I drove 2 plus hours to see joe and grab a few bags. I loved it there. I also looked at real estate for future retirement, took the old lady some shopping and her favorite restaurant ( waffle house) pellets open the door for enjoyable day trips. Lets see oil or gas do that
They can't call it #1 , because then everyone would know that's what they be doing to you [ middle finger salute ]
many who are going to burn oil don't add the close to 200.00 per year to have the furnace serviced and cleaned which consists of waaaay more than a scraping and a vacuuming. yes I know.. some guys do it themselves but most need to call a tech out to do it correctly. My not well insulated house will drink oil like a drunken sailor regardless what the cost of oil may be so no real savings there for us.. I like the steady heat of a pellet stove as opposed to my baseboard heat.... warm up/cool down/warm up/ cool down/ rinse/lather/repeat.. btw: was just up to see Joe few weeks ago to do a little trading...
The last winter I heated with only oil, I spent about $1200 and the house wasn't any warmer than 64, and that was when it was 'warm' out. Now I have the wood stove, pellet stove, pellet furnace and oil furnace. Lots of things have to go wrong before I'll go cold. Pellets would have to get a lot more expensive than they are now before I'd abandon them as a heat source. I don't mind the bit of extra work. If I didn't haul bags of pellets, load the furnace and clean it out, I'd probably put on an extra 10 pounds over the winter. I will say that if I had natural gas available, pellets would probably be more for ambiance than anything else. It's no concern of mine what someone wants to hear their house with. You can burn oil, propane, natural gas, pellets, treasured family photos, it's your business. Edit - I should add that it was 2005-ish when I last used oil exclusively. I got the wood insert in 2006 and first pellet stove in 2007. Oil was a lot cheaper then.
Welcome FunFlyer! I agree what ever works for ya!! Seems some are getting flack because pellet pricing went loony! Its all about using your best viable option. Some of us don't have but pellets as the most viable alternative.
I dunno....I also kinda like the fact I can work on my pellet stove, understand it, with parts not too confusing and readily available. As for the oil burner, well, a little more confusing. Ive cleaned my own burner........and if you think cleaning a pellet unit is dirty, try brushing the heat exchanger on a boiler sometime!
I don't touch the oil burner.... Ever. I have a great guy who does that for me at a reasonable price.
I just looked in the LP burner last night and O-M-G. I was actually checking to make sure the thermostat was still connected as I was pulling wires out from an old doorbell and managed to grab the thermostat wire first (couldn't figure out why I couldn't pull more than 6-8" ). Once I figured out my issue, figured I better turn up the stat and see if the burner went on. Oh, it went on alright and I was looking in there at all kinds of spider webs, dust bunnies and crap that looked flammable right under the flames . Fortunately, I shouldn't need to run the boiler for another month or two (for keeping the pipes from freezing) so I have time to find someone to clean it.
R/C pilot only, helicopters and fixed wing. Spent 32 years in the Air Force as an aircraft maintainer, mostly heavies, Engine Tech, Crew Chief, QA Superintendent.
