2 Very Different Types Of Pennington Pellets Within The Same Delivery Are These Hard or Soft Wood?

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sydney1963

sydney1963

New Member
Oct 4, 2008
770
Windham Maine
Hi All,

I have 3 tons of Penningtons, 3 different pallets, all one delivery, and have 2 very different types of pellets.

Light Colored very dusty, tons of fines, lots of sparks flying around as they burn, I have noticed they burn cleaner and less ash---could these be soft wood?

Dark Colored not dusty at all, almost no fines at all, hardly any sparks, burn dirtier and more ash---could these be hard wood?

I can't say if the light colored were on a separate pallet than the dark because we re-stacked them in the basement.

Anyway both seem to burn great, dump em right into my stove straight from the bag, fines and all. Stove loves em. No difference in the bag labels to give me a clue if they are light vs. dark. Every day is Christmas, never know what your gonna get till you open them

Any thoughts are welcome, Happy Burning.
 
In my limited experience:
Light colored, dusty, lots of fines, low ash = hardwood
Dark, no fines, more ash = softwood
 
Hi Sydney,

I just bought some Freedom Fuel pellets today (a couple bags to try out) and went to their site to check them out. Their site actually say that sometimes the lighter colored are usually softwood wood. You cant always go by the color though. It depends on the wood and its fiber composits. They show several colored piles of pellets side by side. One of the darker piles is softwood but they noted it is darker because of a bug that killed the trees leaves a blue enzime in the wood fibre which causes it to look darker. I thought that if the pellet manufacturer was a member of the PFI, they had to state that it Hard or soft wood. Anyway, glad to hear they are both burning well for you.

Perhaps the bags came from differnt hardwood sources. Keep warm!
 
sydney1963 said:
Hi All,

I have 3 tons of Penningtons, 3 different pallets, all one delivery, and have 2 very different types of pellets.

Light Colored very dusty, tons of fines, lots of sparks flying around as they burn, I have noticed they burn cleaner and less ash---could these be soft wood?

Dark Colored not dusty at all, almost no fines at all, hardly any sparks, burn dirtier and more ash---could these be hard wood?

I can't say if the light colored were on a separate pallet than the dark because we re-stacked them in the basement.

Anyway both seem to burn great, dump em right into my stove straight from the bag, fines and all. Stove loves em. No difference in the bag labels to give me a clue if they are light vs. dark. Every day is Christmas, never know what your gonna get till you open them

Any thoughts are welcome, Happy Burning.
Click to expand...


I would DEMAND ProPellet. When you go to your local pellet supplier tell them you only want ProPellet. Tell your local supplier to contact Kinsman Stoves and ask the nice people there to supply them with ProPellets. 2,000 tons moved and not one complaint that I can link to the pellets. Some people are shocked that you can not leave pellets outside for weeks and not have the pellets harmed.

This is just my advice but if you want the best just ask.

Eric
 
I burn both hard and softwood and the softwood ones I have burned were always very light in color and gave off very little ash. Try smelling the pellets in the bag- all the softwood pellets I have gotten smell like pine. Give it a try... :lol:
 
I burned about a ton & a half of Penningtons last year that were exactly as you describe. They were softwood pellets, light colored, dusty with fines, but burned well with very little ash. I also burned PA pellets which were hardwood, dark & not very good heat & produced a lot of ash. At the moment I am burning Freedom Fuel. These are softwood, almost no dust, burn very hot (10 degrees last night & the whole house maintained 71 degrees), but do have a lot of ash.
 
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