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Fuel Choices: PelletPellet Update: Fall 2011Great American is $245/tonDry Creek is $290/ton O'Malley will be in between but we don't have them right now Pellets: It's all about Convience. Imagine a heat source that delivers a steady stream of evenly heated air to your home as needed at the touch of a button or automatically with a thermostatic control. Imagine that this stove burns waste wood (saw dust) that might otherwise be dumped in a landfill, yet the fuel is clean, conveniently packaged in 40lb bags. Imagine that this technological marvel is also beautifully styled, displays a view of the bright flame and has accents of 24-karat gold! Pellet stoves are direct vented into an existing chimney or directly through an outside wall, have 1" to 3" clearance to combustables, and have 40 to 100 hour burntime without refueling, depending upon the hopper size. For the homeowner who wants the incomparable warmth of wood heat without storing and handling cordwood, without even lighting a match, we invite you to consider a pellet stove or fireplace insert. Drawbacks. Need electricity to operate. Requires weekly cleaning of firepot, and a through cleaning about every ton of pellets depending upon usage and brand of pellets used. High quality pellets come in all colors and sizes! There are more to pellets than just softwood or hardwood. Matching pellets to appliance is an important step in order to receive the highest heat output, cleanest combustion, and highest efficiency. Here are some things to consider when choosing your fuel. Wood Pellet Color When choosing a fuel, you may notice that there are many different colors of fuel. Usually the lighter fuels are softwood while the darker pellets are hardwood. The fuel in the center of this photo is made from lodge pole pine that died from pine beetle infestation. The enzymes they secrete into the wood makes it blue, so the pellets turn out darker. Some softwood whole-tree pellets are also darker because of the bark and needles mixed with the wood. In other words, it's tough to pick a "best" pellet based on color. Wood Pellet Length From one brand to another, or even from one season to another of the same brand, it's very likely that the pellets you buy could be shorter or longer in length on average. This is very normal. There are several variables that determine the length of a pellet during manufacturing and any one of them could be different from brand to brand or season to season. How does this affect burn? Longer pellets will feed less fuel into the firepot with every rotation of the augur than shorter pellets. If everything else in the appliance stays the same, and the only difference in the fuel is the pellet length, the shorter pellets will provide more fuel to the firepot than the longer pellets. You will need to reduce the feed rate or increase air flow through the firepot to maintain the correct fuel to air ratio. If you don't, you could have incomplete combustion, leading to more and darker ash, blackened glass, a lazy fire, and lower combustion and heat transfer efficiency. Wood Pellet Density Pellet manufacturers compress the wood fiber to a consistent density of at least 40lbs per cubic foot. That means that if you fill a cubic foot container with the pellets (just pour them in), it should weigh at least 40lbs. But it's difficult to compress to that exact density consistently, so most pellet mills compress to 41lbs or 42lbs. It's not uncommon that the pellet could be as dense as 44lbs or more. If one bag of wood pellets is denser than another, it will deliver more fuel to the firepot with each rotation of the augur than the less dense pellet. If you have two brands of pellets, you can stack eight bags of one brand on top of each other next two eight bags of the other brand. The taller stack is the less dense pellet. Being less-dense or more-dense isn't bad, but it does change the fuel-to-air ration in the appliance. If you switch from a less-dense pellet to a more-dense pellet, you will need to reduce your feed rate or increase airflow through the firepot to maintain the correct fuel to air ratio. |
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Locations We Serve - Hatfield, Lansdale, Harleysville, North Wales, Souderton, Quakertown, Montgomeryville,
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Pellet