay more than 250 bucks. I've been on oil for some time. I put a third tank in and filled them up recently. Should last well into next year. Two tons stocked away for reserve. I'll buy two more tons if the price is right. I could care less about enviromental baloney. Humanity is spiraling in, and we won't be around long enough to have environmental concerns be an issue. It's all over by 12/23/12. The wheels have been put in motion....
Wet1 said:
Nice friendly attitude you have.
I don't give a damn what you "think". The fact speaks for themselves. I have used a little under four ton and kept my house 5-8 degrees warmer than last year. I know what I pay for oil and what I get out of a tank. Whether you "believe" me or not means very little in my world.
I agree with you ,i almost locked in at 4.85/gal instead i bought three tons of pellets for 805.00 and have about 15 bags left and couldn't be happier.thesyguy said:
by the way theres a lot of douches in the world whats one more :lol:
Its economics. Just like us buyers we find the best price; so do the sellers. It's the old law of "Supply & Demand".
thesyguy said:
So not only did you replace 209 million btu worth of oil with only 66 million btu worth of wood pellets, but the entire house is also 5 to 8 degrees warmer as well?!?! It would likely take an additional 10%+ more btu million btu of oil to get your house up to this 5-8° warmer temp (which would bring your oil consumption up to 230+ million btu), amazing you're doing it with only 66 million btu worth of pellets. Are you processing these pellets through some type of fission process?
BTW, I see oil prices are around $1.65 a gallon in ME... not even the $2/gallon I'm using in this example. Using a real street price of $1.65 a gallon, and you're saying it would take $3000 worth of oil to heat your house... that's 1818 gal of oil, plus another 10% or so to get it up to the additional at 5-8° warmer temp... that's 2000 gal of oil at 139,000 btu per gal... so according to your original statement, you're heating your house with 66 million btu worth of pellets (4 tons), but it would take a whopping 2000+ gallons, or 278+ million btu of oil. As I said before, simply amazing!
DB
Before we bought our pellet stove we went through 880 - 920 gallons of fuel oil/year. Now we only burn on average 350 - 375 gallons/year over the past five years along with 5 5-1/2 tons pellets. I paid $3.97/gallon and $179/ton this year and spent right at $2,000 for just heating purposes. Now, if I used just fuel oil I would have spent $3,500 - $3,700 this year. It is not only that I am saving money but where my money IS or is NOT going.
So you're using about 540 less gallons of oil a year and replacing them with about 5.25 tons of pellets. That sounds very realistic based on the btu numbers.Bantam said:
Those are pretty unique numbers to your situation as most people should have had access to much cheap oil prices, and higher pellet prices, thus much less of a savings. Since you had a very high oil price and very low pellet price, you did save a lot of money.
Here's where your math gets a little off track for the average user (not using a high oil lock in price of $3.97). Oil has been around $1.65 to $2.50 for the entire heating season in most areas. Even at the high end of the price spectrum, using an average oil price of $2.50 for the season, 900 gallons would have cost about $2250 (cost for using only oil). 360 gal. @ $2.50 = $900, plus 5.25 tons of pellets at $179/ton (great price
) = $940... or a total of $1840. So the average Joe not using a high oil lock-in using the quantity of fuel you used, and a low pellet price, probably would have saved about $400. But this is assuming using a high oil price average for the season and a very cheap pellet price. The actual savings for most users using these quantities of fuel would have likely be less than $400 for the year because of substantially higher average pellet prices. In fact, running the same numbers, but using a more realistic average pellet price of say $275, it would have cost about $100 MORE to use pellets.Anyway, nice savings for the year if you could only get oil at $3.79/gal., and a hell of a great buy on the pellets!
I see your point. But when I purchase fuel I normally fill my tank (1,000 gallon). If I would have filled it (before my pellet stove) that is where 900 gallons x $4 came into play. I now can almost run my furnace for three years from a full tank. This year I decided to only purchase 250 gallons since I still had 200 in the tank. In the past when I purchase my late summer fills the price was typically near the bottom and even got a 5 - 10 cent price cut for buying bulk. When $3.97/gal was what I paid when prices were expected to go near $5 I decided not to fill the tank. I'm glad I did not as I recently bought 600 more gallon for $1.90. So my thinking is that since my house heating is a "hybrid" of sort then I can pick and choose but will still lean towards using pellets verses oil even if I lose some $.
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