Cheap alternative to pellet pail.

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Glosta

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Nov 1, 2009
152
North of Boston

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Please don't take offense, if you think it will work for you great, but you're right when you say cosmetically it might not work. I would rather pour my pellets straight from the bag to the hopper, than hassle to pour these pellets into an ugly dispenser then into my stove. Sounds like double the work to me and for what benefit? Just my opinion.
 
I think some people who use some version of a pellet pail do so because physically it is difficult to lift the bag and pour it into the hopper easily. I for one don't seem to have the arm strenghth to do this without potentially having pellets all over my living room.
 
I guess I vote to just cut the bag top and pour.
I only do it once a day before I leave for work and so far it has worked fine.
 
Many people (including myself) like to separate the fines from the bag, therefore pouring pellets straight from the bag into the hopper is not an option. After the fines are sifted and vacuumed, the pellets need to get stored somewhere. Once again, I find this dispenser to be very useful.

If you don't care about having extra fines in your stove, then I agree, a pellet dispenser is not necessary. I'm just not a big fan of dumping pellets (even super premium pellets) into the hopper straight from the bag without separating and removing the fines.
 
Over at my parents house. My mother has a problem with the dust when pouring straight from the bag. Why I don't know, never noticed it to be a problem when I filled it from the bag. So they now use a 5 gal bucket. Fill and haul through the house from the garage. But you can not get a full bag into the bucket. So you have to make two trips to fill the hopper. But now that I think about it this might make a good christmas present for them?
 
For years use a cheapy coal tender, my stove has a small slit in back like 2" wide, so straight from the bag would make a serious mess
 
For some reason people like to bash it but always try to imitate it. I use the Pellet Pail and it works great. Dust drop the bag in and it dumps out. It's got nothing to do with arm strength it's just convenient. It is awkward to fill my insert from a bag. Fines settle to the bottom and I sift those out every once in a while. It's well built, looks like cast iron, but won't scratch the stove when dumping. To each his own but don't knock it if you haven't tried it.
 
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