Blackstone hardwood pellets

[Peterfield]

I searched for info on this pellet but the forum without success and also on the internet. Aside for a couple of posters complaining of excessive fines in the bag via woodpelletreview.com, I couldn't find anything. Well, a vendor a couple of towns over from me is selling these at $200/ton so thought I'd try a couple of bags and if good, maybe I'd pick up a ton. One bag thru the Harman so far and I am surprised to say they are the cleanest in terms of hardly any fines in the bag, very low ash production with no, discernible ash in the tray and they are not fogging the glass of the stove. I have been using Hamer's Hot Ones and bags of Blazer's, CleanFire, Green Team Platinum, Cheat River, and a couple of others this year that I'm not recalling at the moment. The heat is good and consumption is running better than average. I've noticed on CL the prices for the most part have dropped to @200-$229 a ton. Haven't shut down and checked for clinkers yet but when I scraped the burn pot, I couldn't feel any bumps. One thing I did notice about the bag is the vent holes are larger than typical so if they were not stored or wrapped properly, I could see water getting in and breaking down the pellets. After the second bag, I'll shut down the stove and see what's in the burn pot in terms of clinkers and speed bumps..

 

[bogieb]

Definitely let us know of your findings / opinion. I seem to think I saw something about those. Another forum seems to think they may be a Dry Creek product.

 

[Peterfield]

I was aware of the Dry Creek speculation but the vendor told me it's a relatively new mill in eastern CT. The web site for Blackstone leads one to believe they make the pellets there.

 

[Peterfield]

Well, two bags through the 52i and color me impressed. Glass is still clear and ash pan has very little ash in it. Cleaned out the burn pot and there are no clinkers and no speed bumps, a first for this stove. Not sure what type,of hardwood they are using in their recipe but whatever it is, it works. I'll be picking up a ton as soon as the Hamer Hot Ones are gone.

 

[bogieb]

Opened a couple bags of Blackstones that I obtained today ; one for each stove. They claim to be hardwoods but dang if they don't smell like Christmas . Actually the only pellets that I've had, since the Vermont's last year, that actually smell like wood to me. Haven't opened any of the oakies yet, so not sure of what they smell like. Both stoves have another day or two before they hit the Blackstones, but if those burn half as good as they smell, I'll be delighted!.

 

[Peterfield]

When I opened a bag it reminded me of the smell in my 7th grade shop classroom.

 

[bogieb]

So the Blackstones have gone thru both stoves:

In the P43 they burned exactly as the Pres-to's have all season. I couldn't tell when they hit by either the thermometer or ash (very little - just a bit at the lip of the pot). the only reason I know the Blackstones have gone thru is because the hopper was nearly empty last night when I checked. I had been very happy with the Pres-to's, so the fact that I couldn't tell the difference is praise in itself.

In the P61a, there was a huge difference in both heat and ash compared to the ThermoGlos' (was there any doubt? ). I have used way less pellets since they hit and haven't had to dig the ashes out to keep the flame from being engulfed.

Definitely a more than decent pellet - and a winner, especially for the $199 price that Peterfield was able to get.

 

[Peterfield]

Glad you found them to your satisfaction. I'm contemplating scraping together some cash and getting another ton.

 

[Roydog]

Just bought a ton myself in Central CT...$249/ton. I had one bag that got wet out of the ton but the rest were in perfect shape. They looked similar to the TSC pellets I've bought in the past. They DO smell nice, I must say. Had a good size mix of pellets and they looked relatively "light" in color which I also like to see. I had a very small amount of fines at the bottom of the bag, which is nice. Just poured my first bag in my "Enviro Empress", which pretty much eats anything, but I'll let you guys know what I get for ash. They look good so far though and the price is right!

 

[Harmanizer]

Lowes sells Still River pellets which I believe are the same as the Blackstone's.I will have to try a few bags.

 

[ct_administrator]

I was picking up a load of Timber Heat at Lowes and saw that they had North American (no thanks) and Still River. I decided to try a bag of the Still River. They were burning in my stove for about 2 1/2 hours and had very little heat output. I took most of them out and mixed in the Timber and the heat is finally coming up a few degrees.

I don't know anything about the Still River Pellets, but I'm not impressed with the low output of heat I've seen.

 

[Roydog]

Alright so an update to my last post regarding these pellets. Again the smell is great when you open a bag and when they are burning. Nice light pellet, and a surprisingly small bit of ash. the one issue I am having is the darn pellets are too long. I've increased the burn rate to the maximum but because the pellets are too long, the auger cannot feed them at a substantial enough rate for a good burn. I need to jack up the feed rate on my stove and run it at a #3 heat setting just to keep a somewhat consistent fire in the box. I wrote the company about three days ago and haven't heard back. As soon as I do I'll post their reply. I'm not sure I'll buy these until the pellets are of a shorter consistency

 

[Peterfield]

The owner is on a road trip. I've had great luck with these and didn't notice any issue with length, but the 52i chomps on long pellets fine so maybe it depends on the stove one uses.

 

[Roydog]

The owner is on a road trip. I've had great luck with these and didn't notice any issue with length, but the 52i chomps on long pellets fine so maybe it depends on the stove one uses.

Hmm....I've burned alot of different kinds of pellets and never had issues like this. I'm pretty good at trouble shooting things, and this to me seems like a length issue.

 

[Drow]

Hey a newbie to the site but with a pellet question 2-3 years old, we've had a Quadrafire Castille insert for about 8 years in the midwest. This is the only topic I read that seemed to involve my issues. The first 4 years I burned pellets from the company where we bought/installed the insert, but switched to local pellet vendors 3 years ago due to the drive & cost. The last two seasons auger blockages became regular and this weekend I took the insert apart for a complete, including auger assembly, cleaning and it fired right up. It looks to me that 25% of these pellets (not sure of brand anymore) are 1.5" to 2" long, where I recall the original pellets were up to 1" long. Does any one else feel the pellet length may be an issue behind auger jams? Is the way to try and confirm this to go back to the original pellets or bust these pellets into smaller pieces? I apologize if this is the wrong forum to post this issue, and I don't know that the length is the issue, but auger jams and pellet length seem to be related due to brand switch timeframe. Thank you for any thoughts.

 

[Roydog]

Hey a newbie to the site but with a pellet question 2-3 years old, we've had a Quadrafire Castille insert for about 8 years in the midwest. This is the only topic I read that seemed to involve my issues. The first 4 years I burned pellets from the company where we bought/installed the insert, but switched to local pellet vendors 3 years ago due to the drive & cost. The last two seasons auger blockages became regular and this weekend I took the insert apart for a complete, including auger assembly, cleaning and it fired right up. It looks to me that 25% of these pellets (not sure of brand anymore) are 1.5" to 2" long, where I recall the original pellets were up to 1" long. Does any one else feel the pellet length may be an issue behind auger jams? Is the way to try and confirm this to go back to the original pellets or bust these pellets into smaller pieces? I apologize if this is the wrong forum to post this issue, and I don't know that the length is the issue, but auger jams and pellet length seem to be related due to brand switch timeframe. Thank you for any thoughts.

Yup, that's actually a not all that uncommon of a proble to have. 2" pellets would cause alot of problems in my opinion. Honestly I'm not sure I've ever seen any that long before. Purchase a couple of bags of the original pellets or any other brand of pellets and try them out, see if there's a difference. Alot of trial and error with pellet stoves when you consider how inconsistent pellets are from brand to brand.

 

[rich2500]

I got a ton of these Ironstone mills pellets I'm burning and they are the longest I ever seen. The Ravelli chews them right up though.