Wood Pellets or Natural Gas - Supply issues

Lake Girl said:

No city water here - draw directly from the lake. We're on a piece of bedrock but ran the line along an area where it drops off and back filled but can't remember the depth. 1-1/2" line with internal heat trace inside 6" pipe with expanded foam. Back to the drawing board...

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None here either that is why the well line is well below the "frost" line by several feet.

Neighbor has a water line in his barn and that is well wrapped and has heat tape.

My poor chickens with the water heater even had problems on more than a few occasions, luckily I only had to break the ring around the outside and remove one section. The heater works just fine until the temperature gets down below -10 F.

If I could get NG on this lot I'd have it already, used to have it in the big city. Nearest location is too far away.

So wood pellets it is (got to have something the boss can handle). While I have the time wood is just too time consuming, would rather spend it playing in the garden.

Now I best find out what it is that has my stove not feeding correctly. I'm waiting for it to cool off so I can finish emptying the hopper, I suspect I have a bed of fines that the auger is just tunneling through instead of moving along causing a feed volume reduction.

SmokeyTheBear said:

Put'em down deeper and really insulate all tap lines

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Did this when the well was put in , water line is 5 FT down and 2 inches of insulation on top.

http://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/toronto/enbridge-seeks-40-natural-gas-price-increase-1.2572366

If the Canadians jack the NG price, the Americans will follow....more pellet shortages may come also as more people look for cheaper sources of energy, but like I said the pellet gouging factor might come into effect also...........

hyfire said:

If the Canadians jack the NG price, the Americans will follow....more pellet shortages may come also as more people look for cheaper sources of energy, but like I said the pellet gouging factor might come into effect also...........

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According to the article I read, the 40% proposed increase might raise the cost of heating from $1000 to about $1400. While a big increase, it still puts NG heating at the low end.

Doing the math 1 cubic m NG cost me 28 cents after all the BS fees. 1 cubic meter holds 35000 btu of energy. 1 bag of wood pellets has 336,000 Btu. This is = 9.6 cubic meters NG. This works out to be the same as paying $2.69 for a bag of pellets, if this goes up 40% then its $3.77 a bag equivalent. SO yes its still cheaper....for now!

If NG goes up I suspect pellets will go up in price. Our society is very dependent on NG.

hyfire said:

Doing the math 1 cubic m NG cost me 28 cents after all the BS fees. 1 cubic meter holds 35000 btu of energy. 1 bag of wood pellets has 336,000 Btu. This is = 9.6 cubic meters NG. This works out to be the same as paying $2.69 for a bag of pellets, if this goes up 40% then its $3.77 a bag equivalent. SO yes its still cheaper....for now!

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Wow, that works out to about $0.80/therm. We're paying more like $1.50 /therm around here. However, Maine has the 3rd highest residential prices in the US behind Hawaii ($4.70/therm there!) and Florida.