A pellet plant is opening up about 1 1/2 hrs from my house!

[EatenByLimestone]

http://www.pelletheat.com/news/index.php?id=42

I've seen posts saying that pricing is lower when the plant is close. How much lower? Do they sell to a guy outside their gate with a trailer?

A large plant opening up in NY can only help lower demand for NG and oil.

Matt

 

[babalu87]

http://www.pelletheat.com/news/index.php?id=42

Do they sell to a guy outside their gate with a trailer?

Hopefully in your case.
Maybe you can figure out what one of the managers likes and barter with him, may be able to get the things for REAL cheap if you can swing some type of deal.

 

[carpniels]

Hi Guys,

Schuyler indeed is getting the largest pellet plant. Cool. 15 minutes down the road. I wonder if they will have 'local pickup only special deals.'

Still will not make me change my woodstove to pellet though!

Carpniels

 

[webbie]

Even without local pickup, you will probably get a deal as brokers such as pelletsales.com can pick up there and then deliver close by for much less than the further distances.

 

[HarryBack]

certainly, the closer the pellet plant is to you will lower the price of the pellets....less shipping. Local dealers will pay less for the landed product and so should you. Also, let me know if they do sell to any Tom, Dick, and Harry showing up with a trailer or pickup at the plant, so I can promptly cancel my 3,000 ton/year (+/_) business with them, along with many other dealers who might feel the same way. New england pellet isnt known to do this though, and i dont expect the plant near you will be any different.

How much you save will depend on how much less the dealer pays for shipping. My pellets ship from about 70 miles away, and costs about $18/ton for shipping. There isnt alot of "wiggle room" in the profits of pellets though. A better strategy might be to take advantage of pre-season pricing from local dealers or brokers, and get them early when the price tends to be lower.

 

[Eric Johnson]

I'll probably go over there and do an article on the plant once it's operating. Like Carpniels said, it's about 15 minutes down the road. I know some of the people involved, and I doubt you're going to get any special deals, other than what you'll get from the local retailers, which ought to be somewhat cheaper because of the transportation savings. Doubt they'll sell anything out the back door retail. Heck, there's a strong export market to Europe, given strong demand there and a cheap U.S. dollar.

I'm stickin' with the free firewood.

 

[webbie]

I really...really....really doubt that folks are gonna do better than the 200 range that some pellets are selling for right now.
BUT, having more plants and plants close by is a good thing for the biomass biz.

 

[GVA]

Well unless they have changed The jaffrey plant won't sell to non dealers unless the have the silo outside where they will deliver in bulk form only....
Or a minimum of a truckload (20 someodd tons). That was the last time I checked though.. My brother in law is 20 miles from the plant, and can't get pellets from them....
As far as the pricing...... I hate to say this but the cost of pellets in the Jaffrey area are almost identical to what others pay for the same pellet 50-100miles away, again last time I checked..... My Bro in law buy's Energex or Cubex from canada cause he likes them better, and they are the same price as the ones made down the street from him.. Go figure....

 

[Corie]

Its an economics thing. If the other dealer's in town are selling pellets for $200 a pop, even though the local pellets are costing the dealer less, chances are he's going to ask for the rate everyone else is getting or darn close.

 

[EatenByLimestone]

I'll still go for the free wood I'm burning now, but if consumers could get pellets direct from the manufacturer, I think it would sway people toward them.

HB,

How would somebody pulling up with a trailer hurt you? I can't imagine most people would want to go through the hassle of going out to get it. Much less have a way to go out to get it. There has to be a pretty fine line between where it would pay to drive out to a dealer vs. having it moved by barge or rail down the Mohawk Valley.

Matt

 

[HarryBack]

How would a person pulling up with a trailer hurt me? Well, if its a local customer, it'd be 26 tons less I would sell. Pretty simple, really.

Craig is right in that the $200/ton pellets you can find today (we're selling the New England Canadians for $199/ton, the STandards for $189/ton), is almost certainly the lowest pricing you'll see on fresh pellets this year. There are some '06 holdover pellets (pellets that didnt sell all winter, and dealers may be picking them up at a slight discount) which you might find a bit cheaper, but Im guessing still around $200/ton.

The cheapest way to buy pellets I know of at the moment is to hook up with a driver who has access to a tractor-trailer combo and pick them up, then distributing them yourself, thereby saving yourself any delivery charge. You can expect to possibly get a $5/ton discount for doing so, over the normal "picked up" price. Yep. theres really not alot of profit in pellets for *most* of us. :blank:

Also, a little word of advice. June is coming. Pellet pricing to dealers goes up on June 1st from many manufacturers, New England included. If you are fence-sitting right now, I'd suggest buying your pellets soon, since we're likely to see increases on June 1st. The (relatively) low pricing window that now exists is slowly closing.

 

[Jabberwocky]

Well unless they have changed The jaffrey plant won't sell to non dealers unless the have the silo outside where they will deliver in bulk form only....
Or a minimum of a truckload (20 someodd tons). That was the last time I checked though.. My brother in law is 20 miles from the plant, and can't get pellets from them....

This is exactly right, Larry from Heartline Stove in Jaffrey is 5 miles from the plant and sells tons for the same as everybody else. Why would NEWP undermine the local stove shop and deal with the local yokels and their pickup trucks?

As for the new plant in central New York, if there isn't one now, expect a local retailer to open up.

 

[Eric Johnson]

I heard on the radio this morning the electric rates in CNY are going up around 20 percent beginning this summer. I wonder if anyone is contemplating designing a pellet-fueled water heater?

Pickup loads of cheaper pellets direct from the factory sounds great to those of us who live near one, but setting up a sales outlet like that not only pisses off dealers like Harryback, but it's an added expense for the manufacturer. They need a loading facility, staff to run it and then they have to hassle with either cash or credit cards or personal checks, not to mention higher insurance costs. The only reason for doing it, IMO, would be to foster good community relations, but they probably are already accomplishing that with the jobs and tax base that come with any new factory.

You might see some minor savings at the local Walmarts and other retail outlets due to lower transportation costs, but probably not anything worth getting excited about.

 

[begreen]

Well, there are definitely pellet boilers out there Eric. You might enjoy this site. Pellet boiler is link #6:

http://www.solarenergyireland.com/kuenzel_boilers_wood_gasification_pellets.html
Tarm:
http://www.pelletboiler.com/mh_multiheat.asp
White paper:
http://www.wipo.int/pctdb/en/wo.jsp?IA=WO2006008762&DISPLAY=STATUS

 

[Eric Johnson]

There's no shortage of $8,000 boilers on the market capable of burning pellets, but I have yet to see an $800 pellet-fueled domestic water heater. I bet the Euros have a few stashed away somewhere.

 

[begreen]

I would expect the cost to be at least similar to a premium pellet stove which would put it in the $3000+ range.

 

[Eric Johnson]

I wonder if it would (should) be that much. No ornaments, glass, chrome/brass or other adornments. No outrageous "stove dealer" markup. Seems to me you could rig up a conventional gas water heater with a hopper, burner and auger pretty cheap, but maybe I'm dreaming.

I'm thinking Corie........

Anybody got a clue as to how many pounds of pellets to heat an average day's worth of hot water? Castiron?

 

[begreen]

Though it could be cobbled together, I would think for the general market it would need several safety systems, aquastat, logic controller, pellet hopper and negative draft system. As a boiler, it would have to meet some rigorous testing standards all of which boost the price.

But this is a good question that led me to a great site in Ireland that has tons of links to bio-mass boilers in Europe. Many are new to me. The wood pellet boilers pdf is at the bottom of the page:

http://www.sei.ie/index.asp?locID=765&docID=-1

 

[Eric Johnson]

Maybe I'm being naive, but it seems to me that an existing gas-fired water heater vessel has already been safety tested, including a surface-mounted thermostat (instead of an aquastat), TPRV, etc, so it's not like you'd be designing and building the thing from scratch. Essentially, all you're doing is replacing one heat source (gas) for another (pellets). If you rip the (UL-approved) guts out of a small, cheap pellet stove and mate them to a gas water heater, I think you could do it for a reasonable price.

And I'm not talking about something you or I would do for a fun project. I'm talking about a company manufacturing these things. Heck, you can buy a cheap conventional boiler for less than $1,000.

On the other hand, you could make the same argument for designing a pellet boiler, and it obviously doesn't work out that way. Probably mass market appeal, high volume manufacturing and competition have more to do with pricing than my notion of the way things should be.

 

[webbie]

I wonder if it would (should) be that much. No ornaments, glass, chrome/brass or other adornments. No outrageous "stove dealer" markup. Seems to me you could rig up a conventional gas water heater with a hopper, burner and auger pretty cheap, but maybe I'm dreaming.

I'm thinking Corie........

Anybody got a clue as to how many pounds of pellets to heat an average day's worth of hot water? Castiron?

Would not take many!
But you would need auto-ignition, etc.

Assuming an 70,000 BTU hot water heater that fired for about an hour a day, that would be less than 12-13 pounds of pellets.

Actually, still, it would not be cheaper than NG or even oil in most places, but much better than electric. It would be better to have a system that took heat off a pellet stove, furnace or boiler that was already being used for heat...at least for those winter months. This was you would not have another complete set of mechanisms to deal with.

Does anyone remember those little mexican DHW heaters that burn wood? You could manually throw a pile of pellets into one of those - or just some bio brick chunks.
(note - these things are great, but don't meet any US Codes)

 

[begreen]

Maybe I'm being naive, but it seems to me that an existing gas-fired water heater vessel has already been safety tested, including a surface-mounted thermostat (instead of an aquastat), TPRV, etc, so it's not like you'd be designing and building the thing from scratch. Essentially, all you're doing is replacing one heat source (gas) for another (pellets). If you rip the (UL-approved) guts out of a small, cheap pellet stove and mate them to a gas water heater, I think you could do it for a reasonable price.

And I'm not talking about something you or I would do for a fun project. I'm talking about a company manufacturing these things. Heck, you can buy a cheap conventional boiler for less than $1,000.

On the other hand, you could make the same argument for designing a pellet boiler, and it obviously doesn't work out that way. Probably mass market appeal, high volume manufacturing and competition have more to do with pricing than my notion of the way things should be.

Sounds like an interesting project. One thing I'd be concerned about is cleaning the exchanger. This is a non-issue for gas gas, but might lead to a significant degradation in performance over time with pellets. Never having dissected a modern high efficiency gas hw heater I am not certain how its exchanger is designed. Would it be easy to clean with an appropriate brush or does it have manifold branches?

 

[Eric Johnson]

It's just a big hollow tube going up through the middle of the tank. At least the ones I've taken apart are designed like that. Think donut. It doubles as a chimney. No branches or other nooks and crannies to worry about. So theoretically at least, it would be fairly easy to clean. Whether or not it would ever get done, on the other hand, is a whole nother issue.

I'm inclined to concede your point on the cost, BG, and Craig's on the relative economy of burning NG or fuel oil. But it seems to me that if pellets eventually catch on to become some kind of ubiquitous source of fuel on this continent, we might start seeing this kind of appliance. If you're already buying pellets for a stove, why not use them for other things as well?

Well, I gotta go cut some firewood and haul a load home. I can't think of a better way to relax after another hard day at the office. You guys have a good weekend.

 

[Gooserider]

It's just a big hollow tube going up through the middle of the tank. At least the ones I've taken apart are designed like that. Think donut. It doubles as a chimney. No branches or other nooks and crannies to worry about. So theoretically at least, it would be fairly easy to clean. Whether or not it would ever get done, on the other hand, is a whole nother issue.

I'm inclined to concede your point on the cost, BG, and Craig's on the relative economy of burning NG or fuel oil. But it seems to me that if pellets eventually catch on to become some kind of ubiquitous source of fuel on this continent, we might start seeing this kind of appliance. If you're already buying pellets for a stove, why not use them for other things as well?

Well, I gotta go cut some firewood and haul a load home. I can't think of a better way to relax after another hard day at the office. You guys have a good weekend.

Uhm... The ones I've taken apart have the hollow tube like Eric says, but also have a zig-zag metal baffle in them to force the flame to bounce of the sides of the tube. I could be mistaken, but I'd expect a wood or pellet DHW heater to be a major creosote factory - anything that didn't burn in the flame is surely going to condense on that nicely cooled chimney.

Gooserider

 

[EatenByLimestone]

What about height concerns? A HW tank is ~4ft high. Toss that puppy on top of a fire box, auger and hopper and you may have height issues in many basements.

Maintenance may be an issue too. Many want HW on demand. They don't want to worry about clinkers or refilling the hopper every X days.

I think Craig has the right idea to take the heat and hold it from an existing pellet stove or duel fuel heater. Something where you can use gas in the warm months and your pellets in the cold months when you will be doing the maintenance anyway.

Matt

 

[HarryBack]

http://harmanstoves.com/features.asp?id=48


only sold one, and they arent cheap. Have another in the showroom. Its a new unit, out less than a year, so it should be interesting to see what shakes out. Remind me later and I'll try to keep you updated on how its working, and any technical issues we've been notified about.