Pellet heads!! What's up today?

Just hit -10* here (low was supposed to be -6, but at these temps, a couple degrees more or less doesn't really matter). Still plenty of time to go lower since the skies are clear and there isn't any wind.

Both stoves are on stove temp and I'm using the feed rate to control the house temperature. P63 is burning longer pellets so I have a feed rate of 2, P43 is running shorter pellets with a feed rate of 1. Downstairs is at 72* . Main floor is 70* in my office and 75 in the living room. Garage is at 35* and the therm guard is running water thru the FHW pipes every 8 hours.

 

I've never understood why pellet prices in the east are always substantially more than in the Midwest. You have the production facilities out there so transportation cost should be less and the cost to produce should be the same as here (based on last season this season prices). Factoring in inflation at 7% or so, next season (fall 2022) prices will probably increase at least $30.00 per ton. My off grade seed corn supply also worries me. While not an issue this year, the cost per bag of seed corn has increased substantially already. A lot of growers around here that are rethinking their planting regimen because the price of shelled corn really isn't commensurate with input costs (fertilizer, fuel, herbicides and pesticides and even equipment costs) so a lot of growers around here at least are leaning toward crops that have a better per ton return (like soybeans which are currently at 11 bucks plus). Less seed corn purchases means less grown and the grower down the road also grows soybean seed and wheat seed, so things are volatile on that end as well.

Not gonna be a good year for row crop farmers this tear anyway because of the inputs and a lot of local farmer had a bad year this year anyway due to the weather. Farmers can only take a few bad years and then they fold. Farming in an interesting business in as much as you have to project your P&L based on a product you haven't even produced yet. It's a very risky business.

I've already had to raise my per bale cost for hay due to the input cost, least my customers understand that. Inflation is a viscous circle and everyone looses and not trying intentionally to sound political, but, the current administration don't seem to be able to grasp that fact.

I'll most likely trundle down to TSC and buy 4, maybe 5 skids of pellets today. I have the room in the barn to store a hundred skid or more if necessary so storage isn't an issue and the Michigan Hardwood pellets they have are excellent pellets, with very low ash content and burn plenty hot too. Looking at next year more than anything else... Hard to predict but if what is transpiring in the market today holds true next fall, $230.00 a ton will be a bargain price.

On the home front, it's a balmy 11 (f) presently and according to NWS, it will stay unseasonably cold for at least another week but no precipitation to speak of (snow) and I'm all good with that.

Strange times we are living in. One has to project a ways ahead and hope what they do will pan out.

 

COL is much higher than in the midwest. Housing is limited so rents and cost of buying much higher. You gotta cut thru granite to lay any water lines, put up electric poles etc - or run those thru swamps, plus gotta go 4' down to get below the frost line etc. - all that mitigation is costly. Wages are higher (must be to afford housing), power costs are higher. Transportation costs are higher, not only because of higher wages, bu because the gas has to be trucked/shipped here before it can go into the trucks to haul timber to make the pellets and then haul the pellets.

 

Currently 12° here in the pines. Burnin some chows and staying nice and toasty.

 

I'm waiting for mine, hopefully will be here this week sometime... I'll leave it on the default setting I imagine because we have forced air and I just want the furnace blower to circulate the heat throughout the house. I did add a dryer vent bypass to the exhaust duct on the dryer (Menards had them on sale for 12 bucks) and I bought a 3 pack of gallon plastic mesh paint strainer bags with drawstring tops to use as lint filters. No point in wasting the dryer heat and humidity out the exterior vent and my wife is always washing and drying something anyway.

Got up at 5AM and the house was at 65 (11 outside). I cut back the stove at night and the furnace is also cut back to 55 and resumes normal temp (68) at 6AM, so it's running as I type this plus I've ramped up the stove to HR7 as well. Once the temp reaches 68 inside, the stove will cut itself back to the set point I have on the thermostat and the central furnace won't run again until tomorrow morning.

Still on my first tank of propane (with a full tank shut off). I'll run this tank down to 5% and open up the other. I need to bring the full one down about 10% in order to receive the full 500 gallons I pre bought at $1.45 a gallon this last summer. The shop heats with in floor pex fired by propane and the floor temp is 65 and steady. Once the slab is hot, don't take a lot to maintain the temperature plus I have another biomass stove in the shop so when I'm in there, I fire that up for additional heat.

Not windy here, glad of that but the barometric pressure is high so no cloud cover, hence the cold temp. I really need to install a new battery in my buggy as the old one is getting petered out and I have a new one in the shop on a trickle charger but it's just too cold to fiddle with it plus I need to fire up one of the farm tractors and put the forks on as I need to move some skidded fertilizer from the big barn to the small barn where the spreader is at. That will be joyous, listening to it bang and clang as the diesel warms up. Diesels in general don't like the cold and it takes some serious battery power to get them started. I always warm them up for at least 15 minutes at high idle before I attempt to move them. The oil is thick from the cold and like me, they don't really want to move... at 71, I fully understand that.

I welcome the cold with no snow cover in a way because the cold will kill of overwintering bug larva and allow me reduced usage of chemicals to keep the bugs out of my hay fields. Have a big issue here with potato leaf hoppers and they can decimate an alfalfa field pretty quick if left unchecked.

Just think, in a few short months, this will all be just a memory and we will be back to mowing lawns, washing cars and wearing flip flops again.

 

During cold cold weather we do not shut the stoves down on a lower setting at night.
Once this spread out Ranch Style house cools off (And everything in it) it takes a lot of extra heat and time to get things back up to being comfy again.

The goal has been to maintain a comfy temperature and just keep it there.

We had a major power outage back a few years ago and at that time we did not have a gen set..

House got down to 46F indoors and it took a long time to get this shack back up to temperature again. And this was not during a major cold outbreak either.

We try to keep the indoor temp at 70-72 F .....
These past few days the weather has been pretty moderate with daytimes in the 50F range and near freezing at night....

The big stove on #3 setting will hold it until the weeeee hours ...and by 4am when I roll out it will be 65F in the far reaches (Over by the little stove...it being off)

This morning it was about 65F over there....Tossed a fire in Weeee stove and cranked the big boy up to #4

By 7am it will be about 74F in the bulk of the house....Daylight by 7:30 and we have some decent weather expected......

Likely shut down the wee stove for the rest of the day once the temps are up

Musical stoves....

Trying to juggle which stoves to operate and how much in order to keep it comfy is a real crap shoot.
Wind, outside temp, outside humidity.........

A good dose of snow on the roof and this place gets real cozy......

Great fun....

 

Exactly...
Game of greed disguised as "market conditions" For example used cars are being sold for more than they cost new, and new vehicles have a section for dealer items that include a "market adjustment" of +$20K over MSRP. Also demographics, wages are generally higher so they just jack up the prices. Make no mistake they have figured out exactly how much they can charge and get away with based on it.

There are multiple mills in every state around here never mind Canada, there is a shipping port 60 whole miles away in Boston that supplies oil and gas and who knows what else so spare me that excuse. It's well known that it's just demand which is why fuel oil and gasoline "unexpectedly" skyrocket in the winter. People have to have it, so pay the price or freeze.

 

My big thing is holding my RH at as close to 50% as possible and also my big ongoing cost because we have to fill it with distilled water as our well water with it's high calcium content, kills a humidifier element in a day or less. I'm a 'frequent flyer' at the grocery store loading a shopping cart with 2.5 gallon jugs of distilled water. I usually buy 10 2.5 gallon jugs at a time because more and it's impossible to move the shopping cart around and of course then I have to dispose of the plastic jugs and I won't landfill them because the plastic will sit there for hundreds of years so I roast them in the burn pile along with cardboard boxes the Chewy and other assorted stuff comes in. We have really turned into Internet shoppers this past year or so. We tend to do the 'hermit' thing. I cannot afford to contract the Wuhan flu, it would most likely kill me with my underlying condition and my compromised immune system. Don't like to sleep when it's too warm, I prefer cool and so does my wife.

 

The good thing around here is trash burning facility's, which is absolutely the smartest thing to do outside of shooting it into the sun. Everything is sifted and sorted so anything toxic or valuable is taken out and recycled. Then it is ground and burned in a air injection furnace suspended in air, so it burns near 100%. Destroys bio hazards and the fumes are sent through enormous rooms where it is filtered and the heat is used to make steam turbine electricity.

People love to scream about how awful they are, but I don't see them cutting back on their consumption any to actually do something other than waste oxygen running their mouths. They think it's better to put it in the ground (as long as it goes somewhere else first).

 

Yep,state of the art burners are the way to do it.

 

Out here,if looking for something,facebook marketplace is the place to search. Craigslist is almost dead.

 

Beats he hell out of tossing all the junk in land fills.....
Steam turbines are a great way to make electricity....All ya need is a heat source...

Get a Tsunami or an earthquake ...or other debacle...worst case scenario...the fire goes out or the stack switches shut the burner off.

No radioactive mess that lasts a billion years.....

 

you need stand alone or insert? I will soon have an insert I’ll be selling for a song.

 

oof. That’s rough. My new harman cast iron gets installed in 3 weeks. Moving to stand-alone.

I’ll keep an eye out for you.

 

Hey! I get sensitive about these things!

 

If your lucky.