With Cheap Oil Prices Anyone Else Not Buying Pellets This Year?

In 2008 I bought the pellet stove because oil was up at ~$4/gal and it was way cheaper to heat with pellets. Best price around me now is $259/ton @ HD. Local Pellet seller has MWP for same price (other better brands higher of course). TSC is higher than HD.

Filled up 2 oil tanks for $1.39/gal. According to this calculator it's way cheaper for me to use the oil boiler:
Fuel Comparison Calculator for Home Heating

I have 34 bags left over and I am not buying any this year. Some fires to relax by some nights and weekends only. Screw em...

 

I stopped spending 50 bucks a week at Starbucks so I don't mind paying a bit more to heat with Pellets..
like the steady/constant heat of burning...

 

Just checked oil prices from the COD guy, and it's $1.82 a gallon. Already starting its move higher for the winter in my neck of the woods. I burn wood now, but when I did pellets, the good old days had Energex at $169 a ton. They were one of the few suppliers at the time. With more mills coming on line the price only went up from there. Crazy.

 

screw who?.....wake up next month and oil is $5.50

 

You have to have a sharp pencil to keep ahead of the game. Like oil, it has higher BTU's per gallon than Propane, but then propane has a lot less maintenance costs than oil...and if you price check the cost per BTU which is like .0000000010 as a fraction, I have always found propane and oil have the same price. So add in the less maintenance costs from propane. and it is therefor cheaper.

The same goes for pellets, versus firewood, versus coal, versus propane, versus oil. Some years one is just plain cheaper than the others. This year coal is extremely cheap. Its running at $250 a ton! With a heat value at 1 ton of coal to 2 tons of firewood, that is a lot of heat for your buck. But last year propane was. The year before pellets had the advantage.

And while we all would like to say firewood is cheaper than anything, today I did a farm tour of a big dairy farm and they probably had 75 cord of firewood at the ready. The thing was their firewood pile was full of mat logs. I would say at least 20" of it could have gone for mat logs. I ship 50 mat logs and clear $1100. If they had simply separated out their mat logs, and cut (or even bought tree length firewood) to replace it, they would have made a lot more money. Even now I see some gorgeous hardwood logs be cut up into firewood that could have been sold with the money going to buy their oil/propane/pellets/or coal instead.

Oh yes Brother, I am with you...heat your home with whatever is the cheapest. Options man, options!

 

The guys that saved you money in the past?
Why not just say, 'this year I will burn something else'?
And when/if the prices are lower, I will go back..
Why wish bad luck on someone for something they have no control over?

Dan

 

If you don't want to buy pellets because the cost more, sounds good. But if oil goes back up, and you have no pellets to fall back on, you can bet the pellets will go up also. They will say their cost went up, but the truth of the matter it is all supply and demand. The price will be what the traffic will bear. My thought is burn your cheap oil, but have a back up of pellets, wood, coal.
Me, I plant to use some propane and pellets. Pellets to keep us warm and propane to keep the upstairs family warm.

 

Cost? What is cost? What is true cost?

Let's talk firewood

• The cost of firewood varies a great deal.
  • Do you buy it by the cord?
    • Anywhere from $175-250/cord depending on how green you get it and your location.
    • You still have to stack it you care.
    • You need to bring it in the house.
  • Do you buy it log length and process yourself?
    • I pay $250/load which equals 2.5-3 cords.
    • You can but trailer truck loads for $850 locally around here which would yield 7+ cords.
    • Need a chainsaw and at a minimum a maul. More than likely you need a chainsaw as a splitter.
    • How much do you make per hour at work?
    • How many hours does it take to process said wood at your works hourly rate?
    • You still have to stack it you care.
    • You need to bring it in the house.
• Do you cut down wood from your property and process yourself?
  • Chainsaw to cut it down.
  • More than likely you need a method to get that wood out of the woods.
    • 4-wheeler? Tractor?
  • Maul or a splitter.
  • You still have to stack it you care.
  • You need to bring it in the house.

While some of the above costs money out of pocket, much of this labor of love is done by oneself. Sure you could quantify the 8 hours spent on a Saturday at $20/hr or $160. However; most people that process their own wood truly enjoy it. For me and many on this site, we don't bother to quantify the hours as dollars spent. It's the old adage, wood heats you three times. Once when you cut it down. Another when you split and store it, and finally when you actually burn it.

Let's talk Pellet's

• The price of pellets tend to swing in many areas based on supply.
• Many purchase their pellets by the ton. Which requires you to pay someone for delivering your pellets to your home. In other cases, homeowners drive to the store and buy it in smaller quantities to try and reduce the cost.

(I'll need to finish this tomorrow.)

 

My take has always been to have options, otherwise its like the two contractors that live next to me. Each one goes to the John Deere dealership and the Cat Dealership when they are about to buy a new piece of equipment and try to work one against the other for a lower rate. The thing is, the guy to the right of me has a yard full of John Deere's and never buys anything but John Deere, while the guy on the right buys only Caterpillar. In the end they are fooling themselves if they think they are going to get a better deal. The equipment dealers already know their choices and just placate them with no special pricing I assure you. About the only thing they get is the use of a new piece of equipment for a few weeks that they won't have to pay for. And honestly, I think they only do it so they can list a things they hate about the opposing manufacturer.

I am not brand loyal to much of anything unlike my neighbors. Yes I only buy Stihl chainsaws, true Hershey chocolate syrup, and use only Listerine and not store brand mouthwash, and other then a few things, that allows for flexibility and thus reduced cost. In an ideal situation, a homeowner would stock up on whatever commodity is cheaper and heat their home with whatever is cheapest at the moment, saving or selling the rest as the winter turns towards Spring.

I learned long ago that firewood comparison is utterly impossible. I can make the utmost strongest case for it, and yet turn around and make the strongest case against it. WAY too many variables. For instance the point of having to own a tractor or ATV to get wood from a person's own forest. That is true, but I bet 90% of firewooder's also use that ATV or Tractor for more than just firewood a good part of the time. In my case, I use a bulldozer, but I have a farm and use it for a lot more than logging. Even acreage matters. For a person with 10 acres, a mat log is worthless if you don't have 50 of them to make a load, and in that case using mat logs for firewood makes much more sense, but a person with 50 acres certainly could justify cutting mat logs and selling them and using the money to buy conventional home heating products.

 

Oil is currently $1.75 a gal. Around here I could probably get through the winter on 300 gal. That's $525.00,I bought 2 ton of pellets at the end of last year at $200.00 a ton that's $400.00, I have never burned more than 2 ton a year to heat my place so pellets are cheaper for me.I will still burn about a 1/4 tank of oil on those days and nights it's not quite cold enough for the pellet stove.Even if pellets cost more I would be heating with them because we like the constant warmth and the wood heat.

 

We do too , my other option is electric No thanks Have close to 6 ton on hand some more on reserve with my buddy Joe from Bucks and always on the look out for more .

 

First, I bought a bunch of tonnage last year for $99/ton during the fire sales. So, I won't be buying pellets this year except if I see a brand I haven't tried - then it will be a couple bags here, a couple there. I also bought 3 tons of Okies for the price of lesser pellets around the same time, so I'm sitting on over 11 tons at present.

For me, even at today's price for FSU's at the BBS, $259/ton, it is cheaper to heat than with propane. Propane has a high cost for me (over $3/gallon), and the FHW is only run thru the main floor. I have a pellet stove on each floor, so can heat both spaces for less than I would spend for propane hating one floor. Sadly, I'll still spend a couple hundred bucks soon to have the boiler serviced. It really needs cleaning and the pilot light lit - it blew out last spring during a horrendous storm, and I just shut off the gas at that point.

This place can go thru 200-300 gallons of propane a month keeping it at 68* for the main floor only (based on winter of 2013-14), With pellets, I go thru 4.5-7 tons to keep it 70+ on both levels (based on last two winters)

If the stoves haven't already paid for themselves (one bought new and one used at a ridiculously low price), they will this year in savings for me. My circumstances are different from yours, or others, so I say burn what you want (oil, NG, propane, wood, pellets, coal, corn etc.). Heck, I don't care if you spend exorbitant amounts on your fuel of choice - as long as you don't ask me to pay for it

 

I actually looked into compost heat a few years ago. I nearly tried it since I have the ideal set up for it.; a concrete pad for sheep manure close by (I am a sheep farmer) and radiant heat. The two are perfect for each other since both use low temps and mass to heat so it would merely be using a pump to transfer heat from the compost pile to the my homes concrete slab.

This is the issue with that however.

I would have to dedicate a few acres of grass or corn ground for the compost pile, then put it up slowly interlacing pex throughout the pile, then add tons of water...about 9000 gallons. Well I live on a hill so I would have to pay the fire dept to truck that much water in. So while it would work, why not just go out in the woods and in the same amount of time cut firewood to do the same thing? Or cut two loads of tree length firewood and sell it and buy propane. Or sell the firewood and buy coal...you get what I mean. Tons of ways to heat a person's home.

I will admit though that compost heat still interests me. Others have successfully done it, but its pretty rare here anyway.

 

$275 here, green.

 

Like the new avatar

 

Cheaper here: Firewood, 3 cord dry mixed firewood. Cut and split, 16" lengths. You haul, $200 per cord. 1 cord dry oak and maple firewood. 4' lengths. You haul, $150
this is right here in Chelsea.

 

The "you haul" makes a difference.... the $275 is delivered......

Dan

 

I get $120 a cord for tree length firewood (green) delivered with a pulp truck within 30 miles; 9 cord minimum.

 

How much for one cord, cut and split, delivered?