Home Heating Oil is becoming the alternative

I love it.

Here're, here're, here're. We here at the wood pellet fuel organization (woodpelletfuel.org) are now saying and declare , keep it in the well. Oil is becoming the alternative as pellet fuel will be the primary home heating source in a decade or less. In my home pellet fuel is primary and oil is the alternative. We told you so 15 years ago.

I started this thread just to get some thoughts of others

No argument here, but I can also say gasoline is the alternative fuel for transportation to diesel, and water is my alternative drink.

For some folks, yes.

I can't imagine a large percentage of pellet burners in the country. Ever.

The primary reasons I feel that way are (a) it is very labor intensive compared to delivered oil/gas and (b) pellets will never provide HUGE savings even if the price of oil and gas skyrockets. Heating with pellets might save 40% or 50% now. If oil goes higher pellets will too; it's supply and demand and the pellet mill owners realize that when all is said and done they are competing on a BTU to BTU basis with other fuels. My guess is that if oil doubles pellets double too.

Nice savings but not enough to motivate a majority.

However this is the first time that a fossil fuel has had serious competition, prices my not increase as much as you think. If there is not much savings people may stay with oil or gas.

Maybe not, but when you can buy your heat a week at a time instead of 200 gallons at a clip, that's compelling for a lot of people. Many people in this country live from paycheck to paycheck and having to drop $1,000 or even $2,000 at a time to fill up their oil tank is simply not possible. Dropping $30 or $50 or even $100 every week to buy your bags of pellets is far more doable for many people.

The current discount oil dealer near me is charging 3.69/gal with a 150 gal minimum COD. That's over $550. When I got my tank filled from my regular dealer back in July the bill was $943 and I had almost a third of a tank at the time. Even on a monthly plan, my oil bill is $350/mo and they want to tack on a $40/month surcharge for upcoming price increases. Those kind of numbers will drive people to Wal-Mart to buy pellets by the bag. Especially if oil doubles and even if pellets do too.

I think oil will be a secondary fuel for a lot of people myself. This year my oil dealer wanted $422.00 a month on my equal payment plan. Knowing 2 people that have used pellets for a few years now and they tell me they use around 3 tons of pellets and maybe $1,000.00 worth of oil a year was enough to make me buy a pellet stove. As far as the extra work I think I will be able to find 10 min a day to do the work. I grew up on a farm and we always burnt wood and coal. Hard to get coal around here and I really never wanted the work of wood but pellets make sense.
If I was in an area where I could get natural gas I would have gone with that over oil, anybody I know that has gas seems to heat pretty cheap also but thats going up also. I think they will keep pellets in line with the price of oil but if oil goes up then pellets are still going to be cheaper.

Current cash price for oil here is $3.02, and gasoline is down to $3.34.

Seems as though I am in "bizzaro world".

I am moving, #2 oil here is $3.50 a gallon.