I second this. We stuck a Drolet insert into the fireplace and it's a night and day difference. Good wood and some reduced air easily yields an 8 hours burn time.
Welcome to the forum dotman17, hope you’re having a good time here! Whereabouts in WA? I’m in Lakewood.
Lakewood near Smokey Point or Lakewood south of Tacoma? I'm up between Snohomish and Lake Stevens. Thanks for the welcome, FatBoy. I'm guessing we have the same graduation year?
I got my ton of N.I.E.Ls for $230 so I'm guessing my $$/cord would go down than what you quoted above. Plus a cord of green wood out west during the off season comes nothing close to the cords of wood out there. You'd think it might be different -- but the quotes I'm reading from you guys make me envious of your prices. It seems natural wood is your thing and pellet fuel is our thing.
Same here. I drool over their hardwood cord prices, significantly less than a cord of DF here. But pellets are cheap! And I source my own firewood, so all is well.
The thing I'd like to contribute is these NIELs put out fantastic heat. You get 268 of them and they are dense. They take up less space. But they are a wee bit messy and you do have to store them indoors (we keep ours out in the garage). I bought a pallet for $230 in the greater Seattle market and at that price, I think they are worth it. In fact, I'll probably get another pallet when I'm out. But at $350? No.
What do you think about 380 logs/pallet @ $323/pallet ($0.85/log)? I think that's right around the same price per log that you can get them for. My wife and I have been looking for an alternative to cord wood, and tried the Bear Mountain bricks, but they leave quite a bit of ash in the box. Just started using some of these logs to test with this week, and have been pretty impressed so far. A cord of hardwood in our area is about $410 + delivery during any time of year. Pine/fir slightly seasoned can be had for $100/cord during the summer, but in the winter they go for $300/cord.
Coastal has some good deals and you can pick them up for $240 - sales tax. I think that's a great deal. We have about 10 logs of it left and I'll buy some more over the off season. Yeah cord wood is a ripoff here. Funny. In the PNW it's more than pellets.
That would explain the tendency for firewood to grow legs and walk off, as metalcuttr and Reloader have experienced. Roadside pickup
My first thought is these logs show you how inefficient your at burning wood. In a boiler you have to burn the wood efficiently and then you have to transfer that heat to the water. Lots of BTU's are lost right in this 2 step process. Lets all remember that to get the most heat/BTU's out of a stick of firewood it needs to be burned efficiently. That means a hot fire, lots of air and holding, mixing of smoke to make sure all the fumes get burned off instead of sent up the chimney unburnt. Turning down the damp/air on the burn makes for inefficient burns, less BTU's and more risk for creosote formation. Its a way of trying to get a longer burn at the expense of burning the wood efficiently. That creosote that forms on the chimney is smoke/unburnt fuel that an inefficient fire releases up the chimney. We all know how inefficient fireplaces are. Same thing, relatively efficient at getting a hot clean burn but most of that heat goes up and out of the house via the chimney. Wood stoves are better but still lacking at storing the heat/capturing the heat created and keeping it in the house. You can choke down a stove where you can't a fire place. But choking down a stove reduces the amount of BTU's you get from the wood. To get better use of what your burning and more importantly how much you burn you need to reduce the rate of heat lost in your home (insulate) and find better ways to burn and keep the heat that your creating in a fire. Easier said than done in the real world.
