My worst were Boreal softwood from Canada. Some of the pellets were 3 inches long and jammed my auger. They were clean but no heat at all. I have used Nations Choice which is my 2nd least favorite and the only problem was I had to clean more.
My worst we're O'Malleys Hardwoods.. hands down longest pellets in the Universe.... good heat but left behind Super hard speedbumps.. i'm takin full bore chiseling to get them off...
Up until 3 days ago I'd say I'd agree with you about the Curran pellets. I tried them two or three years ago and they were junk. But on the weekend my local dealer had Curran hardwoods burning in an Enerzone and they looked good and felt hot. So I bought a few bags and have to say my P61A loves them, they're burning clean and hot! Maybe they did a lot of work on them for this burning season. For me, I'd say the worst I ever burned were the Granuels LG. Clear bag with blue lettering. No heat at ALL and just evaporated from the burn pot!!!!! When my girlfriend started into them I was working afternoons and she left a note asking me to look at the stove because she thought it was broken as it wasn't outputting much heat. Luckily I only had 30 bags or so.
You werent alone. I didnt think the lgs where the worst pellet I have ever burned but I agree the heat was virtually non existent
Thanks. I also forgot about Curran Blend. I had to buy a ton a few years ago. There was nothing else to be had. They turned my stove black.
Yeah, Curren Blend ain't all that good. But did burn some pine bedding pellets from TSC that were worse (the dark ones apparently are the wrong ones). I'm currently running out the rest of the Curran's blend that I got last year (3 tons of cr*p as far as I'm concerned) and can't wait to get back to the ThermaGlos - that is how bad they are
My local TSC is loaded up with the new white TSC bags with a Curran UPC. The bags indicate they are hardwood, not a blend. Anyone burn these before? Not sure if they are worth trying. The pallets are wrapped similar to North Americans where under the main clear wrap, there's an extra piece of white plastic shroud covering the top few rows of bags.
I didn't have much luck with Easy Heat and Freedom Fuel from last year. In both cases, I burned a few test bags. My third ton of pellets last year: ThermaGlo I did not have good luck with these pellets. Heat output was so-so at best. I have my stove hooked up to a wifi t-stat and it will graph the room temp over the course of a day. When I used these pellets, I noticed more of a drop during the day than the others. Also, these were some seriously ashy pellets. Using other pellets, I could go about a week between cleanings. With these, the ash was touching the base of the burnpot in a few days; and effecting the flame pattern. I wrote an e-mail to the company. They said they hadn't heard any issues and they would have engineering look into it and get back to me. That was the last I heard.