Cord to Pellet conversion

I don't know how long the body is going to allow me to do the wood routine.
I use about 4 cords per year. Looking into the cost of pellets for a year worth of heating. What would an average conversion of cords to pellet weight be?

 

Totally unscientific, but I figure a cord = a ton of pellets = a tank of oil.

 

Somewhat scientific answer is 1 cord = 1.5 tons of pellets. Other calculators may differ slightly.

 

To do this with much accuracy you would need to know about a cord of what? Cottonwood or hickory.

A pound of wood equals a pound of pellets.

A cord of wood can weigh a little or a lot.

 

Pellets should have a minimum of 16,500,000 BTU / ton.
If your firewood is well seasoned (only 20% moisture), you should get 18,000,000 to 20,000,000 BTU/cord.

The fuel price comparison tool comes out at about 1.13 tons of pellets to a cord of firewood. But, that's price not BTU.

 

All of your math assumes a relatively low density of firewood that shows your source’s bias towards pellets. Firewood people know that a cord of poplar has way way less btu and weight than a cord of oak. Even my Doug fir softwood has 20 million btu per cord.

quick google search says red oak has 24.6 million btu per cord. White oak has 29.1 million btu per cord. If we use your 16.5 million btu per ton of pellets we are looking at 1.8 tons of pellets per cord of white oak.

Do the same math for eastern red cedar which is 13 million btu per cord and it only takes 0.8 tons of pellets to equal a cord.

So there’s a range.

Wood Heating | Forestry

 

Oh and don’t forget, you can buy pallets of compressed wood firewood logs that are also ready to burn in your current woodstove. A lot like pellets really but without the noise and electronics. Sort of a transition fuel.

 

I was where you are now. As an example, I had a some hardwood trees cut down in my backyard for a new leech field to include having the logs cut into 16” lengths. My next door neighbor asked is he could have the wood, which I happily agreed. He spent a three-day weekend carrying, splitting and stacking the wood in his yard, amounting to approximately two cords. A week later, I called a pellet supplier and they arrived and placed two tons of pellets in my garage, taking about ten minutes. The other advantage is that in my wood-burning days, it was not fun going outside to grab some cordwood and then after bringing it in, cleaning up the bark, mud and sometimes bugs that came out of hibernation. Now, I walk into my attached garage, grab a few bags and have no dirt, snow, ice or bugs to be concerned with.

 

I would go with Scot Linkletter 's calculation unless you have a steady source of higher BTU species.

Cordwood may have more BTU's, and be lower priced (especially compared to the super, duper premium pellets), but one advantage is that you can regulate your house temperature better, and pellet stoves are self feeding so you may only have to feed it once a day (+/- depending on weather and house insulation). However, be aware that the bags are 40#, so may not be as easy for you to work with as wood. Of course if you CSS your own firewood, bags of pellets are a lot less work in total.

Lots of advantages using pellets, and I wouldn't go back to a wood stove unless the apocalypse happened and there was no electricity. But, wood stoves also have their advantages (like being able to heat without electricity), and as mentioned above, compressed bricks are now becoming somewhat mainstream.

 

Good point bogieb and jtakeman , there’s more to the story than just btu equivalents and steady state stove efficiency. Control. Most wood stoves are unable to provide constant, controlled heat to keep a house steadily warm at a certain temperature. Pellets stoves are like little furnaces, instant on and off on a schedule and/or thermostat, they aren’t wasting fuel by overshooting temperatures or by running when your home is not occupied.

 

I think when I went from supplementing the woodstove with a pellet stove to running two pellet stoves and no wood, it wound up being about a ton (or maybe just over, by say 10 bags), per cord of wood; i.e. if I was going through 4-5 cords of wood, I would now use in the neighborhood of 5 tons, that's comparing pellets to Oak (Red & White)/Hickory mix for cordwood. The consistent temperature of the pellet stove vs woodstove is great, you only have to load once a day and the time it saves in handling alone is a good trade-off (not to mention no more wood mess indoors).

Make sure you get a good heat producer, I prefer the P-Series Harman's because they are pretty much bulletproof, have large ash pan buckets, are IMO the easiest to clean and will burn most anything without worry (BTW, for the difference in price among the P series Harman's go with the P68 and never look back). There are others that can pump out the heat too, But I know only from my experience that the Harman's keep purring for years, one of my 61's is 20 yrs young. I did have to replace the feeder weldment on that stove two years ago, but that is from years of burning very low and not using it to its potential.

 

5 cords of red/white oak is a LOT of btu! Does an oversized pellet stove like a p68 run on low hurt the stove?

 

It really doesn't care for it.. IMO.
It's really meant to throw some heat.


Dan

 

Hurt the stove? I made it for 18 years on the P61 before I had to replace the feeder weldment from running at lower settings, so it depends on what your idea of hurt is. The burn pots no longer have the holes closer to the end of the feed tube, so its hard to say if that will ever happen again. Both the P-68 and the P-61 are made to where they achieve a lower BTU rating than a P-43, so that leads me to believe it doesn't really hurt them, but I'm no expert, just using my personal experience.

 

I never said it "hurts" them.. just that the stoves get a lot dirtier,
running them on low/low..
Glass gets dirty faster, and the carbon cakes grow faster..
They seem to happier, working a little.

Dan

 

"Hurt the stove?" was in response to Highbeam's question, not your comment, he had asked if it hurt the stove.

As far as getting dirtier, and getting the glass dirty, I don't know what I would compare it to, I've never had issue with either, I do burn Hardwood pellets as opposed to softwoods, but that's by preference (I use the same in the Englander's too without issue). My Harman's generally get a quick cleaning about every ton (the Englander's require much more attention), and all stoves get a thorough cleaning at the end of each season. I usually scrape a little carbon build- from the ramp of the BP's on the Harman's (easily removed with the Harman cleaning tool) during the quick cleanings, but don't get the "cakes" you mention.

Since I use room temp, mine are usually ramping up & down at least a few times a day so that probably helps things. That being said, I would rather have the extra capacity and not need it than need it and not have it.

 

This is why I asked. Wondering if there were drawbacks to running low. I know it really gunks up my woodstove! Also, in my case, I would like to try a larger p61 or p68 in my shop which needs high output but also have an option of moving that p61 or p68 to my home which has a much lower heat demand if we ever needed to stop burning cordwood in the house. I didn't realize that a p68 has a lower low and higher high than the p43. That was not something I would have guessed.

 

Yeah, burning low doesn't seem to hurt my P61a. Sure, gets ashy, but I use middling pellets anyway. I also run mine on a thermostat, so it starts up and shuts down when it needs to. So, it will be running at a good rate for a little while, enough to get the pipe nice and hot, then gradually shut down. During the worst of the winter, I may convert to constant burn, low for a while (could be 10 hours, could be days), but I just try to remember to get it at a high burn rate for about 10 once a day. the Exhaust doesn't usually get gunked up - I just clean it every ton or so - and that is just ashes so it comes out nice with the leaf blower trick.

I'm with nitro-fish and would rather have reserve capacity than not enough. If I have to, the P61a can heat the main floor too - not as nicely, or evenly as having the P43 going, but it will still work in a pinch.

 

Hello
I really like this realistic comparison!