Trying to figure out how much money Pellet stove will save

[mithesaint]

great forum and thread. i'm on the fence about getting a pellet stove. live in greater boston area, on a street where there is zero chance ever of getting a gas line in. Oil last year run me about $550/mth, for my 2000 sq ft. house(2 floors, colonial). Oil is at $3.50/gal right now. I'm thinking if i get a pellet stove insert (have a fireplace already) i would mainly use it to make the main floor comfortable 70 degrees. I would still have to use oil to heat the 2nd floor, although during the daytime, i wouldn't keep 2nd floor that warm. (have 2 babies at home all day)

i'd like to hear some more real-life stories of:
a) people who still use oil to heat a 2nd floor, like i would and how much oil would they use from say October - April

my concerns with a pellet stove include:
- possible rising cost of pellets
- availabilty of pellets (wasnt there a shortage last year)?



thanks again.

I have a 2400 sq ft 2 story colonial, and I've heated it almost exclusively with a pellet stove placed in the center of the back half of the lower level. I have a open foyer, and heat rises nicely to the second floor. If your colonial is open, you might be surprised how much heat makes it up stairs. On the other hand, if the stairway is the only way for heat to get upstairs, you'll struggle getting enough heat upstairs.

Pellet availability shouldn't be a problem, as long as you don't try to buy your pellets from a box store a few at a time. Lowes stops stocking pellets in February. Buy enough for the whole season at the beginning of the season, and you can lock in your price. As long as you have room to store them, they will be fine till next year if you accidentally buy too many. Pellet btus are much cheaper than oil btu. If you're worried about return on investment, try am fm energy, and look at the pellet insert (55-TRPEPI). Cheaper way to try pellets.

Good luck.

 

[thundercracker]

thanks everyone for the replies. very helpful as always.

can you store your pellets outside? or does everyone store them inside?

 

[TimfromMA]

Personally, I store my pellets inside. Pellets come on a pallet wrapped in plastic. As long as they stay unwrapped, you can keep them outside. Once you break the seal, Id move them inside. There are those who keep them outside under a tarp, but I wouldn't.

 

[NHcpa]

Yup keep oil heat at 55d and run pellet in living and surrounding area 73-75 (which I would never do with oil). As far as your other concerns (availability, price), those are the same concerns I have. natural gas can spike too. All said, I have oil, pellet and burn wood. would go nuclear if it were available.

 

[Boomer Sailor]

great forum and thread. i'm on the fence about getting a pellet stove. live in greater boston area, on a street where there is zero chance ever of getting a gas line in. Oil last year run me about $550/mth, for my 2000 sq ft. house(2 floors, colonial). Oil is at $3.50/gal right now. I'm thinking if i get a pellet stove insert (have a fireplace already) i would mainly use it to make the main floor comfortable 70 degrees. I would still have to use oil to heat the 2nd floor, although during the daytime, i wouldn't keep 2nd floor that warm. (have 2 babies at home all day)

i'd like to hear some more real-life stories of:
a) people who still use oil to heat a 2nd floor, like i would and how much oil would they use from say October - April

my concerns with a pellet stove include:
- possible rising cost of pellets
- availabilty of pellets (wasnt there a shortage last year)?



thanks again.

Just to add what the other 2 just said.... I have a 2,300 sq. ft. colonial - but pellet stove is not centrally located - however, during the normal winter temps, I had no problem heating the house with it (I have electric baseboard heat, so if you think oil is expensive...). During the 'normal winter temps' say morning lows of 15 - 20 then afternoon highs of 25 - 30, my house temps were ~ 70/72 where stove was (great room-kitchen) - 67/68 opposite end of house on first floor - upstairs was ~ 64/66. (a good sleeping temp if you like blankets - we would have electrically heating it higher than that).

When we had the REALLY cold temps of -7 for a low and 10 for a high... we would see ~ 68/70 - 64/66 - 59/60 with my type of stove (an insert) on almost full blast (stove temp of 6 where 7 was max)

Another 3 caveats... I have a very well insulated house plus I was using Barefoot pellets who a lot would agree were 'better' pellets btu-wise and my weekly cleaning reflected more along the lines of a monthly cleaning, so a very clean stove to boot

 

[hyfire]

You can save money with pellets but as I did the BTU conversion its limited 35-40% compared to oil. The key is to insulate your home to the max and use the pellet stove on really cold days and split system heat pumps on other days, which will cost you about the same or cheaper than the cost of using pellets depending on the outside temp. THe heat pump can be 1/3 the cost to run over standard electric heat on cool days 35-45F.

 

[moey]

Our sellers disclose on our house said 1200 gallons a year of oil. We used 5 tons of pellets the one year I used nothing but pellets. We now have geothermal last year it cost me $800 for the year to run.

 

[yrock87]

Our sellers disclose on our house said 1200 gallons a year of oil. We used 5 tons of pellets the one year I used nothing but pellets. We now have geothermal last year it cost me $800 for the year to run.

Our seller disclosed 1800 gallons each the last two years! This is my first winter with the house and with the stove but I figured that I would spend $2200 on 8 tons, another $3000 on two tanks of oil and still save $2k over what they spent! (approx 7200) wish that a heat pump was an option here.
Does my math add up? In any case, I will be able to answer the OP in 8 months!

 

[moey]

Our seller disclosed 1800 gallons each the last two years! This is my first winter with the house and with the stove but I figured that I would spend $2200 on 8 tons, another $3000 on two tanks of oil and still save $2k over what they spent! (approx 7200) wish that a heat pump was an option here.
Does my math add up? In any case, I will be able to answer the OP in 8 months!

Geothermal heat pumps work in Alaska. They just put more pipe in the ground or dig deeper. Now finding someone to do it thats another issue.

 

[Jp16]

To Thundercracker; I too live in MA, on the NH border to be a bit more precise. I installed a Quadrafire Santa Fe last December. Coincidentally a day after getting the stove signed off we got an oil drop. Typically in the winter we would get a December drop of 170 to 190 gal and another in February of 190 to 200 and one in July for 150. My last February drop was 109 gallons. We had a leak on the line from the tank and had delivery stopped so repairs could be made; they were made yesterday ad we had about half a tank. I was using about 600 gallons a year prior to the pellet stove install. Now I figure we will use maybe 220 gallons a year. The insulation in my 1300 sq ft 2 story cape is what I would call average but the windows are awful. There are drafts so bad the curtains sometime move... I am comfortable saying I cut my oil use in half, maybe even by 2/3rds. AND we kept the house much warmer. 70 vs the 60 with the oil. I think this year we may not keep it as warm because it is not new. I used 2 ton of pellets since the install costing about $600. So at about $4/gal for oil I saw a net savings of about $600. So the stove is a third paid for. This spring I got 2 ton at a decent price however oil seems to be a bit less, at least for now.

 

[thundercracker]

To Thundercracker; I too live in MA, on the NH border to be a bit more precise. I installed a Quadrafire Santa Fe last December. Coincidentally a day after getting the stove signed off we got an oil drop. Typically in the winter we would get a December drop of 170 to 190 gal and another in February of 190 to 200 and one in July for 150. My last February drop was 109 gallons. We had a leak on the line from the tank and had delivery stopped so repairs could be made; they were made yesterday ad we had about half a tank. I was using about 600 gallons a year prior to the pellet stove install. Now I figure we will use maybe 220 gallons a year. The insulation in my 1300 sq ft 2 story cape is what I would call average but the windows are awful. There are drafts so bad the curtains sometime move... I am comfortable saying I cut my oil use in half, maybe even by 2/3rds. AND we kept the house much warmer. 70 vs the 60 with the oil. I think this year we may not keep it as warm because it is not new. I used 2 ton of pellets since the install costing about $600. So at about $4/gal for oil I saw a net savings of about $600. So the stove is a third paid for. This spring I got 2 ton at a decent price however oil seems to be a bit less, at least for now.

this is a great reply. thanks, it's exactly the type of real-life experience i'm looking for. good description of everything.

much appreciated.

 

[briansol]

Figure a bag is $6 (delivered) and you use about 1 a day most the time, more when colder. That's $180-200 a month avg cost for heat. If your electric costs more than that, pellet will save you money (factor in the stove price, etc)

 

[thundercracker]

Figure a bag is $6 (delivered) and you use about 1 a day most the time, more when colder. That's $180-200 a month avg cost for heat. If your electric costs more than that, pellet will save you money (factor in the stove price, etc)

This is a helpful comparison. I get at least one oil delivery each winter month, so approx. $550-600 each month.
so how warm are you keeping your house, using 1 bag a day? is 1 bag too conservative? is it more like 1.5 bags/day? I want to be conservative with the amount of money i'm estimating that i'm going to save. I'd rather guess that i'm saving less, and end up saving more than vice versa.

thanks!

 

[briansol]

Well, "house" isn't a constant size, insulation, outside temps, etc etc are all variables and pellet brands used vs stove inefficiency all play in. I use about 1.5 bags a day most the time because my house is drafty as hell (bad sliding doors) and it's empty (i live alone... well, i have a roommate but he's basically never there....) so there's little human body heat, cooking, etc going on which plays a big factor. I generally keep my place about 66-67 most the time, bumping it to 70 while i'm watching tv/dinner for a few hours before bed. I experimented with going down to 62/64 while gone, but it just too much time to bring the house back up and it burned more fuel to get there. It's easier to maintain than rise/fall IMO. I also have a level of my split-level house below stove-grade, so i get massive air currents of cold air from the den (that is basically empty and i keep at 55 on the oil burner). I've tried various settings to hedge the costs but it's all about the same. I'd rather use more pellets than oil anyway.

The first year i moved in to my house (2007) i spent about $5700 in oil to keep my place at 62-64. oil was also $4.50+ remember...
that summer i said never again and bought the stove.
Last year, at 3.50 ish prices for oil and 275 ish prices for pellets, I spent about $1400 in pellets and $1200 in oil (i have my hot water on the oil as well as that lower level).

Or, about half, when oil prices are only down a 1/4, so by horrible math, it's about 25% cheaper...... and i was 4-6 degrees warmer, had the ambiance, and the ladies love watching a movie in front of the fire :D

Oil would have to drop to about 2.50/g or pellets rise to 450/t for me to say it's cheaper to burn oil.