Pennington Pellets

[petejung]

Anyone ever used the Pennington Pellets? I bought a ton from HD yesterday, and I think the wife is burning a bag of them today while I'm gone slaving away...

Only thing I noticed about them is they smelled a slight bit different than the Somerset pellets I bought from TSC, and they were a more pale color - the Somerset pellets were a more golden/dark brown and the Pennington's were a pale/light brown.

Anyway, if anyone has any relevant information, please pass it along. I'll consider no news to be good news on this one, though

 

[stoveguy2esw]

i just got back from atlanta doing an advertisement for penningtons pellets , we set up an insert in a fireplace and filmed it running the penington pellets for them , they had a celebrity in the ad linda lydey from HGTV. i have been burning some of these pellets last few days and am happy with them (fringe benefit for helping them with the ad) they seem to do quite well in my 25-pdvc and they burned like a champ in the insert during the ad filming

 

[petejung]

Thanks, Mike!

 

[petejung]

Just a note to all, for information purposes:

I've found these pellets to burn well in my Englander 25PDVC... However, the pellets are dustier coming out of the bag, and seem to produce a lot more ash. I went through about 18 bags of Somerset pellets before I emptied out my side ash bins, and I've burned 6 Penningtons, and I need to empty again. Neither here nor there, just thought it was interesting info, as this was the first time I used a different brand of pellet.

 

[pegdot]

Pete, I'm burning Somerset in my 25-PDVE since they are all I can get locally. Looks like I'm getting clinkers so I was thinking about trying to get Home Depot to order me some pellets which would probably be the Pennington so this is an interesting topic to me. Did you make any adjustments to your stove to get them to burn the Somerset well?

 

[petejung]

I had some trouble with my 25pdvc, and they checked my settings when I called them, and had me change them to 6-9-1.

 

[pegdot]

Thanks Pete! Mine was set on 6-9-1 when I got it but I turned the low fuel feed down to 4 because it was blowing through pellets like crazy. Haven't touched the other settings yet since it seems like more combustion air is what I need now and it's already cranked all the way up on that setting.

I'd planned on getting a ton of the Somerset today but I guess I'll wait until after I talk to Mike tomorrow.

 

[stoveguy2esw]

peggy,
i cant comment on the somerset pelets as i havent run any , the pennington did fine in my pdvc, although i still prefer lignetics over anything ive run to date.

 

[petejung]

One thing I noticed - the Pennington pellet bag didn't seem to have the pellet institute symbol on it, at least I didn't find one. The Somerset pellets did. How much weight does the Pellet Institute symbol carry? I suppose that not all brands that don't carry the symbol are necessarily "bad" pellets, but I would suspect that brands that did carry the symbol should be standardized.

 

[bstinelli]

for me i didnt care to much for pennington pellets i almost bought a ir thermometer and did a few surface temps to verify so far anything with the PFI seal does exceptionally better to be honest i've been home since the weather is bad and i check up on my stove quite a bit and i ran it reallly high with pennington so far NLI and greene team especially green team i couldnt ask for more havent gone above a heat setting of 6 with the blower @ 9 good heat

 

[petejung]

bstinelli - I agree with you on the Pennington pellets... Won't buy them again unless I can get them dirt cheap.

 

[schulj76]

I snagged 6 bags of Pennington pellets to try out. They have some sort of binder and/or filler in them. Clinkers like I have never seen before and I have tried some bad pellets over the last 3 years. Of the 6 bags of pellets I had, 5 bags had a very dark color of pellets and 1 bag had light brown pellets. The 1 bag of light brown pellets burned cleaner than the 5 bags of dark ones. I ended up mixing dark pellets with known good pellets to get rid of them.

 

[blanc12]

I got several bags of these pennington pellets form wally world the other day. I found they had alot of fines in them. Wife called me today and told me the stove quit. I found the fines from these pellets jammed my upper auger. I cleaned everything up and stove is running again. I have 4 more bags of these. I will have to find some way to clean them before I can use them. Other than the fines they seemed to burn ok.

 

[petejung]

I've spent a lot of time sifting Pennington pellets through screens to separate the fines.

 

[brandytab]

I snagged 6 bags of Pennington pellets to try out. They have some sort of binder and/or filler in them. Clinkers like I have never seen before and I have tried some bad pellets over the last 3 years. Of the 6 bags of pellets I had, 5 bags had a very dark color of pellets and 1 bag had light brown pellets. The 1 bag of light brown pellets burned cleaner than the 5 bags of dark ones. I ended up mixing dark pellets with known good pellets to get rid of them.

Same here... wow are these pellets dark! I bought 3 bags of Pennington the other day and won't be buying them again.

 

[stoveguy2esw]

for the record , i have been watching this thread, and pennington is aware of this website ( i told one of their ad people about it personally while i was down there) i am going to see that they are made aware of this thread in particular , and see what happens , i will suggest that they may want to address this thread in here to answer any questions that are brought up. as a company they seem to be very up front and are intent on producing a fine product. the folks who i worked with down there were very attentive. hopefully they will garner some worthwhile information from the posts in this thread and may be able to use it to make a great product.

note: i write this wholly of my own free will and am not in any way compensated by pennington or any other company for doing so.

i will post again when i have any information to pass on

 

[petejung]

Yesterday when I got home from work (they let us out 1/2 hr early - so it was still light) I decided to clean out my exhaust piping... OH MY GOSH! We have burned between 15-20 bags of the Pennington pellets, and the amount of residue that I got out of the pipes was unreal. There was/is actually a pile of ash on the ground under my cleanout. I was covered head to toe in ash.

We burned 17 bags of Somerset before I bought these Pennington pellets, and I cleaned out the exhaust piping right before I started burning the Pennington's. The Somerset produced nothing near the amount of ash as the Pennington's. I agree with the weife on this one, for $20 more, I'll buy the Somerset's again... Unless I get the Pennington's for about 1/2 price in April. I'm not mad about this, I'm just expressing my concerns and opinion after having used this product.

 

[blanc12]

The only problem I have with these pellets is the fines. The bags I have are the Nature's Heat ones. It could be they just got shook up to much in shipping. They may be better if you live closer to where they are made.

 

[gossipninja]

i got an englander with 240 pound hopper, use pennington pellets from home depot, they are very very ashy. Also, the exhaust is quite hot, according to my ir thermomter around 150 to 170F, is this normal? Seems like that is a lot of lost heat just going out the wall.

 

[HD41]

I found Somerset pellets produced about 25% greater heat/temperature on the same setting compared to Pennington and AMF (American Wood Fiber) I tried some Tidy Timber from Walmart and they produced the least heat were full of fines coming in dead last. I haven't seen any comments on AMF pellets.

 

[kshew97]

I have had similar problems to the ones listed here with the Pennington pellets. Although Home Depot and Lowes are both only about 4 miles from my house, I will be making the 15 mile trip to Tractor Supply or one of the stove specialty stores to make my next pellet purchase. This is only my second year using my pellet stove, and I have had to do more cleaning using the Penningtons for 3 weeks than I had to do using other pellets all season last year. Dirty burn, extremely dusty, poor heat.

......Just my $0.02

 

[JimmyD]

I won't be wasting any more time with Nature's Heat pellets by Pennington. Poor heat, more fines and fly ash. Life is too short for a product this spotty qualitywise.

Jim

 

[petejung]

Sounds like the Cincinnati area got a lousy batch of Pennington pellets.

 

[petejung]

Glad to report that I'm 1/2 way through my last bag of these pellets. Can't wait to get back to burning my Somersets!

To tell you how much ash is in these pellets - I cleaned out both of my side ash bins this week on Friday morning the 25th (Englander 25pdvc). This morning, the left bin was full up to the top, and the right was 1/2 full. That's 3 days worth of burning on mostly heat setting 1, sometimes up to 3. To me, that seems like a huge amount of ash, as with the Somerset's, I burned them for a month and a half and never cleaned our the side bins.