Oil vs. pellets

Dave, How many SQ FT are you heating if I may ask? I wish I could get by heating for $830 a winter. Lucky Dog!

Yeah. Did you steal them? LOL

I have recently found Greenways for $205 per ton and Somersets for $219 a ton locally which is a good price. I have not burned anything other than 6 tons of Sets and a ton of Pros last season and both were good. A local friend said he likes the Greenways and that's his stash for the season.

At these prices pellets are a cost effective heat source but Dave sounds as if he gets to double dip this season. Cheap oil and economically priced pellets. No oil option here but I would heat as cheap as possible if I could. Did wood for many years but it's just not feasible for me right now.

It's when I see a ton of pellets going for close to $300 a ton and north of that my eyes bug out and chin drops. That's where oil being cheap now is a very viable option for those who can utilized cheaply priced home heating oil.

bags said:

Dave, How many SQ FT are you heating if I may ask? I wish I could get by heating for $830 a winter. Lucky Dog!

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The house is 1600 square feet, the thermal glass enclosed porch with the pellet stove in it is about 400 square feet. So, 2000 square feet total. The house is single story.
The view side of the house is all thermal glass and the porch was originally just an outside deck. I enclosed it and insulated the roof and floor. We used to keep the sliding glass doors to the porch closed in the winter, but still lost a lot of heat through the glass on the house and the glass on the porch. After installing the pellet stove on the porch, my heating costs went way down. We now leave the sliding doors to the porch open all winter to let the heat from the pellet stove into the house.

In the winter, the temperature can get down to 20F but not for a long time, usually it is in the thirties and forties. If we get any snow, it stays for about a week or two, winters are mostly rainy.

Dave
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Yes, your temps help some vs. some of us that get consistently colder temps. I was out at Ft Lewis in the late 80's so I have an idea of your weather. Still $830 total for an entire heating season is a great number. Some here would probably pay that is two to three cold months just heating like the vast majority without wood or pellet options supplementing. Plus you are heating about an average sized place everyone else here is doing plus or minus an little.

$830 is highly respectable. My hat is off to you. I thought I did well last season for right under $1,400 with 2,350 SQ FT but you have almost cut that in half with only 350 Sq Ft less. I also heated from Oct 18th thru March and into the first or second week of April so right at 6 months. It was a nasty and cold winter here but I am happy with my costs and warmth. Cheaper oil and realistically priced pellets and you have it whipped.

The house next door is a rental, it was built in the '60's, with little or no insulation, it has very large single pane glass windows. It is heated with a forced air oil furnace. One of the tenants said that he was moving, after a winter in that house, it was costing him almost $700/ month to heat it. It was a colder than usual winter though and oil prices were high.

Dave

DneprDave said:

With a pellet stove, with the local pellets price of $200/ton, X 2 1/2 tons = $500 Dave

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You always get great pellet pricing but you're nearer most of the softwood source pellets!

Pretty sweet!

Just bought 200 gallons of oil and I have two mixed tons of Okanagan platinum, La Cretes and stove chow. I imagine that will get me through most of the winter and I will probably buy more oil if I run out of pellets if oil prices stay the same.

Jason845845 said:

Just bought 200 gallons of oil and I have two mixed tons of Okanagan platinum, La Cretes and stove chow. I imagine that will get me through most of the winter and I will probably buy more oil if I run out of pellets if oil prices stay the same.

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That's the beauty of this heating season, you can scrimp on pellets knowing oil is cheap and an excellent alternative money-wise and convenience-wise.

Up here in New England where we do get winter weather I intend to supplement the oil with a few pellets this winter. I can keep the house at 73 that way, a temp I would never do with oil alone at any price because the upper floor would be far too hot that way and suck far too much oil . I might use two tons this winter. And the shoulder season will be on oil most likely. I'm not looking at pellets till late Dec except a test burn or weekend burn if I want one. I'm sure I will supplement the oil in Jan and Feb, thats kind of a given.

The latest report on imported oil here in the US that I know of is far east oil is less than 5% of what we use. we get far more from Canada, even Mexico, not to mention our own, though we mostly export ours for what ever unknown reason.

Pete Zahria said:

More accurate to say that pellets are North American...
Without Canadian pellets, we would be up the creek....

Dan

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Do they use pellets in Russia? They got a crapload of trees.

Hello everybody. Everywhere I look in the Hudson valley the prices are mostly the same. From $269 at HD, Lowes , and Walmart. $289+ at my local pellet stove store. I just can't believe the jump in prices. There are tons of pellets to be had everywhere I look but at these prices I might burn the black gold for a bit and wait to make my pellet purchases. You guys and girls think that's a good idea, to wait to buy pellets? Should I just get my 4 tons now or should I wait a bit and hope prices come down a little?

I would go with whatever is cheaper for you. If oil is cheaper I would stick with oil. If oil goes up or pellets go down you can always switch.

Last year I had a very hard getting pellets. I wanted La Crete, but my local suppliers were out. One dealer told me the plant was shut down (E-mailed the plant in Canada "not so" the problem was with trucking: truckers wanted a return load, and they had problems finding one). Second dealer was out, third was expecting delivery quickly, but never received any more La Crete. My pellet pile was down to 10 bags, and it was getting cold. So I paid more for Okie Platinum that finally arrived with snow already on the ground. I like Okies, but for some reason they didn't seem to be outputting the heat. This year I wanted to buy early. My first dealer was already out of La Crete in early August, the second wasn't even listing them for sale, but the third had Spruce Point with free delivery so I opted for 3.6 tons of Spruce Point. I've tested them before in my Castile and they were on a par with the La Crete's. So I am sitting on 4 tons of pellets.

Keeping the discussion with the original post I am trying to find the calculator that is somewhere on this forum that was used to calculate the breakeven point of oil verses wood pellets. Anybody have the link?
I also am wondering if I should burn some more oil this winter, and save my pellets?

americanenergysystems.com has a cost savings chart you can load your $$ for several fuels. Couple others if you google pellet fuel conversion

Thanks bioburner. Running that calculator my break even price for fuel oil would be 2.65 a gallon, and I am told oil is well under that.

Just don't know how long the oil will stay low as last couple days the markets have been pushing oil back up. Will enjoy the gas stove more this winter and back way off the corn and pellets. Still very hard to beat corn at 3.65/bu

smalltown said:

Thanks bioburner. Running that calculator my break even price for fuel oil would be 2.65 a gallon, and I am told oil is well under that.

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Most certainly is and oil will stay low for a while. One of the items holding up treaty with Iran is how to control the downward price pressure that will occur when millions of barrels of Iranian oil hit the market. Saudi's are pumping like crazy to keep the price down, win more market share and slow down U.S production, which as already occurred to some degree. Even in the Northeast, traditionally having oil prices higher than most anywhere else, it's down to around $2.00 a gallon if you look around.

This is actually a great development for heating this winter as last year's "get your pellets before they run out" mantra will most likely ring hollow this year. All the pellets you want this year at $300+ per ton and if not, a lot of us will have an economical alternative.

Been burning pellets since 2008. Haven't bought oil since 2011 since we bought the second stove.

Made up my mind yesterday, to buy oil. Pellets are at 259 in northern NH, oil is at 2.03. Went on one of those sites that figures these things out. Using oil is about 15% ahead of the game over pellets. At 66, and in good shape, I think I'll take a year off from lugging pellets. There is no doubt in my mind, that it won't be long before it's more advantageous to burn pellets, but not this year. I'm sure we'll still lite the stoves on occasion.

Tom

Smart man Tom!
Save your money! I still cant understand why so many people want to spend more for pellets when oil is easier and cheaper...

You're right Mike.

When oil is $4.00 per gallon, I'll lug the pellets, no questions asked. But, when oil is $2.00 per gallon, I pick up the phone and call the oil man.

Tom

Oil price today, 1.85. Should be cheaper on Monday, as it went down today.

Peterfield said:

Most certainly is and oil will stay low for a while. One of the items holding up treaty with Iran is how to control the downward price pressure that will occur when millions of barrels of Iranian oil hit the market. Saudi's are pumping like crazy to keep the price down, win more market share and slow down U.S production, which as already occurred to some degree. Even in the Northeast, traditionally having oil prices higher than most anywhere else, it's down to around $2.00 a gallon if you look around.

This is actually a great development for heating this winter as last year's "get your pellets before they run out" mantra will most likely ring hollow this year. All the pellets you want this year at $300+ per ton and if not, a lot of us will have an economical alternative.

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On the AP wire this morning:

http://bigstory.ap.org/urn:publicid:ap.org:8b4df9a41c694df788512c7a6f8179c4

Basically, all market indicators support downward trend in oil prices.

Bloomberg.com posted an article yesterday that the only reason oil wasn't tanking faster was that the Chinese are stockpiling a reserve that has a way to go to match that of the US. US reserve I believe is 700 million barrels