Last nut shell run of the season

[Snowy Rivers]

Yesterday was cold and clear out, so I decided to give the nut shellers a call and see if I could get some shells.

The winter has been fairly cold so far and we have been plowing through a lot of shells to keep one if not both of the whitfields running full time.

This is our first year to heat this house 100% with the shells.
In the past (up until last winter) we used the Quadrafire for the average days and if it got cold we used the Old Earthstove WP-50 on shells.

Last winter saw many changes with the addition of the Prodigy and then the change to the Advantage II that replaced the old Earthstove.

Now we are heating 100% with a waste product.

Soooooo since we started the season fairly early and the nut crop was smaller than normal and much later too, getting shells in was later too.

Having not heated this house 100% with shells previously I did not have any idea as to how much it was going to take with the current stoves.

I picked up about 4000# of shells in the dump truck and got them all barreled up within a couple hours.

Scrounged up a dozen more cheapy plastic garbage cans with lids (keep out rodents) and added these to my regular compliment of containers.

Best guess after seeing what I ended up having to dump in the side yard afterwards, I likely stored 3000-3500 pounds.

We should be good to go now until summer.

I calculated out what we have been burning so far and its about 40 pounds a day on an normal day and a little more when I run two stoves.

The shells are costing me about 2 cents a pound to purchase and very little time to get stored.
The plant is 15 minutes away from the ranch, so the travel cost is minimal.

Looks like a daily cost of about 80 cents. If one factors in the electicity and all its still a super deal at around a dollar or so.

For next season I am planning on getting a 5 cubic yard dumpster and storing that in the out building and filling it with shells.

Getting a weather window when I have the time to go and do the job is always an issue too.

I would love to have a large enough storage area to be rid of all the barrels in my basement.


Yesssss, all warm and cozy and now the weather man says the temps are going to go up to the 50's after tomorrow.

This will see us drop back to using the tiny little stove for a while.



Later troops

Snowy

 

[Jack Morrissey]

Wow, you cant beat that price... Hows the ash and clinkers compared to wood pellets??

 

[chris288]

You must be a mind reader I was just looking up hazel nut shells for sale in NY about an hour ago, don't see any suppliers around this area. Lucky you, heating your house for 40.00 / ton of biofuel...

 

[Snowy Rivers]

About twice the ash as pellets.

Need to knock out the clinker twice daily with a quicky swish of a long handled scrapper.

Yessss the price is the reason.

Its a little more work than the pellets, but the heat is good and for the great savings, I can easily handle the addition chores.

The ash is a light gray in color.

The biggest issue is that there is enough non burnables that will form a soft clinker in the fire pot over several hours.

The firepot design on the whitfield is such that the stuff does not blow out, just too heavy I guess.

The smell of the exhaust is nice outdoors though. Smells like stuff cooking in the kitchen.


Snowy

 

[littlesmokey]

Instead of renting an open dumpster why not think about buying a used shipping container. If you have the room, they are dry, sealed or vented (they come both ways) and a 20 footer should be reasonable pricewise. I looked into getting one for storing rough cut green wood at my shop, but the zoning folk said NO. Your place and space should not be a problem. With all the stuff coming into Longview they should be dirt cheap.

Just for curiosity sake, is the smoke pleasant?

There are several fruit processing plants within 75 miles and lots of peaches and apricots are pitted. I have thought about investigating the "pits" for burning, but think a multi-fuel stove would be necessary, and that is not in the budget right now. It stays near the front of my thinking though.

 

[save$]

Snowy,
You have done a fantastic Job at keeping yourself warm and the cost down. Looks like you have the situation in control instead of the reverse! While you post the effort spent is modest, What you are telling about what you did seems to be a lot of activity. But that is so often the place were most of us get to save any money at all. Here in Maine, our biomass is limited to wood and wood pellets. I have a friend who is healthy and owns his own wood lot. He chuckles at the rest of us when we are talking about what we have to pay to keep warm. The biggest hang up with depending on most biomass burning is the need of being around them twice a day to keep things running right. Nice to have a back up system when you want to get away for more than a few hours.
It is fascinating to read about the mix of stoves you use. My success with heating with a single pellet stove is from going after drafts and with additional insulation. Huge difference. Had I to do it all over again, I would go with those 6in outside walls, triple e windows, and a multi-fuel biomass furnaces, and I would orient my home for maximum solar gain. I read about someone who has a home something like that and it is heated with a small wood stove.

 

[Snowy Rivers]

We have the Quadrafire 1000 that always loaded with fresh pellets and the T stat set at 62F

If we need to go away for more than a day (work day) the Quad will come on and keep the chill off.

The cost differential is so wide that I just can't justify using the Pellets 100% when I have the shells available so cheap.

The current prices on Pellets locally are $187 a ton ( about 9-1/2 cents a pound)
The shells are costing 2 cents a pound.

Pretty easy to make the decision as to what to burn.

Snowy

 

[jtakeman]

There are several fruit processing plants within 75 miles and lots of peaches and apricots are pitted. I have thought about investigating the "pits" for burning, but think a multi-fuel stove would be necessary, and that is not in the budget right now. It stays near the front of my thinking though.

I was pretty surprised how clean the cherry pits burned. I have seen a few post's where the owners of standard stoves tried them with no issues. If you do try some please share how they did for you?

 

[Snowy Rivers]

We have a large cherry crop in the valley, but I have never spoken to the processors about getting any pits.

The Cherry processors are 40 miles one way from me and the nut shelling plants are only 8 miles round trip.

We do have huge amounts of seed grass grown here, and am very supprised that someone has not set up to pelletize this stuff.

The farmers used to burn all the straw off the fields, but with all the enviro regs now, they can't burn it any more, at least not in the huge field fires.

Just so many Bio mass fuels that could be used to heat homes cheaply.


Snowy