Pellets look excellent. Just blah for heat. I think I barely got 40LBS. for density. That's why I called. I didn't think they were in spec. Was told 40 was exceptable and most of their tests said well above 42LBS.
Fred Meyer is weird like that. Some stuff priced normal, other stuff is stupid expensive. Also the prices wildly fluctuate.
I don't know of anyone that heats with pellets either. I grew up in Northern Maine. Lot of folks going with rice coal which is hauled up from PA. There's a dealer in Easton for the stoves and coal.
Pellet sales, stoves and fuel is a hot item around here. Oil is just too expensive. I know a lot of folks with good incomes that don't put up with being robbed blind by fossil fuel. Pellets are being sold nearly as fast as they get them in. Certainly that is the way at the box stores where you can get them for a reasonable price. We have natural gas just coming into this area. Doubt that will influence most of us because they are only installing it in town on the densely populated streets. Seldom see wood being burned in those areas. Most all the big business are in the process of converting to gas. They should see a huge savings.
There's a stove dealer on Rt 1 just outside of Caribou. He sells Quads and seems pretty busy. For some reason everyone up that way loves NEWP. He didn't have too much good to say about the Northeast pellets. Then again, he didn't have much good to say about Harmans either.
Didn't like the Harman, that is very telling about him! A lot of the dealers I ran into would say how costly they are, but usually they avoided saying anything negative about the quality of the stove.
That shouldn't influence you. While big business is moving to Nat Gas, no one is increasing the capacity in the NorthEast which will have the effect of driving up prices negating the near term savings.. One disruption to one of the pipelines and people are going to be walking by your house wondering why you're hanging out in a t-shirt and shorts on a day with single digit highs.. Just My Humble Opinion. "Temperatures in New York City hit 7F on Jan. 22, a day after the price to deliver natural gas into the city spiked to a record $123 per thousand cubic feet on the spot market. A hundred miles away in Pennsylvania’s Marcellus Shale, the biggest natural gas field in the U.S., the same amount of gas costs 35 times less......" http://www.businessweek.com/article...ord-natural-gas-prices-due-to-pipeline-dearth
that spot market sh!t has gone too far. Now it is spot greed. All the more reason to kiss it good by and be independent.
For now....I cannot imagine that wood/wood pellets/biomass will not be speculated and traded in the future. I believe this is time frame will be looked back on as the glory days of pellet heating..... I hope I am wrong because I LOVE burning right now and saving a ton of money, but I don't see the savings lasting.
I agree. Will be interesting to see if it affects the pellet producers in the Northeast. They may have to stockpile material, produce when electric prices are low (spring and fall) and follow the lead of some of the paper companies in Maine that have to shut down and lay off their workers if the price of electricity exceeds a certain amount. Not sure how much electricity is used in the production of each bag of pellets. I would assume that they use biomass to dry the pellets which would lead to more price stability.
Each mill is different how they dry their fibre. Some use hog fuel, some electricity and some air dry....but every mill uses the juice to run the place and I have two mills that I know of that can't expand, cause they can't get the extra electricity from the grid...unless they build their own co-gen plant to the tune of about 8-10 million....Pellets are traded in EU on the Amsterdam exchange...and I agree, I think you will see a gradual trend up in price going forward
I wonder if that's the same dealer I remember? Has a sunroom type thing off one side? I think coal has been popular because its cheaper maybe?? I'm not sure exactly.
Well, if they make the pellet future's contract approximately equivalent to Heating Oil on a BTU basis, that would mean that one contract would consist of a little over 300 tons. With pellet mills scattered throughout the country, it would be tough to write a contract specification that would minimize point to point shipping costs. If "they" do begin trading pellets, it is likely that a small percentage of what is produced would actually be traded on a futures exchange. The down side is that this small percentage would end up setting the price for the rest of the market, much like crude, gasoline, and diesel (heating oil, diesel and kerosene). Time to stock up!!!! Okay, what was this thread about?
That's the way I remember it. The sunroom is on the PI side. Sit's on top of a hill. May even be called Hilltop Stove Shop.
