How Many Tons In Lehigh Valley, PA?

[valentine92]

For those of you that live in a similar climate I was wondering how many tons of pellets I should be ordering since this is my first year.

1300 square foot home ranch home, built in the early 1960's. New windows and doors. Harman Accentra free standing stove. We reside in the Lehigh Valley in PA. I plan on burning 24/7 and will try to keep my home between 72 - 74 degrees during the winter months. Im not sure how much insulation is in the walls but we did add insulation to the attic a few years ago. We are only heating one floor.

 

[BubbRubb]

Do you plan on using this as your only heat? If so, I would recommend 4 tons. They keep from year to year and nobody can predict accurately just how severe the winter is going to be. I live 5 mins from the PA border in MD and burnt two tons last year, but only used my stove when the heat pump was insufficient.

 

[valentine92]

Yes We are hoping to only use the pellet stove for our heat

 

[ylomnstr]

My first home used a small quadrafire stove. It was only about 850 sq feet, and I used it for my only heat since we had electric heat. I had it hooked up to a thermostat and we went through about 1.5 tons per year.

All depends on how you burn, how warm you want it, and if you use a thermostat.

I'd say a minimum of 2 tons to start.

 

[Corie]

Order three.


Can you get the total energy used to heat your home last year? It's easy to convert whatever heat source you used into pellets to see how it will take, but I wouldn't go into this heating season with less than 3 tons.

Hey, where in the Lehigh Valley? Been there about 9 million times before I moved down here to VA (wife went to school there, plus on the way home)

 

[pelletwood]

I also live in the Lehigh valley, Just got my Harman Accentra in the beginning of May.
Our house is about 1300 sq. feet 2 story
Do you use oil heat, if you do you can do a calculation to figure out how many tons you need.
1 ton = about 115 to 120 gallon of oil
This is only a starting point because there are so many variables to consider.
Insulation, windows, how old the current heating system is and how wasteful it is.
Also if your furnace is in the cellar, you will not be heating that with the pellet stove(extra savings)
From what I have read many people use less pellets than the calculation that I mentioned.
My calculation came to about 3 ton and I purchased 4 to be on the safe side.
If you have room to store pellets in a dry spot I would order a little extra.
I am new to this as you are and I am hoping that my calculation works.

 

[valentine92]

Thank you all for the input. Our oil usage varied greatly. There were times that we used 800 gallons for heat and hotwater. Over the past few years we added insulation to the attic, new windows and doors, etc. Last year we only used 454 gallons of oil for heat and hotwater but I supplemented with firewood and electric space heaters since the price oil was very high.

It would probably average out to approx 600 galllonsy, but now I am only going to be heating the main floor with the pellet stove.

 

[pelletwood]

At 600 gallon your looking at about 5 ton.
But this is just a guess!
Try to figure out during the summer months how much oil you use for hot water.

 

[valentine92]

We averaged about 20-22 gallons of oil a month during the months that we are not heating the house.

 

[pelletwood]

Here is a link to the calculator that I used
(broken link removed to http://www.pelletboiler.com/mh_fuel_price_calculator.asp)