Heating Oil vrs Pellets.[whole story?]

MadMax31 said:

I love the short-term memory by alot of oil burners. One cheap season and they forget not 5 years ago they shelled out 3.50-4.25 a gallon.

Click to expand...

Oil is not the only fuel that varies in price. I'd say the same is true for any fuel. Oil and propane seem to be the most varied price, but natural gas, electric, pellets, and firewood have all changed over the years too. The ultimate in low price certainty is having your own woods for firewood. Beyond that there is no certainty on price or even availability. Of course the average over the last few years still show pellets being less expensive than oil/propane but with pellets steadily increasing and who knows what with oil/propane...

So, I'm late to the game here, but I'll chime in. I am in the "I burn pellets strictly for the cost benefit" group. I run a basement stove in a finished living space in my 2,100sq ft ranch - and use the air handler on the furnace with the cold air return in the pellet stove room to distribute heat evenly throughout the home.

So, this year started out with Propane at $1.79/gallon and pellets at $269.99/ton plus delivery, so for 4 tons I'm like $287.50/ton. With 336k BTUs in a bag, and a 75% efficient stove, I was looking at $11.41/day for the 500k BTUs my home typically consumes. Propane being 91k BTUs a gallon and a 93% efficient furnace I was looking at $10.58 for the same output. On top of that I have to factor electricity - when I run the gas the air handler runs 6hrs/day ($.50/day), when I burn pellets it runs 20hrs/day ($2.00/day). So, that's a no brainer for me, the pellet stove is a bunch of work - cleaning every other day, keeping fed, stacking 4 tons of pellets in my basement. Total daily cost is $13.41 with pellets vs $11.07 for gas, plus I don't pay out a bunch of time to maintain the pellet heat.

At the end of the season we now have Propane at $1.84/gallon and pellets at $200/ton. If I were to buy 4 ton now (for the same comparison) the daily cost of pellets falls to $10.66 vs. propane now at $11.37. I'm still more than willing to pay a 41 cent convenience charge to not have to fool with the stove on a daily basis. When propane goes back up, as I'm sure it will, I'll be happy to start saving money with the pellets again, last winter they were the way to go and saved me hundreds of dollars. Until then, that iron stays cold unless I need some rare heat down in that part of the house - I do keep like 10 bags on hand for "just in case" situations where the propane runs out, furnace quits, etc.

For 5 seasons I burned the pellet stove full time in the winter when oil was high. The pellet stove is on the first floor. The first floor was adequately warm in most rooms, the second floor bedrooms were cool, but comfortable for sleeping. The cellar where my workshop is located stayed around 42F - 45F, which was not conducive to playing down there in the winter much.

With oil priced at less than $2 a gallon I've gotten into a different mode where I run the oil furnace during the day set at around 67F and switch to the pellet stove which is located in the living room at about 6PM in the evening for extra warmth and ambiance. At about 11:00 when we head to bed, the pellet stove is shut down, and the oil furnace thermostat is programmed to kick back to 55F for the night until 6AM where it's set for 62F and then 7AM to 67F. The cellar during the daytime is now about 62F and the workshop is usable (I'm retired, so I can play during day )

So long as oil remains "affordable" this scheme has worked well.

billb3 said:

no one in new york knows how to set up zones in hot air and hydronic systems ?

Click to expand...

I'm sure there are for considerable amounts of money.

bogieb said:

I don't burn oil, so really don't have a dog in this hunt. But to go purely by published comparisons of a million BTU's for January (not withstanding the on-off cycle of traditional heating systems and perceived comfort), oil just edges out pellets in cost in NH. A key part is not shown on that page, but another linked page - this is an average cost of deliveries to customers that use at least 925 gallons/year. And of course, the more you burn, the less the cost - that adds in government contracts/schools/large mfg's (most of which own their own tanks and can negotiate prices), but leaves out a lot of homeowners who pay more than that average and/or are tied to a company because it owns their tank.

View attachment 174869

And since my boiler burns propane, and I am charged about $1 more per gallon than the published price, it should be obvious why I burn pellets

Click to expand...

It may be different in Maine, but typically oil delivery costs nothing additional, and everyone I know owns their oil tank. And, I use about 650 gals of oil a year, if I don't burn pellets, and my last fill, 2 days ago, was $1.37/gallon. Not sure why NH pricing is so much higher. I'm not on a special pricing plan either. No pre-buy, nothing. My oil cost records only go back to 2008, but this year has been the cheapest by far. Pellets will have to keep dropping in price for me to even think about wanting to buy a few tons, though I will definitely keep an eye out for super firesales. $150/ton, that'll perk my interest.

I am not a pellet burner and have a wood insert. I really haven't used the insert much this winter and have been just running the furnace. Im saving my wood for when oil goes back up. I have had a handful of fires on those really cold days/nights otherwise I have just been running the furnace.

Here are some real numbers from my Venstar Thermostat. The high run times from last week was because I was away on vacation and we had record cold here.

I tune my own oil furnace so I know the exact firing rate/oil consumption per hour.

My furnace is a 2 year oil Carrier high efficiency forced air. House is 1800 sq ft from the 1960s and is insulated.

Furnace has a .68 nozzle so it burns .68 gallons per hour of run time.

I filled in late Jan for $1.29 a gallon

So far my monthly run times have been almost exactly at 75 hours.

.68 gallons/hr X 75 hours = 51 gallons X $1.29 = $65.79 montly oil cost.

$66/mo, wow that is cheap. We are running about $100 with full time pellet heat (propane back up) in Northern Mi.

Doom and gloom for pellet and stove sales until the next energy spike.

How many square feet?

Great that you can heat for so little this season!

I have an old oil boiler vs a brand new pellet boiler. My efficiency is a great deal better in the new system so am losing a lot less heat up the flue with my pellet boiler. Tough to determine exact break even for me but I would guess I'm getting close at $1.80/gallon. All things equal, burning pellets is supporting a local small business that is trying to get up and going vs the evil empire. Just my 2 cents.

I second buying local fuel if possible. Our pellets are made 25 miles away and are sold for a reasonable price, plus delivery only comes to $5/ton.

reallyte said:

Let's put this way. For the 62f furnace temp it's 1200$ a year vs less than 900$ for Pellets at 72f in my living room.

Click to expand...

Huh?, i've bought 300 gallons this winter @$1.39 x 3 = $417 for oil, alot cheaper then 4 ton's at $250 = $1000

Pellet-King said:

Huh?, i've bought 300 gallons this winter @$1.39 x 3 = $417 for oil, alot cheaper then 4 ton's at $250 = $1000

Click to expand...

How do you figure you would have used 4 ton of pellets this year? I am tracking to use 1/3 of what I did last year. I am guessing the last year you used oil you used a lot more than 300 gallons or else you would have never started using pellets.

Luvmesomesamples said:

How do you figure you would have used 4 ton of pellets this year? I am tracking to use 1/3 of what I did last year. I am guessing the last year you used oil you used a lot more than 300 gallons or else you would have never started using pellets.

Click to expand...

Everybody's setup is different, but on average, his 300 gallons of HO is thermally equivalent to 2.5 tons of pellets. Even so, oil would have been cheaper for him.

Yeah I figure $417 of oil at $1.39/gal is roughly equal to $600 worth of pellets. ( $250/ton)

Anyone ( like me) who figured oil prices were going to go up even more three years ago and invested in a triple pass boiler are kinda glad they did despite ROI being extended a little. For those of us who also burn wood or pellets to further cut our oil dependence - well we had options this year.
Looks like Natural Gas prices are expected to slowly rise so anyone with primary natural gas will probably be watching pellet prices.
We had a odd warm Winter. Even with a repeat next year I think demand for pellets is going to go up ( despite what happened this year).

Luvmesomesamples said:

How do you figure you would have used 4 ton of pellets this year? I am tracking to use 1/3 of what I did last year. I am guessing the last year you used oil you used a lot more than 300 gallons or else you would have never started using pellets.

Click to expand...

This is my first yr burning oil full time, I have been burning pellets for 18 yr's, before that 15 yr's of burning wood, don't miss cleaning/lugging pellets at all nor buying/stacking either

Let's see - I heated my basement to 73* for roughly $5.00 the last 24-30 hours. Residual heat traveling up the stairs plus the solar gain from yesterday kept the upstairs at 72-73.

If I had used the boiler to heat the downstairs, it would have been about 50*. Oh sure, would have been zero $$ since there are no pipes run down there

Luvmesomesamples said:

How do you figure you would have used 4 ton of pellets this year? I am tracking to use 1/3 of what I did last year. I am guessing the last year you used oil you used a lot more than 300 gallons or else you would have never started using pellets.

Click to expand...

Believe it was 500+. Old house mediocre insulation.

Sorry for jumping in late, but the fact is we will never get the whole story. Each person has a different book. Its like saying Ford vs. Chevy or BK vs. McDs.

Everyone has a preference, some go for the deal, some stick with what they know, some don't care about price they want what they want.

I hope you'll forgive a newbie for jumping in here, especially one that hasn't burned a single pellet yet! But I lived in Texas for almost 22 years and am in transition to Oregon, where I'm building a small cabin. The question has come up about why I'm not putting in an oil burner, with my cabin so small and oil prices so low. It's a good question!

The answer is that I don't know what's going to happen with oil in the longterm. I do know what's happening in Texas now, though. Even the most conservative parts of the state are building huge solar farms, just as they built huge wind farms several years ago. The Gulf States of the Middle East are also going to renewables, even electric cars and public transportation. They'll be happy to fuel our cars and homes even as they transition to green technology for theirs but they'll name the price.

I doubt that cheap oil will last. I think that as more players get out of oil and as demand for oil in the US gradually decreases, prices will rise because of fewer rigs, refiners, suppliers. But who knows? The Gulf Nations are so stinking rich they can sit back and manipulate the market without putting a dent in their fortunes. Meanwhile, I saw a figure that more than 60,000 oil workers in Texas lost their jobs last year and that number is growing this year. I don't know how many more "boom and bust" cycles remain in reality.

Wood pellets are made of wood waste from wood product industries. Sustainable, renewable. Heck, if worse comes to worse, I've seen pellet machines online for sale so people could manufacture their own pellets, if need be, after picking up the sawdust and other waste from stores, companies, industries.

Anyway, that's why I'm not doing oil, even for my small application. Cost, delivery, and service could be a big problem in the not-so-distant future.