Heating Oil was at $1.85 a gallon, It's on the rise again!!! $2.09 today http://www.cashoil.com/

but what if they don't use it.. don't they get a credit? if so tell them to call the cheaper guy fill up tell the oil company they are burning pellets and when they top you off it will be maybe 30 gallons for the winter and they owe you a credit... then buy from them when the price goes down

We bought our stove over the summer when LP prices were still on the higher side. Now LP in this area has dropped.

We decided to fire up the stove to simply see how well it worked. Due to the fact that we live in an old farm house where the heating vents were jury rigged into place, the pellet stove heats the house so much better. More even heat, no cold spots, etc.

If LP gets to the point were it is simply foolish not to be using it over pellets, we will review it, but the quality of life with the stove is soooo much better.

I also agree with others, that if oil based fuels stay low, pellets will have to play along to get along.

How about this? Your dealer may have filled his tanks for $3.50/gallong a month or so ago. Except his tanks have 100,000 gallons in them. How long do you think it'll take him to get rid of that $3.50/gal oil delivering 100 gallons at a time? Or do you think he should mark it down to $2.50 and lose a hundred thousand dollars?[/quote]

Absolutely.. Either that, or eat the whole tank and go out of business.. This is the real world, those gas stations that had 3$ a gallon gas that ran the price up to 4.50 recently as a result of a hurricane were allowed to do so because its a FREE market. That oil guy needs to use some of the profits he procured earlier to keep himself a float until he can make a profit again... If they can win big, they can lose big-- give it a minute the government will bail them out too..

Jason

Pellet prices will not adjust in the NE until the plants work thru the orders they took when oil was $5. If oil is much below $2 at the end of this heating season I think some of the pellet plants that have been running 3 shifts will be lowering prices but will only be able to go so low before they start layoffs and ... going under. Some of the new plants have been built under the assumption of oil staying expensive, It will be several years before you see oil prices rising dramatically again (save for a major disruption supply). Even if demand is there, there currently is not the capital in the markets to float crude back near $150 barrell.


I spent a few seconds kicking my own arse about getting $4k into stove and pellets. What looked like a easy 3 year payoff on my investment in june will be much longer in November. However I already laid out the cash so will be burning pellets this winter and I'm counting it as my green deed for the year, not to mention I like keeping my fuel money in the LOCAL economy.

I totally agree with your analysis. I too like keeping my fuel money locally, but it appears oil, gas, and other fossil fuel prices are going lower, and barring some unexpected crisis, will stay lower until the global economy improves. It appears to me the demand for new pellet stoves and pellets will abate to a point the manufactures will be forced to contract. I well realize that when oil prices jumped to almost $150 a barrel, the demand for alternative fuel appliances soared. Unfortunately I think most of us have a short memory and will go back to buying polluting fuel guzzlers, and using fossil fuels to heat our homes. How sad, we just never seem to learn.

Where did you get the propane price.. I checked the link and could not find any propane pricing...do you have a site that lists propane?

THANK YOU! Further, as oil gyrates, demand for pellet stoves and pellets fluctuates as well. Pellet mills and stove manufacturers can not plan for future production which leaves all of us vulnerable to shortages as we just saw.

My forced hot water system never produced the comfort level I'm getting out of the XXV. I did a quick test last night just to be sure. After putting down a couple of Miller Lites sitting in front of the oil furnace, and a couple more in front of the pellet stove... although it was a tough decision, the pellet stove won. :coolsmile: I bought the 5 tons and I plan to enjoy every one of them this season regardless of oil price. If next years HHO pre-buy price competes with pellets, I might consider splitting the difference. But I like the effects of the stove (heat and ambiance) way too much to go without it.

I will use whatever is the cheapest. If oil is $2.00/gal, then that is what I will burn. The issue with pellets is they are still very expensive and hard to find by the ton.
This is my 4th season with my pellet stove and the 2nd out of 4 that pellets have been scarce (2005 & 2008). The main issue I have with pellets so far is that 1/2 the time I have had my stove pellets were impossible to purchase. In 2005 I could not get a delivery until late December; so I was still forced to use oil. If pellets are truly to become a viable alternative to oil then manufacturers will need to guarantee enough supply to meet demand. During my 10+ years with oil heat I have never ever had a problem receiving a delivery; even the next day. Right now the pellet industry is screwed up and I do not know if I made the right choice in purchasing a pellet stove. The only bright spot is that I do have a choice to burn either pellets or oil (if I can find pellets).
At the end of the day I will purchase what is the cheapest product to heat my home and use the savings to go out to dinner and still help the U.S. economy. I don't believe that purchasing the cheaper product is un-American; your extra money saved can still help the economy; at least indirectly.

I think that we can all agree that using the cheapest fuel is not "un-American", but, in fact is very american. The free market system is built on the principle of making financial choices that best fit your situation. Of course, others (and I include myself in this group) may choose to stay away from oil or propane out of discust for the system, which for a very large segment (OPEC) is not a free-market system, but a group of countries that fix pricing. Now, you will see regular contributors to these forums that will go on and on about felling bad for the local dealers. Again, this is a free market economy, so if the dealers are not getting the Return on Equity that they want...they can take their capital and put it somewhere ielse that will provide the returns that they need. My job, and I respectfully submit that it is all of our jobs, to do what is right for our families. This may be buying the absolutle cheapest form of fuel available, moving to a greener fuel, or mixing both strategies.

I myself am very excited to have my new stove this season. I am comforted by knowing that my heating source for the winter is sitting in my basement. I aim pretty excited that pellets are renewable resource that has less effects on the environment. But, most of all I am excited that for the first time in my adult life I now have a choice of two different fuels to use to keep my family warm. The decisions of the oil industry can no longer have complete control of me. Also, like others on this forum...I can't believe how much better the heat from the stove feels.

So when you are out to dinner with your family enjoying your savings....buy yourself a beer from me

YES!
I now look at oil as my "Backup" heat source!
I just may have 2 beers

That's the spirit!

Have one for me.

ROTFLMAO! Your charity is astounding. That oil dealer is our neighbor. He's not some "bigwig fat cat" in some far away city. Local oil dealers are just like the corner grocer, the service station owner down the street, etc. The nickel or dime a gallon they've made in profits aren't going to cover the oil they bought to supply their customers. They've never gotten wealthy off of the products & services they sell. The bailouts will be given to the large corporations and the individuals who bought too much house on too little income and now can cry about getting taken advantage of. The local oil dealer is likely simply to go out of business costing him his business and many of our neighbors their jobs.

I hope that you get to see just who that is when it happens...or maybe you lose your job, need some help and someone decides you had your chance to make plenty of money in the good times so if you can't take some of the money you made over the past few years of great prosperity to keep yourself afloat until you can find a job and feed the family again too bad for you. If you can earn a nice living then you can lose a nice living...but give it a minute and see if the government will bail you out too. (Or considering where you live, why aren't you better prepared for that hurricane so you've got a few hundred or thousand gallons of gas to tide you over after the hurricane comes thru...why do you need someone to sell you cheap gas or help dry your town or fix the buildings or subsidize your insurance? Why should it be my taxes that pay for your desire to live in a hurricane prone area? After all, I don't get hurricanes and I don't ask the govt for a handout everytime a snowstorm comes thru--what's wrong with you people?)

My grandfather had some words of wisdom that apply now -- A recession is when your neighbor loses his job. A depression is when you lose yours. Tolerance and charity are called for now, not kneejerk uninformed self-satisfied petty vengance. I expect this doesn't mean much to you based on where you're from (most home heating oil is used in the Northeast) so you don't really know how the business works, but for any of the folks up here, your comments might provide an opportunity to reflect on what kind of sympathy we're going to get from the rest of the country.

Digger, I agree that we should not be bailing out companies that fail because of horribly bad business decisions. I also agree that it is insane to be constantly bailing out coastal residents that make a choice to live in hurricane prone areas. Furthern to this point...I also understand that any business runs the risk of going out of business for any number of reasons. Not to sound too cold, but this has always been the case in our economy. The oil, gas, and propane industries are simply starting to see what other businesses have seen throughout history...Competition! For decades there have not been many choices for a lot of folks when it came to heating their homes, or fueling their cars. If you lived in an urban setting for instance you did not have cost effective access to cord wood, so you had to rely on oil or gas to heat your home. With improvements tho distribution channels, we now have access to many alternatives to oil and gas...such as pellets, solar, geo-thermal, etc. In our cars, we now have the ability to drive a hybrid that gets double or triple the mileage of gas only cars. This is called "market evolution".

I don't know any people that hate the good folks that own fuel oil dealerships. This is not personal, it is simply the free market economy at work. For instance, I buy my propane from a dealer in Milford, NH that began selling pellet stoves and pellets last year. He chose to change his business model with the times so that rather than be put out of business by alternative fuels, he can now be a part of a growing market segment. As a more personal example, I am in the insurance business. As you can read daily, the insurance business is in serious trouble. Almost all of it is self-inflicted. Some of the larger insurance companies refused to change their interanl risk management systems to avoid putting their comapnies at risk. Now, they are seeing the consequences of their in-action. At the end of the day, their failure to evolve with the times is resulting in many of them closing their doors, or getting in line for some corporate welfare. The reality is that not all insurance companies are seeing the same results, because some of them made good business decisons to change.

I don't know you, but I certainly respect your pellet stove knowledge based on the posts I read from you. Maybe you or someone close to you is a fuel oil dealer, I don't know. If this is the case, I sincerely hope that they are not adversly effected, but in the end...that will be up to them. The great thing about this country is that it gives evrerybody the ability to work hard and start a business...but, it does not guarantee that they will succeed or sustain...only they can do that. Remember, the guy who made Ice Boxes loved his company, but then another guy came out with an electric refridgerator and the game changed.

Thanks for your posts. I may not agree with all of them, but I respect your opinions and enjoy reading them.

By the way, it's killing me, what does ROTFLMAO mean? I have wondered for a while, but have been afraid to ask in fear of showing my lack of message board savvy.

Rolling on the floor, laughing my ash off

That's great! I need to find a dictionary of that stuff.

http://www.netlingo.com/emailsh.cfm

http://www.webopedia.com/quick_ref/textmessageabbreviations.asp

http://www.aim.com/acronyms.adp

Check out how many you've seen before.

Funny but not really, I was just reading some news about OPEC and the special meeting they are having where Iran is demanding that they cut production on oil so supply and demand will be more in their favor so that they can jack up the price and screw us some more.

I use pellets because it keeps my house warm... my furnace doesn't.

I just called my propane dealer in Southern NH and he quoted me a price of $2.91 per gallon. This is 3 cents lower than what I paid on my last fill up in May. Not sure how this can be so high when I see many people that have quoted far lower, closer to $2 per gallon. I guess since they own my tank and no one else can fill it, they can charge the monopoly price. I'll continue to use my pellet stove because I like it, its eco friendly and in spite of my price gouging propane company.

In Northern Michigan propane is near 2$/gal, 2.19 this AM. (cheboygan, mi) So burn pellet burn and problems with this except when away from home.

Chas

As the price of oil gets close to the cost of pellets (which it appears is happening), I think most people will give up on burning pellets given enough time. People are generally lazy or busy and burning pellets is not nearly as maintenance-free as oil fired central heating. I hate big oil as much as the next guy, but given enough time I know I'd go back assuming oil were cheap enough (if I hadn't converted to NG).

In fact, NG in my area is significantly cheaper than burning pellets (even at $205/ton) so even though I enjoy running the pellet stove(s), I don't think I'll be doing anything other than occasional low temp fires this winter. At some point NG and oil prices will go back up, so I'll save my 5 tons of pellets for when it's more cost effective for me to burn them.

It's the principle The oil companies keep sticking it to us and we never seem to learn our lesson. Think long term; do you really think that the Saudi's, Exxon/Mobil, etc. plan on losing money. They want as much of our money as they can get their hands on. I am sticking with pellets for my heat and will buy as little oil and oil based products as possible. It's not rocket science. Oil (and all the entrenched companies, lobbiests, etc.)= BAD... Alternative fuels (in our case wood pellets made in the USA) = GOOD.