Pellet stove off for now. How many others

I won't shut down unless oil drops to $2 per gallon or lower.

I shut mine down but not because of oil prices... I woke up in the morning and it was 67 in the house, I guess I had the stove dialed to low for room temp auto. Wanting to warm things up a little quicker I turned it to ~75 and flipped the dial to stove temp. Went off to work and came home to an 82 degree house. Forgot to switch it back to room temp.

This is one of those seasons that makes those Douglas Fir pellets a little less rosy. If you're buying pellets at $330/ton, then you're about at the break even point for oil heat. If you're buying at $235/ton, then the price goes down to $2.00 per gallon. (per the DOE heat calculator sheet).

For me, I'm not shutting the stove off yet, but at the same time, I'm not as worried if it runs out overnight as I was last year.

My oil burner runs away with the oil like a .......... , well you get the point !

My stove will heat the house better than the oil burner does anyway, and at $2.80 per gallon for oil, nah, I've paid for the pellets, so pellets I'll burn.

Oil needs to fall to $1.60 or less per gallon before I put the oil burner back on fulltime. The only time the oil pig is running is when it's really cold outside and I have the stove shut down for cleaning, about 90 mins total.

Not me. I have electric heat. According to that DOE spreadsheet, pellets would have to cost $900 a ton before they reached the same price as my electric heat.

Harman newbie said:

this is my first year of using a pellet stove and was wondering if anyone has shut theirs off due to lower oil prices . Oil dropped to 2.65 gallon here and going lower. I have 3 tons of ok firs in garage and was wondering if it stays low should I keep them for next year. Thanks for erything

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I might think about mixing oil heat with pellet heat in my house when the price hits $2.25. But to go all oil then every month I have to replace the oil and right now I own pellets. Turning to all oil now would double my heating cost for this winter in a sense ( ya I know I'd still have the pellets but mine are dealer stored). Meanwhile oil here is still at $2.89-$2.93 so not even a thought yet.

I'm down to about 5/8 tank of oil. Normally, I would wait until I'm almost empty for a refill but I may top it off sooner if I seen anything that suggests that oil prices will start climbing.

kofkorn said:

This is one of those seasons that makes those Douglas Fir pellets a little less rosy. If you're buying pellets at $330/ton, then you're about at the break even point for oil heat. If you're buying at $235/ton, then the price goes down to $2.00 per gallon. (per the DOE heat calculator sheet).
.

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The problem with these calculators is they go based on BTU output of the fuel only, not BTUs into your house. There is a certain magic associated with pellets that is not taken into account. Could be 'right sizing' of the furnace to the job or 'true efficiency' (usable BTUs into the house), or something else. I just became a (pellet stove) cult member this year, using the calculators said I will need 3 tons to replace my normal oil burned, so far it looks like 2 tons will do it at my present burn rate. If you talk to some time pellet burners to compare oil vs pellets burned, you will find the same. Based on that, I think $250/ton pellets = Oil at <$1.50/gallon.

Heating oil at $2.75 a gallon here. Thing is there is no real way to determine how much I'd use versus pellets. A true calculation would need to take efficiency into condideration. If you compare raw BTU expense I'm saving about $80 per ton of pellets used. Not earth-shattering but not quite chump change either.

TimfromMA said:

I'm down to about 5/8 tank of oil. Normally, I would wait until I'm almost empty for a refill but I may top it off sooner if I seen anything that suggests that oil prices will start climbing.

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Last I knew we were at 7/8 full. Our tenant has had the heat on over there but that place uses squat compared with the main house so it might be down to 3/4 by now. So our oil burner runs anyway, it just doesn't use much to heat that apartment..

SteveA said:

The problem with these calculators is they go based on BTU output of the fuel only, not BTUs into your house.

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I somewhat agree with you. These sheets are only looking at broad generalizations, such as BTU/lb for pellets which varies between 8000 and 9000. But this particular one does account for the appliance efficiency, which is the ratio of Btu input to output.

In my case, I'm using this sheet as a basic comparison, not gospel. I've got a full tank of oil and four tons of pellets on hand now and I'll be using both throughout the winter, as the oil furnace is the main supply for my hot water and a backup for my heat.

All I know is that I've replaced 600 gallons of heating oil with 3 1/2 tons of pellets. I'll use whichever is cheaper.

bcarton said:

Not me. I have electric heat. According to that DOE spreadsheet, pellets would have to cost $900 a ton before they reached the same price as my electric heat.

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Same here, electric everything in our house. Last winter (before the pellet stove) was a nightmare. It was running non-stop to keep our house at 64 and we still got a $500 electric bill. I couldn't imagine how high it would have been if we tried to keep it at 72 like we do with the pellet stove.

Edit: My November electric bill was $99, last November was $240. Granted I used ~12 bags of pellets @ $5 a bag that's $60 so im still saving over using the electric heat.

Same here....
furnace would drink Oil Like a drunken Sailor if we we're to keep our house at 72-73 degrees..regardless of the price per gallon.
what's the point of using more at a lower purchase price? your gonna fill up again sooner so where is the savings?
No way do we go back to living with 67 degrees just to Conserve Heating Oil..
250.00 ton for pellets and we stay warm 24/7.

mr47930 said:

Same here, electric everything in our house. Last winter (before the pellet stove) was a nightmare. It was running non-stop to keep our house at 64 and we still got a $500 electric bill. I couldn't imagine how high it would have been if we tried to keep it at 72 like we do with the pellet stove.

Edit: My November electric bill was $99, last November was $240. Granted I used ~12 bags of pellets @ $5 a bag that's $60 so im still saving over using the electric heat.

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That's ok, the real saving will show when the real cold weather shows up.

All things factored in (HDD, efficiencies, cost per unit and equivalent BTUs), to break even oil needs to be at $2.52 per gallon for me. That means no vacuuming, no cleaning and burnpot scraping, no lugging bags, no added electric for distribution fan, no added noise of unit, more even heating of entire home (not bad now but no issue at all with oil), and reduced airborne dust from pellet bags. Need to figure on a price that that is worth to me, to come to a real world break even point and save the pellets for when oil spikes again!

I prepaid for my oil this year for the first time in a few years. You all can thank me now for the fall in oil prices. I wont be heating the house with oil at all at the price I paid, although I only bought 500 gallons which should last me 18months of heating water. Sitting on about 3.5 tons still so Im all set for the remaining winter.

If I am going out and have just cleaned the stove and it's mild outside, I have at times flipped on the oil heat set at 62 and a few times it kicked on before I could get back and fire up the stove.

I feel at times I should be going to confession because we feel guilty our house is so warm and we are so comfortable compared to using my trusty old wood stove, we don't even want to venture out and when we do, we are looking forward to walking through the door back into our toasty lair.

Don't have oil, have propane (which is way less efficient than oil). Oil is still over $3 here, and propane is at 3.39.

This time last year, keeping the main floor at 64 degrees, I had already used about 300 gallons of propane (I moved in November 15th last year). I have burned right about a ton of pellets at $259 for the ton since September. Doing the rough math, says I got another couple of tons to burn before I even hit the $$ I burned in propane in one month last year (during the warmer part of winter - you don't want to know what I spent in January!). That is heating the downstairs with pellets to 72 and the upstairs to 76. Oh, and another important point is the downstairs doesn't have FHW registers so during the winter and heating with propane, the basement was about 50.

Factoring in the cost of the stoves, I will break even in a very short time!

Harman newbie said:

this is my first year of using a pellet stove and was wondering if anyone has shut theirs off due to lower oil prices . Oil dropped to 2.65 gallon here and going lower. I have 3 tons of ok firs in garage and was wondering if it stays low should I keep them for next year. Thanks for everything

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If you would have saved your money and bought cheaper pellets to burn in your Harman, the $2.65 a gallon for oil wouldn't look so good.... My opinion, save money on pellets.... After all that is why I got into pellet burning. To save money....

TimfromMA said:

I won't shut down unless oil drops to $2 per gallon or lower.

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Oil would need to be about $2.00 per gallon to match the low price of heating with pellets at $260 per ton.

mepellet said:

If you would have saved your money and bought cheaper pellets to burn in your Harman, the $2.65 a gallon for oil wouldn't look so good.... My opinion, save money on pellets.... After all that is why I got into pellet burning. To save money....

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But some are penny wise and pound foolish when it comes to pellets. Assuming that cheap will get you more bang out of your stove can backfire profusely. If you enjoy cleaning your stove daily, having clinkers the size of marbles, and minimal heat production due to such foul buildup that your stove can't breath, then buy the cheapest crud you can find. I'd personally rather purchase better pellets and have a good burning experience. I paid 300 per ton, and it burns HOTTER THAN HELL, and CLEAN AS A WHISTLE!