Pennington Natures Heat are trash

They burn very well in my stove. I never get clinkers, and the flame/heat is fine. More ash than others, but I think a decent pellet for the price in my stove.
Mike -

I bought two bags to try in my P43. It's amazing the difference in pellets. I'll post back my results when I burn them.

Natures Heat made by Pennington and Natures Choice (aka- Inferno's) are the 2 lowest heat pellets I have burned/seen.
I have long said it, and will continue to do so... Get more heat out pf them, if you rub them together (friction in your hands)

jdempsey said:

Picked up a bag a walmart. Just wanted to see how they compare to somersets. These pellets will not burn. The burn pot was half full with coals but the flame was never more than 2 inches high even when i turn the feed rate to max. Actually with the rate that high it was choking the flame even more. My basement was barely even warm. There was more ash burning a quarter of a bag than i had burning 3 of the somersets.

I had read on here probs with this brand. I just feel sorry for anyone that buys a ton or more of these. Premium pellet my A$$. Maybe i got a bad bag but seems everyone has had issues with them.

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With your 10-cpm, it should burn just about anything. If the stove is set at the factory recommended 1-4-1, try turning the LBA to 6 until you finish burning them, and then reset back for the Somersets.

bought a ton,Burned some of them and returned the rest, didn't like them at all. Lots of ash, not as much heat.

kenfsr said:

bought a ton,Burned some of them and returned the rest, didn't like them at all. Lots of ash, not as much heat.

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That's funny because I have the same stove and they burn fine for me. I burned one ton last year and I have 3 tons in the garage for this year.

I have found that every brand has some variation. I imagine Pennington Nature's Heat pellets come from several sources and the quality varies (within the pallet and shipment).

Winslow2010 said:

kenfsr said:

bought a ton,Burned some of them and returned the rest, didn't like them at all. Lots of ash, not as much heat.

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That's funny because I have the same stove and they burn fine for me. I burned one ton last year and I have 3 tons in the garage for this year.

I have found that every brand has some variation. I imagine Pennington Nature's Heat pellets come from several sources and the quality varies (within the pallet and shipment).

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Add the following to the stuff at Wal-Mart, they frequently have old stock when it comes to pellets. A good look at the tags on the pallets can be enlightening.

So it is possible to get pellets that span several years worth of plant changes etc...

I saw 2007 pellets during the 2010-11 heating season.

Natures Heat were a very positive surprise for me last year when I did some testing for the fun of it, the outperfromed other box store brands and came close to my beloved Barefoots....

But maybe that is one criteria for 'good pellets' - having consistantly good performance over the years and not one hit and one miss. Maybe Pennington is re-bagging some other brands ? I am wondering, if you use WalMart as your distribution, dont they require you to sign on to a hughe number of tons you have to deliver to them....? So, that must be quite a number, wondering if any one company can really fullfill that with the exact same pellet everywhere ? Or maybe rebagging some different suppliers under one brand ?

I think J-Takeman will try to look into it....

I got a quick reply from an "in"! They have 3 or 4 of their own pellet plants. Right now they only have a couple running though. Seems they take fiber from the open market(not their own fiber) and being slow they might be more selective on what they are recieving.

Here is something my contact said I must qoute!

They have had the Wal-Mart/Sam's contract for years-(with Walmart)quality really isn't a consideration….as long as it burns and they can sell it cheap enough, they will sell it. With literally hundreds of stores to work with, the volume is very hard for some mills to ignore….And supply(Their issue is fiber quality with that much demand)! Personally I think they should stick to growing grass seed….

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j-takeman said:

I got a quick reply from an "in"! They have 3 or 4 of their own pellet plants. Right now they only have a couple running though. Seems they take fiber from the open market(not their own fiber) and being slow they might be more selective on what they are recieving.

Here is something my contact said I must qoute!

They have had the Wal-Mart/Sam's contract for years-(with Walmart)quality really isn't a consideration….as long as it burns and they can sell it cheap enough, they will sell it. With literally hundreds of stores to work with, the volume is very hard for some mills to ignore….And supply(Their issue is fiber quality with that much demand)! Personally I think they should stick to growing grass seed….

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Thanks Jay

That explains why my Walmart store ONLY sells Natures Heat. They also will NOT compete with Lowes and Home Depot's price! They care about the profit on their wood pellets!!

got 20 bags of penningtons here and there burning pretty good in the harman.

I love these threads. Pellet chatter is interesting to me. Sometimes sitting back to watch the show can usually give a good picture on them! I take an average from what I see/hear.

If the average is high its probable that they are pretty good pellets.

Even money and its a crap shoot.

Low and they are bound to be not so hot.

So far I see 4 good to 3 bad. I'll add my comment as not so much heat and a lot more ash than I would expect! Score so far 4-4=crap shoot!

Part of the problem comes from what they are being compared to at the time. I bought a couple of tons a few years ago and thought they were very good, but I was comparing them to pellets I was having a lot of problems with. I didn't look or care about the ash level as to me in most compares the level is close enough to be meaningless. I say from my experience they were good.

I know a guy who just buys Michigan Pellets, he thinks they are great... BUT at the same time he really hasn't tried a Somerset or anything else. His ignorance is costing him good heat. So from his point of view, everything is great...

In conclusion, I think it is safe to say that since Wal-Mart and Sam's Club buy Pennington Nature's Heat branded pellets in such large quantities that the source and quality will vary greatly. For those seeking consistency, it is probably better to select a brand bagged at one site with a consistent source of wood product.

Personally, I bought a pellet stove to shop for the best bargain (within reasonable quality limits). My stove seems to burn everything I put in it.

I thought they stunk too and tied with Michigans for the worst burning pellet in our stove. Didn't give off good heat and super ashy.

Maybe we should do a poll???

New score 4 OK to 5 NG. Are they heading to the not so hot score??

OK I'll stop now!

Can I vote twice?? 2 thumbs Down!! LOL...

Jus picked up 4 bags at $3.88/bag or $194 a ton in Sanford, ME Walmart; for that price I bought a few bags to test. Got a buddy coming over Saturday to pull the auger and give the stove the big cleaning before the heating season gets under way. Which I think began last night! I'll post up on how they burn later on.

Pennington's are the WORST Big time, just had a buddy take the Accentra apart for the annual cleaning to get ready for winter. We cleaned the machine spic and span and threw in a bag of the $3.88 Nature's Heat. After twenty minutes it barely maintained a two inch flame. Now I'm bumming, did we forget something, the auger wasn't moving for nothing. Pellets were kinda long.

After determining the problem wasn't the stove, we emptied out the Penningtons and threw in a bag of Maine's Choice from last year. Presto, big fire and big heat, granted it is almost 80 degrees here today, but we've proved the Penningtons are GARBAGE

Will be using the other 3 bags for ice melt on the driveway this winter Put me down for a big negative on these pellets. Not sure you can even call them that.

They burned in my stove fine but were VERY dirty pellets. Dark oily mess on the glass at all settings even high. Lots of ash and more creosote build up on the cooler sections of the vent pipe outside. The heat they produced was not bad.

PJPellet said:

I bought two bags to try in my P43. It's amazing the difference in pellets. I'll post back my results when I burn them.

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Well I've burned the two bags I bought. I had a good batch, they burned nice with low ash. Was burning Instant Heat before the Pennington's, and the Pennington's win. Surprised by that. IF the Pennington's were consistent and burned the way these two bags did I would buy a lot more.

I have bought the Penningtons from Walmart when I've been in a pinch for more bags, I usually nab 10-15 at a time and throw them in the back of my truck. I had one batch that had a lot of fines in the bags but they burned clean and hot, the 2nd batch I bought last year burned VERY well, no fines in the bag and the pellets had a darker brown color to them, that batch was as good as any I've burned. Pennington has claimed to have a new pellet mill up and running and that they've sorted out the problems from their earlier production batches from 2009/2010. I haven't bought any Penningtons this year (yet) but noticed my Walmart had them last time I was there, so I might grab 5 or 6 bags to see how they do this year.

PJ - how have those Allegheny pellets burned for you? My parents (they live just South of Jamestown, NY) used to burn those in their pellet stove and they had some really dirty batches (this was 5-10 years ago), just wondering if they've gotten better over the years.