My starting point is I agree with Eric of Kinsman Stove who stated "the main reason to burn a pellet stove is to save money on home heating". I know there's a great many of you that burn for other reasons including but not limited to environmental reasons, less dependence on foreign sources of fuel, and having a second source of heating for your home, and I commend you for your decisions.
I originally purchased my stove to save at least 25% on my heating bill. I'm into my 6th winter with the stove and I'm pretty sure I've realized my target savings each year. At this point I have recouped my initial investment in the stove, and just about at the break even point and very happy. Today's closing NYMEX price for crude and home heating oil was $65 a barrel and $1.95 a gallon respectively. Historically, at least in normal markets, the cost to have oil delivered to your home is 50 cents above the raw commodity price making today's cost $2.45 per gallon. I've read many different ways to compare the cost of pellets to oil including the webmaster's "just move the decimal point two places" . Based on my experience and calculations I figure one ton of pellets provides the same heat of approximately 120 gallons of heating oil, thus based on today's price of heating oil ($2.45 per gallon) the break even cost of a ton of pellets is $294.00 delivered to your home. Once again my objective is to save 25% on my heating bills, so I would not currently spend more than $220 for a delivered ton of pellets. I guess if I didn't buy my pellets back in May, and had them delivered in August I wouldn't be able to meet my savings objective. Based on the current state of the global economy, it's not much of a stretch to predict oil prices will move another 25% lower by next winter. If that occurs, I think the pellet industry will be in dire straights because many of us will just burn occasionally for the ambience.
As another poster says, just my $0.02
I originally purchased my stove to save at least 25% on my heating bill. I'm into my 6th winter with the stove and I'm pretty sure I've realized my target savings each year. At this point I have recouped my initial investment in the stove, and just about at the break even point and very happy. Today's closing NYMEX price for crude and home heating oil was $65 a barrel and $1.95 a gallon respectively. Historically, at least in normal markets, the cost to have oil delivered to your home is 50 cents above the raw commodity price making today's cost $2.45 per gallon. I've read many different ways to compare the cost of pellets to oil including the webmaster's "just move the decimal point two places" . Based on my experience and calculations I figure one ton of pellets provides the same heat of approximately 120 gallons of heating oil, thus based on today's price of heating oil ($2.45 per gallon) the break even cost of a ton of pellets is $294.00 delivered to your home. Once again my objective is to save 25% on my heating bills, so I would not currently spend more than $220 for a delivered ton of pellets. I guess if I didn't buy my pellets back in May, and had them delivered in August I wouldn't be able to meet my savings objective. Based on the current state of the global economy, it's not much of a stretch to predict oil prices will move another 25% lower by next winter. If that occurs, I think the pellet industry will be in dire straights because many of us will just burn occasionally for the ambience.
As another poster says, just my $0.02