Oh in a heartbeat if my body would go along with it, but that isn't going yo be. Plus I have to consider the wife. She has had three joint replacements so wood lugging is not realistic for her. She does ok with the pellets because we have devised a way that has limited lifting. We pull the bags off the pallet and into a cart. Pull the cart right into the house. We have a ramp over two steps. We sit the bag on a stool with a bucket next to it. Put a v slit in the bottom side and the pellets slid out into the bucket. Just keep other buckets lined up so none of them are too heavy to lift up to pour into the stove hopper.
$423.50/ton with 1 ton being equal to 121 gallons of oil and oil at #3.50/gallon ETA: I don't want to have to count on finding, the delivery of or hauling pellets during the winter.
I agree....even though i have a pellet house less than a mile away, I would rather not be at their mercy.
All stores in my area have a 10 bag limit right now, I got 10 bags of InstantHeat from one place and 10 bags of North American Pellets from my local TSC. Not sure of the quality of either of these brands but it will have to do......
Both are on the lower levels of heat output and ash. If it's all you can get and you're desperate, they'd have to do. As for the Harman eating any kind of pellet, that's true, but so does my 10-cpm. It will burn from Infernos all the way to Oakies or Cubies, along with corn, cherry pits, grass, or coffee pellets. The Harman just senses low output temps and ramps up the feed, so you'll get the heat at the higher expense of more pellets burned over the same time period as a higher quality pellet.
Thanks for the input guys, I haven't burned pellets long enough to know what's good or bad. I should be able to get my Barefoots next week, they are getting a truck-load delivered sometime next week.
Little birdie told me that http://www.pellets-r-us.com will have a truck of Douglas Fir first thing in the morning tomorrow (Feb 22nd)...but don't be late, or they will be all gone....
Doug, when the hell are these going to make it to PA? I think a place or two in Middle/Southern New Jersey carries your pellets which is basically the same if not farther distance from the bagging plant, no?
Bag limits suck. Haven't been back to the big box stores since Feb 5th when I got my last ton but will have to go check it out and see if they have anything and if they are rationing.
"The Harman just senses low output temps and ramps up the feed, so you'll get the heat at the higher expense of more pellets burned over the same time period as a higher quality pellet." So I might use 10% (high side) more pellets to achieve the same heat level with $210/ton Pellets as compared to $300 to $360/ton pellets. If you put your money in high price pellets, pay again and again. Put your money is a higher efficiency stove and top off your insulation, pay once. Do the math; not so difficult to figure out.
I looked at their site.....I would choose the Vermont Woods ihatepropain....VWP are a very good pellet and have a great following... But that is why Baskin and Robbins has 31 flavors...something for everyone. Not everyone like strawberry...
Doug, when the hell are these going to make it to PA? I think a place or two in Middle/Southern New Jersey carries your pellets which is basically the same if not farther distance from the bagging plant, no? Honest answer to this is when I can get enough to fill ALL the demand from current customers and need to take on more cause I can't sell everything I can bag....And that isn't the case right now...OH, PA, western NY, etc just doesn't support the same price levels for us as most of NE does, so we go where we are supported most and can make a profit. I think most people think we make way more margin on these than we actually do and so we have to maximize that for the distance/time involved for how much effort is involved...Now if you know of a bagging plant closer to your market w/extra capacity then we would probably take a serious look at seeing about more supply into that market....Since we started bagging in MA our volume has increased about 5 fold, but we still can't supply all the demand....granted this was a really cold/long fall winter in the NE ....but we are very happy with our growth. I have one customer in NJ and 2 in NY, with one of those on Long Island....I have had several dealers call me this year from PA wanting to stock our pellets (especially the DFir) but it's expensive to truck that far west from our bagging plant in MA and so far no takers....maybe when things slow down some in a couple of months, I will put some effort in expanding our reach, but so far my supply can't supply the current demand....when I started to build this market in 2008, I had to have the softwood/hardwood discussion about 5-6 times a day with new potential dealers....we don't have do that anymore and the brand is much better known of. My dealer count is a little lower today than it was two years ago, but the dealers we do have for the most part, are selling more each season than when we started out and most see their sales on this same upward growth path for the coming year. That said, I think all the better brands could probably state this...its not that I don't want sell your market, we don't have the extra supply right now....next year that might change, but until it does, I will try and help current customers with more if they want it....
