Such a shame, what waste! You would think that somebody in charge there would know better.
How some Walmarts keep their wood pellets
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bogieb
Minister of Fire
IDK, 40 pounds of kitty litter for $2 is a steal.
Typical. I've found soaked and bloated bags to make great flower bed mulch too. Those pallets of pellets look pretty picked over anyway, by customers looking for dry bags. 2 bucks is fair for what once was 40 pounds of pellets, now 60 pounds of mulch but not much else.
Should be named. 'Summers Mulch' not Summers heat. Ain't no heat there. Just stinky nasty wet pellets.
Should be named. 'Summers Mulch' not Summers heat. Ain't no heat there. Just stinky nasty wet pellets.
tlc1976
Minister of Fire
They don’t sell pellets at the Walmart around here. Probably for good reason, there would be a lot of returns for poor performance or damaged or wet bags. And you can walk next door to Home Depot or Lowe’s if you want them from a box store.
Natures heat. Yep the only way you’ll get heat in your house is if it comes from nature.
Natures heat. Yep the only way you’ll get heat in your house is if it comes from nature.
Walmart's here do but I've never perused their pellets at all. 2 bucks is an excellent price if good (and dry) and for mulch, 2 bucks ain't bad either. Like tires, I never buy them at Walmart. The tire jockeys there are basically idiots. Overtighten lug nuts and poorly balance them, sort of like the 10 minute oil change places, also staffed with dorks. I avoid those places like the plague.
Washed-Up
Minister of Fire
Lucky here I guess, the Wally World pellets are softwood, are $2 LESS than the other stores and burn as hot or hotter than others aside from LaCrete
tlc1976
Minister of Fire
I’ve never had a problem with their tires, some are really good deals. But like you say I won’t allow them to touch my vehicles. Seen too much BS. So I bring in loose wheels. Besides I like to run non stock sizes and they are not allowed to put those on the vehicle anyway. I’ve never had a problem with them leaking.
I used to use the mom and pop shop in town but it started to be every single time they leaked. Even new tires I bought from them. One time they even left a loose valve stem rolling around inside the tire.
I didn't think much of their auto shop, but decided once to give them a chance when I didn't have the time to change my own oil years ago. It was a dodge minivan. So when I went to get in and drive away, I glanced under the front to make sure the drain plug looked like it was installed correctly before planning to pop the hood and check the levels. Well, there was oil dripping from my engine down onto the pavement! Some knucklehead was using a funnel to poor the oil and just filled the funnel full and the funnel slipped and spilled all that oil over the top of my engine. They didn't even bother to tell me or sop/clean up the mess. I will never take another vehicle there to have work done if I have any kind of choice.
I saw the price drop to $2 a bag a week and a half ago so I drove an hour and a half there to see that mess at the front of the store. Thankfully, they had two shrink wrapped pallets over in the garden section. I had them forklift one down and stuffed my Rav4 to the gills w/ 30 bags (it's cargo capacity is almost 1300lbs). I went back last Sat. and they still had the other pallet untouched, so I got another 30 bags. This time the guy didn't want to get the forklift and was trying to tell me to get the ones uncovered in front of the store. lol, yeah...
So I'll see if these things are any good. A lot of reviews rave about them, some said they were terrible, but that's been over the past few years. Couldn't tell if the bad reviewers were burning water damaged stuff or not.
So I'll see if these things are any good. A lot of reviews rave about them, some said they were terrible, but that's been over the past few years. Couldn't tell if the bad reviewers were burning water damaged stuff or not.
I sure hope they are good for you will get plenty of cheap burning with those--sure hope you got the bargain of the year,,clancey
I'm hoping that my experience is closer to those reviewers that say they're excellent pellets. But unless they're horrible I figure they'll be worth at least the roughly $2.30 per bag it cost me (factoring in gas money).
Let us know if they wind up good and I am betting they are for you picked the bags out some of those bags looked pretty bad with blow up look----------Betting you got good ones from inside the store...fingers crossed...Now if you could make the gas prices come down..lol clancey
The bags I got were not inside the store, but they were on shrink wrapped pallets that kept the water out. Otherwise I wouldn't have bothered.
Everyone makes mistakes, it's human nature. Incompetence on the other hand has no excuse. I retired from a heavy truck dealership (Western Star) years ago and I still remember when the night foreman in the shop was doing a service on a big Caterpillar diesel in a large car and he was busy fielding phone calls and forgot to tighten the drain plug on the oil pan. That moment of lapse attention cost the dealership 22 grand for a new Caterpillar 3406 plus they paid for the take out of the blown motor, the wrecker bill and the install of the new one too. Diesels don't last very long with no oil. My boss didn't fire him but he wasn't too awful happy either.
What really bothers me about oil jockeys in places like that is, what are they putting in your vehicle. The cheapest oil or what.
Never, never do a transmission flush on an automatic trans either. If the transmission has over 75K on it, drain the fluid, change the filter and put the old fluid back in, never change it, never 'flush' it. New fluid or a flush job on a higher mileage slush box will almost guarantee slipping clutches and in theory, the new synthetic tans fluid never needs changed unless it's burnt and if it is, your clutch material is in the pan and the box needs rebuilt anyway. That don't apply to Dexron-Mercon, just synthetic fluid. Dexron-Mercon ever 50K and a new filter.
No one has ever touched any of my vehicles except me and that includes the electronics. I have a very expensive scan tool that will tell me what is wrong and even suggest what to replace. Oil and filters are easy-peasy anyway.
Do my own tires too.
One nice thing about wood pellets is, it's easy to tell if they got any kind of wet damage as the bags swell up like raccoon road kill on the side of the road in the summer. They inflate...lol Not so much with shelled corn. it just gets white mold on it and stinks. No stink like rotten wet corn. Time to load it in the manure spreader and put it on a fallow field. You always spread up wind. You don't ever want to be downwind of a spreader spreading rotten corn. Enough to gag a maggot.
tlc1976
Minister of Fire
The easiest way I can tell when a bag has gotten wet inside, is there is hard lump.
One pallet had many bags that were dripping wet. Like water and wet sawdust running out when I picked it up. I just tossed them back in and took the whole thing back to the store. That was when the inept fork truck driver tore the plastic when stacking pallets. He couldn’t even get the pallet into my trailer without repeatedly stabbing the bottom bags. They were getting a lot of wet pellet returns, and thought the pellet company to blame. I told them what I saw and I never saw that guy loading after that.
One pallet had many bags that were dripping wet. Like water and wet sawdust running out when I picked it up. I just tossed them back in and took the whole thing back to the store. That was when the inept fork truck driver tore the plastic when stacking pallets. He couldn’t even get the pallet into my trailer without repeatedly stabbing the bottom bags. They were getting a lot of wet pellet returns, and thought the pellet company to blame. I told them what I saw and I never saw that guy loading after that.
Tractor Supply is good for that (impaling bags) as well. Around here we call them 'Tough Shitte Charlies, where everything is scratched, dented or broken'.....
The stick a bag on the bottom, I won't take the skid and it seems like sop with their 'associates'.
I guess when you get minimum wage, you have minimum smarts too.
ABusWrench
Feeling the Heat
The last time (several years ago) I was going to buy pellets at TSC , I went around back to see what they had. Found 20-30 water damaged pallets of pellets. Looked like they exploded. Everything sets outside until rotated into store for sale. A sad sight. I have found other places to purchase pellets, that are kept out of the weather, and people that care about the product they sell.
Almost the exact opposite at my local TSC (other than the stabbing of the bags with the forks when loading on my Gooseneck trailer.
Outside pallets are kept under a hoop building out of the weather, shrink wrapped and all have plastic shrouds.
Actually, I've stored pellets outside in the winter (with snow on top of them) shrink wrapped with plastic shrouds and no issues at all with bloated bags...
Outside pallets are kept under a hoop building out of the weather, shrink wrapped and all have plastic shrouds.
Actually, I've stored pellets outside in the winter (with snow on top of them) shrink wrapped with plastic shrouds and no issues at all with bloated bags...
If water can't get to them, they'll be fine. I wonder though how long it takes humidity to "soak" into pellets, especially those in bags that are perforated as part of the bag design. The Pennington bags have small vent holes on the back for some reason. Pretty much any bag of pellets will have likely have a few small micro abrasion type cuts from broken ends of pellets cutting the plastic during handling.
So do the ones I buy. I don't believe it matters at all. The contents of the bags will assume the RH of the place they are stored in anyway. I suspect that as long as the RH don't approach 100%, they are fine (100% being wet).
So I just did my first startup and curing of the paint today using the Nature's Heat pellets and they seem to burn really well. Only ran it for just over an hour, so while not really sure, there didn't seem to be a lot of ash either.
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