You guys know I'm cheap as chit but it is nice having next to no ash in the stove after a few days of burning DF's......BUT....I still can't justify the $100+ additional cost per on on Firs......all of my stash of Firs were cheaply priced/bought
Good points above! Most pellet burning folks look at 3 things.....price, ash content, and BTU/lb. Different people prioritize different things. For some, its cost......they don't care about ash content, they do a good job of cleaning (yea, they all do! )....other, its BTU/lb......noone really comes in wanting the MOST EXPENSIVE pellet, but end up there, given the fact they want low ash and high BTU's.......just turns out that in my area, there is a HUGE amount of transport cost in those pellets from far away.....
frankly, the increase in BTU/lb is probably somewhat mitigated by how filthy the stove is.....probably a waste of money buying a good pellet if you arent willing to adequately clean the stove.....
Honestly, I see a difference in the stove temp with the DF's. If you have a stove that self adjusts to give you a particular temperature of course the temp will be the same. But when I use better pellets in the Englander, which just burns pellets no matter how good or bad, with no ability to change fuel/air ratios, and you get the temperature off the side of the stove.. there is a difference. The DF's burn hotter, and of course cleaner. for "me"... If you are looking for something to save you a bag a day, forget it. Dan
I assume that with a Harman, bypassing the room auto modes and going full bore with a constant mode running off of the stoves ESP would be the same as what you posted.?
Maybe I don't understand how that works. My feeling is, either mode, the stove is trying to keep a particular setting. If in room.. it tries to satisfy the 'thermostat'. In stove, it just sets at, say #3. In that mode, when in stove temp at #3, it appears that the better pellets, keep the side of the stove hotter. Is this scientific? is it the way it 'really' works? I don't know. Maybe it's my imagination. What I do know, is the other night, I put in a really good pellet, and the side of the stove was hotter. I'm not saying that is how the Harman works. I'm saying that is what it appears to me. That's all. Dan edit: Again.. in the Englander, which just burns pellets with no ability to sense what is in it, the stove is without a doubt hotter with good pellets. The difference is huge between junk, and premium. Not just ash.
All good advice my friend and I did just that 2 years prior unfortunately there was this surgery thing that put a Kibosh on the spring buying. Last year I was able to score 6 tons of Northern Max and 4 tons of Ambience with the Northern Max being at $229 a ton and the Ambience at $219 a ton. You can be sure that in the spring I will be stockpiling the pellets at a spring discount. I checked in on the Northern's and they had gone up to $280 a ton and that was early in the season(just post spring but barely) which was a huge increase, but I could not really do much as I was disabled even if I had them deliver that would have made it more expensive and I am not satisfied with the way they are protected I actually take it another few steps to ensure they are as they were when they were produced when I toast them. Hopefully and I know it will not be until I finish this first job with the new employer I will have more time to work on my house and conveyed that to both of the owners of the new company, unlike my previous owner they actually want to see that and understand how important it is to me. Why with the first job this is not a reality well because it is the biggest job they have done so far by at least 10 fold and it is a nearly impossible job to execute, it will take a lot of work to pull it off. After that I should be running much less difficult jobs as in much smaller and I am the Lead Superintendent so I will have Supers under me to bear the brunt. Hopper extension yessir that is a must for the cellar stove, I am OK with the upstairs stove just need to remedy the funneling situation with the pellets I like to burn. Thanks TT for the suggestions bud appreciate it as always .
All right here is my experience and unscientific response. I run my stove's on constant burn all the time which is controlled by the ESP. Now with that said the ESP responds to temperature of the exhaust and adjust the feed rate I would assume to maintain that temperature and it does a very well job of that even matching Harmans claim to maintain within 1*. I burn a chitload of pellets and here is my experience, with excellent grade pellets the stove does not load as often as the higher grade pellets burn at a higher BTU and thus requiring less of them to obtain the same heat or actually less of the loading cycle. When you burn as many pellets as I do to maintain a comfortable temperature in this old leaky house ash is critical as the efficiency of the stove decreases dramatically as the stove becomes dirty . Even with the rigorous cleaning regimen I perform it is ever more so evident that a clean stove burns significantly better than one that would not even be considered dirty to most typical users. Myself I have to run my stoves hard as mentioned before and its critical that I keep them clean or they simply do not perform to the criteria I need them to. There is not a significant saving of pellets burning premium or as some call them Super Premium but my experience there is a slight difference but more important to me is what I have listed above. Is Doug Fir worth that difference I say Hell no not with the pellets that are available out there now that perform as well for at least $40 a ton less and some as much as $100 a ton less. You ask well Luney you are listing in the whats in the Hopper thread that you are burning Doug Fir well that is only because I have them and only because I drove 60 miles for another softwood pellet that they ended up not having so I said Fluck it I'm going home with something and the Doug Fir is what they had. As long as the Matra's, Logik-E softwood and Northern Max at a decent price are available I will never purchase Doug Fir again, at least if I spend the rest of my life on the east coast.
I got a couple of bags of DF's a couple of years ago and my P61a was not overly impressed (still plenty of ash - very hot though). However, I got 20 bags of Matras (white pine I believe) a couple of weeks ago and they have impressed me and my stoves. My usage went down (not a bag a day - but went from 2+ bags/day to less than 2). Lack of ash is nice too. My experience is I save pellets with the WP's while running my stoves on room temp. They put out a great amount of heat. With my P61a, only evidence is that it uses less. But the P43, that is on a thermostat shows the difference very clearly. The thermostat is set at 70* in another room. It calls for heat when the temp reaches 68.5* and shuts the stove down at 70.5*. With decent pellets (TSC MWP's for example), by the time the stove has shut down the thermostat shows the room temp is at 71*. With the Matras, by the time the stove shuts down it is 72*. The P43's ash pan needs cleaning about every 3 weeks on the MWP's. With the Matra's it appears as if it would be less often (don't have enough of the Matra's to know for a fact). Do the Matras produce enough heat to offset the extra $$? I don't know, but at $300/ton I am still pretty impressed since middling pellets usually run $250-$260/ton. If I could get the Matras locally then I would certainly get a couple of tons. Unfortunately they cost me a couple hours to drive, plus the cost of gas, so I won't be going that route.
I have been burning good softwoods for past couple years now and my ash has been much less than any hardwoods I burned previously.. there may be some hardwoods out there that do the same job as the EZBlaze premo softwoods i use as far as blazing heat and low ash and i would prob try them if they we're available to me here... never say never....
I'm burning a pellets at the rate of 1 bag every twelve hours. That puts us officially in the two bag a day club... but I still burn wood upstairs so I often only burn only one bag.... but it would be two. February cold streak has hit us.
Look for some Cubex / Northern Max as they will be just under in the ash department but equal if not better in the BTU.
