Pellet Dust???

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Mark_ms

Feeling the Heat
Jan 28, 2008
352
Upstate NY on VT Border
..Is there such a thing? The reason why I am wondering is I am about to buy a pellet insert and am planning on storing pellets in basement garage. So when I bring bags upstairs do pellets emit dust when being poured? I was thinking of building a decorative "pellet chest" to hold 2-3 bags next to Insert, so I would not have bring up from downstairs on a daily basis. The pellets would be poured into this chest.

Besides if I build a chest for pellets, it gives me quality time with my new table saw :cheese:

thanx,

Mark_ms
 
Depending on the brand of pellets, some have a little dust. Dust has never really been a concern for us, but I do recall hearing one person make a negative comment about it... although I have no idea what brand they were using or how bad the dust issue truly was. Dust has really been a non-issue with the premium pellets we've always used.

Regarding the chest idea, I wouldn't do it. The pellets are pretty easy to handle when left in their bags. I certainly wouldn't want to dump the bags into a chest and then have to scope them back out. The bags also protect the pellets from moisture and humidity to a certain extent. I'd suggest you try using them from the bag before building a chest...
 
The more you move them the more dust you will create. I found that to be true in my case when I was arranging my basement and had a ton in 3 different locations compared to a ton that I had placed in one spot and left it there prior to burning. Both tons were purchased at the same time and were the same brand.
 
For what it's worth, we have a crib in the garage that holds around 30 bags or 35 bushels of corn. We 5 gallon bucket out of the crib, if the pellets are very dusty we add some corn oil to the crib and mix it up well. It seems to work well, never had a probelm yet. If you do the oil trick that's up to you!
 
We don't have our stove yet (installed next month), but are planning to keep the bags stacked in the garage & then pour them into something like a coal hod in the garage (so any dust isn't in the house) & then pour them from the hod into the hopper.
 
I poured a whole bag into my Harman P 38 hopper and noticed one corner was all sawdust. Maybe 2-3 cupfuls. That corner obviously got wet at some point and turned to sawdust. I left it there and just mixed it in with the pellets.
The stove burned it all without any visible effects but I checked the fines box after that bag was burned and found nothing.
that tells me sawdust is not a big issue ,at least not with my stove.
John
 
5 gallon plastic buckets work great. I split one bag of pellets between 3 buckets so my wife can carry pellets in the house when I'm gone. By shaking the bag first so most of the dust settles to the bottom of the bag, the "dusty" part of the bag only ends up in the last bucket. You can shake that bucket causing the dust to fall to the bottom & carefully pour out of that bucket avoiding the stuff at the bottom if you really want to reduce dust.
 
What I do is imply set the bag in the bottom of the hopper bottom end down. Then using a razor knife I slit the bag along the bottom from side to side then just let the bag slide up off the pellets. Nearly all the dust stays in the hopper where it gets burned. Pails are good when you are dealing with bulk but the bags are darned hard to beat for simple convenience.
 
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