The Last Hoooorah for this winter

Got a call last week from the nut plant manager that they were about done processing and that if I wanted to top off my shell storage that I had better do it soon.

I made arrangements to get in today and get my last fill em up for the season.

Took on about #4000 pounds in the truck and got them home and all barreled up, stored, the truck washed out, and myself through a shower and ready to head to the shop by 10:30

All went smooth (AS usual)

Here are a few piccy's that Pat shot from the deck looking down.

Hey, gotta love the feeling of having all the storage full.

This will take us through until summer and then leave plenty to start the shoulders with too.

Snow is forecast for this weekend so its a good feeling to know that we have plenty to heat with.

Snowy

Actually there was #4000 this trip. Just enough to refill the barrels that we have emptied during the season from about mid November until now.

The entire procees yesterday started around 8:00 AM with me unhooking the truck from the trailer and then hosing out the truck bed. ( I dont need any gravel and or sand left in there to find its way into the stoves)

After washing out the truck I drove down to the nut plant which is about a 15 minute drive or so.

Weigh the truck on their scales and then back under the huge hopper.
Next they open one of the gates on the bottom and dump in about what I want.
Back to the scales, then pay the manager.

Drive back home again, its about 8:45 now and time to get started unloading.

Get the barrels out on the patio and start filling them up.

Once full its time to lump them back into the basement.

I had a few barrels down in the out building that needed to be filled too.
Got that all done and those stored. There was still about a yard of material still in the truck so I spread it on the gravel driveway in front of the horse barn.

Hose the truck out so its clean and ready for work (my concrete folks won't appreciate shells in their sand)

Hook the trailer back up and park the rig.

TIME 10:30

Sooooo, Its about 2-1/2 hours from start to finish.

The biggy is always juggling my time available with when I can get shells and the WEATHER

I can't do it in the rain. The stuff will mold if its barreled up wet, not to mention, wet shells don't burn well either.

Yesterday was a quicky, last minute thing to get it done before the supply was all gone.

The plant starts processing about mid November to early December and depending on whether they are selling the nuts in the shell or cracking and selling meats only can make the differenc of when shells are available.


Last season it was all over by Mid January and we were nearly out by the time we could get new stock this fall..

Early this fall I purchased 10 more 55 gallon barrels to add a lot more storage capacity.

I am looking at possibly getting 5-10 more barrels this summer to really stock it up.

Juggling time and weather windows is always an issue, even when we did all pellets the weather was an issue some years.

Some years we have had great weather to do shells, with clear skies and cool temps.

Not this year, its been right between rain storms both times.

But all is well now and we are good until next November with ease.


Once we get through March, we will be home free. The usuage drops off and April, May and early June will see sporadic fires.


Last June saw the final fires of the season about the second week of the month, with a little morning spot fire or two to take off the chill.

All in all the nut shell thing is really not much more work than doing Pellets, as far as hauling them home and stacking them.


For us its purely the cost thing.

I paid $73 for yesterdays load.

Later troops

Snowy

The original post is #4000

Yesss it was Four Thousand Pounds
This equates to a cost of $0.01825 per pound or just a smidgin less than 2 cents a pound

Costs about 50 cents a day to heat the house on average. During the cold weather when we have both WHITS burning, it costs about a $1 a day to heat the house @2400 sq ft.

If we were to get a really cold snap with temps dropping into the teens or single digits the cost would be a little higher.

I generally run the stoves on the lowest setting and when one stove is not enough, I turn on the second one.

This practice is really good as it does not heat the stoves up reeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeealLY HOT.

The stacks stay clean and dry too with the shells.

The Quadrafire will not auger the shells due to the spring style auger used. The shells require an auger with full solid fights in the screw rather than the hollow center type use on the Quad.

Most any Pellet stove that has a regular auger can be tweeked to run the shells just fine.
Air settings, feed rates and in some cases the configuration of the grate must be modified a tad.

I added a rectangular piece of stainless steel with many many rows of 1/8th" holes into the bottom of the burn grate.
This just slips into the grate and comes out during cleaning.
This addition keeps the small pieces from just falling into the ash pan.

The whitfield also required a little bar in the center of the pot to deflect the shells and scatter them across the fire. Without the "scatter bar" the stuff tends to form a little mound in the center of the pot.

The bottom feeders seem to work really well with the shells as they simply push the old stuff out with the new.

As far as feed rate goes, there ism usually adjustments available to tweek things a bit.

Snowy

HAAAAAAAAA

Fuel abuse, Hmmmmm interesting analogy.

Last fall I scoured up 10 more barrels to try and have some extra storage, and to help prevent WASTE.
I would much rather dump ashes out in the yard than nut shells.

Sadly, the way they load the stuff there is no way to tell exactly what is in the truck volume wise and or weight wise until I cross the scale on the way out of their yard.

In actuality I would rather have enough to fill all my storage containers and then dump some than not be able to fill all my containers.

This is a never ending loop, enough containers and not enough shells, too much shells and not enough containers.
Buy more barrels, buy more shells, not enough barrels, too much shells. Soon, I would not be able to move in the basement.

Right after a fill up the basement is very crowded.
I start off using the smaller cardboard barrels, then stack them up on top of the larger steel drums.


Then I move on to the plastic garbage can that too, can be stacked up easily until the next fill up.

Once the aisle in the basement is a little wider I move to bringing one steel barrel at a time up from the out building and sitting it right inside the basement rollup door and using from it.

During deep winter a 55 gallon drum full will last about 5 days. give or take.

I have been snooping around for a 5 Cu yd steel dumpster with a good lid.
I can place this in the out building and then fill it up.

Later I can refill some barrels to keep in the basement.

Keeping the material dry and the rodents out is a high priority.

The little creatures will get in if they can and feast on the small tid bits of nut meats that pass through the process.

The first batch this year had a lot of meats in it. Much hotter burn than normal due to the oils in the meats..

Yesss, its sad to dump the stuff out but thats life.


Much of the shells go to the local paper mill to be used as fuel for their CO GEN plant.

There are a few of us that use it for home heating. but the need for a large truck and a place/way to store the stuff makes it tough for most folks to deal with.

A good sized trailer with a dumpster strapped onto it could be towed behind a larger pickup easily.

Build a storage bunker in the garage, shop or barn and you would be set.

The pellets being dense and packed in easy to handle bags does make it easy for most to deal with.

When things are all sorted out, the shells are a total waste product that must be disposed of.

Once I have the shells stored, there is no pallet/s to get rid of, plastic shrink wrap to toss, or plastic bags to worry about.

My entire heating is carried out with little to no environmental impact. The product did not cut down any trees or waste anything that could have been used otherwise.


The food crop was the reason for the waste product to exist.

Biomass fuel does not use any fosil fuel or ????

Don't get me wrong here, I am not a greenie tree hugger thats all worried about the environment.

NOOOOOOOOOO, its all about the $$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$

Some friends just refilled their oil tank and the price was $500, and that will not heat their house for more than a month or two if that.

$500 will heat my house for a couple YEARS or more.

Being very generous here, actually nearly double. Figuring 8 months that we use the stoves here, and using a $1 a day which is near double a times. 240 days (approx)

$240 for the entire heating season is a great price.

I think my actual cost per season is about $150 to $160.

This seaon I have spent $250 (aprox) on shells. Now a good percentage of this will be used to start next season in the fall.

I may start a score sheet and mark down every bucket of shells I carry up and do some acurate numbers next year.


Right now, I screen and carry up two 6 gallon pails every night. One goes into the stove between dinner and bed time (usually some early and the rest late)
The second one will be used to fill the stove in the morning and maybe a little bit left over.

Great stuff. Crunch Crunch Crunch. Pop snap crackle as they go up the auger.

Snowy

Yess indeed.
Beware, the swooping pigs !!

The bear traps sound ominous for sure. Auxilliary teeth :bug: Now that sounds nasty.

I can just hear the squeeling litle pigs all caught up in them "auxilliary teeth"

Do you spray the bear trap with arrisol "CLOAK" so them little swooping pigs can't see the traps ??


I had a large amount of shells left over the first fill of the season, so I dumped it along the edge of the road and put a sign on it, FREE

Nobody even touched it.

I figured someone would grab a pickup full for their flower beds, but nooooooooooo, not a single shovel full went away.

I finally spread it out with the Bobcat so the birds could pick through it.

No pigs showed up though.


Snowy

OMG, a swooping, Pink Piggy wagon.

Scarry for sure.

Snowy