While wood pellet sales have been increasing rapidly over the past number of years as people seek an alternative to rising home heating oil price increases, the actual availability of wood pellet has been decreasing.

Unless you live in an area where there is a high demand for wood pellet you are faced with the ever increasing costs of trying to source good quality wood pellets. The demand for wood pellet is increasing but it does so in a disjointed fashion. Wood pellet sales tend to lean toward rural areas where there is a ready made supply of wood pellet raw material. Urban dwellers that have wood pellet stoves are faced with higher transportation and storage costs. This acts as a barrier to wood pellet popularity.

Increasing oil prices has a positive impact on wood pellet sales as householders seek to hedge their exposure to the fluctuations in the oil market. In turn this leads to an increase in demand for wood pellet. In any true market suppliers will seek to satisfy this demand. Unfortunately there is a lag between the time of an oil price increase and the increase in demand for wood pellet. The cause of the time lag is primarily down to the costs associated with changing from an oil based heating system to one that is based on wood pellet.

Wood pellet sales have also been impacted by the perceived notion that installing and operating a wood pellet stove is expensive. While admittedly initial installation costs can be high, the long term savings to be made by using wood pellets rather than home heating oil are too significant to ignore.

Until the expensive image of wood pellets is tackled along with the real lack of availability, wood pellet will continue to experience volatility. It is up the wood pellet suppliers to continue their efforts to sell wood pellet as an environmentally friendly and economically viable alternative to oil.

Wood pellet stoves are specially designed stoves that use wood pellets as a fuel. However, it is possible to convert some types of solid fuel boilers to burn wood pellets. Wood pellet stoves are fast becoming a popular way to heat a home.

The pellets for wood stoves are made from sawdust that is tightly compacted together to form small dense wood pellets. The compact and dense nature of the wood pellets means that as a fuel source it burns more efficiently. The sawdust itself comes as a by-product from sawmills that would otherwise have been sent to landfill.

Wood pellets have a number of distinct advantages over other solid fuel and home heating oil. These advantages include:

1. Less ash is produced when burnt

2. When burnt wood pellets produce less CO2.

3. Wood pellets are easily transportable.

4. Higher energy density making them more economical.

5. Wood pellets are easy to ignite.

One of the key issues when considering pellets for wood stoves is that of quality. Getting good quality wood pellets can be a concern especially where a householder lives in urban centre.

Coupled with the quality issue of wood pellets is the issue of storage. While wood pellets can be bought and stored easily enough in 15kg bags, to really gain cost savings it is better to buy in bulk. The issue with buying in bulk is storage. Most suppliers will not supply pellets for wood stoves in anything less than 3 tonne loads. This size of a delivery can create a serious storage headache for the average householder.

An alternative source of wood pellets is to actually make the wood pellets yourself. While this idea may seem radical at first bear in mind that all wood pellets actually are is compacted sawdust. Apart from the initial investment in the compacter all that is needed is access to a steady supply of sawdust. Sawdust can be easily obtained from sawmills or lumber yards where it is generally seen as a waste product.

The increasing cost of home heating oil and other solid fuels means the popularity of pellets for wood stoves is likely to continue to grow. While posing some difficulty in sourcing, wood pellets provide an all round superior source of fuel relative to other solid fuels.

When analysing wood pellet cost it is necessary to look at all the relative costs and not just at the cost of the pellet itself. One of the key complaints that people who use wood pellet have is that there are significant extra costs that they either did not realise or did not know were involved with wood pellet.

The two main hidden items that has an impact on wood pellet cost are transportation and storage. While each one on its own can be significant, when combined can add up to very significant.

Wood pellet cost of transportation

While most suppliers will include the cost of delivery in the retail price it is worth noting that buying wood pellet in bulk can make a huge difference to the cost. A 15kg bag of wood pellet can cost $5.50 on average. However, if you were to buy a ton of wood pellet in a bulk delivery it would cost approximately $200 – this works out about 40% cheaper than if you were to purchase the same amount but in individual 15kg bags.

Unfortunately most suppliers have a minimum delivery quota of 3 tonnes. This means that buying in bulk can be a double edged sword and this is where the second hidden cost comes into play.

Wood pellet cost of storage

While savings are to be made by buying in wood pellet in bulk there are hidden costs tat are incurred in the storage of wood pellet. A 15kg pellet of can be transported and stored quite easily, however the transport and storage of 3 tonnes of wood pellet is not so easily achieved. The average household simply does not have the spare capacity to store 3 tonnes of wood pellet. As a result a household looking to achieve savings in cost is faced with a dilemma – do they construct a purpose built storage unit for the wood pellet or do they take a risk and store the wood pellet in some other manner that leaves the wood pellet open to degradation and waste.

These are the questions that have to be answered by the householder who is looking to balance cost savings with the practical realities of using wood pellet as a fuel source.

A gasification wood furnace is a furnace that is based on the principle of using wood gas to create super heated air to heat your domestic water needs. They provide a clean highly efficient source of home heating. The furnaces are very environmentally friendly as they use less wood than conventionally furnaces and the fuel itself  – wood – is carbon neutral.

The main difference between a gasification wood furnace and a standard wood furnace is the combustion process. Standard wood furnaces rely on the burning of wood as the combustion source whereas in the gasification process the wood is first turned into a gas (believe it or not) and then it is this wood gas that is used as the combustion source. The thermal processes that occurs when burning wood gas are more efficient than the thermal processes that occur when burning solid wood.

When considering installing a wood gasification furnace it is necessary to realise that there are a number of vital components that are necessary for its successful operation.

It is important to have a flue for the furnace to vent residual gas. The flue itself should directly vent to the outside of the building and should meet all required building codes.

A heat accumulator is necessary to store additional unused heat so that the system can regulate itself. The one issue with a wood gasification furnace is that once the thermal process has started it will continue to burn even when the requirement for heated water is met. To manage the situation where unwanted heat is created when it is not needed an accumulator will store the excess as heated water until it is needed again.

Gasification furnaces are very operationally efficient and reliable and as a result anyone who is looking for alternatives to home heating oil should seriously consider their benefits.

While the up front cost of wood pellets can be easily calculated if you take the average to be $5.5 per 15kg bag, the hidden costs such as transportation and storage are generally not factored into people’s fuel budget. 

Good quality wood pellets retails at about $5.5 per 15kg bag, if bought by the ton the price is about $200. While significant cost savings can be achieved by buying bulk, transportation and storage costs can eat into this savings. 

Transportation cost of wood pellets:

Most bulk wood pellet suppliers will include the delivery cost in the upfront cost of wood pellets. This could up to an additional $40 per ton depending on the distance travelled. You could possibly collect the bulk wood pellet directly from the supplier but this means that there would be a need for a trailer to transport the wood pellet, this, along with the additional fuel costs is likely to eat into your savings.

Some wood pellet suppliers have a minimum delivery quota below which they will not deliver. Generally this is three tonnes but may vary from supplier to supplier. IT may be possible to negotiate with the supplier to reduce their delivery fees depending on the amount

Storage cost of wood pellets:

While transportation costs can add significantly to the cost of wood pellets a big hidden cost is storage. While storing a 15kg bag of wood pellet is straightforward for the average household, storing 3 tonnes of wood pellet is a completely different matter. The physical size of such an amount of wood pellet means that the average garage will be almost completely filled with wood pellet and with little or no room for a car.

Couple with the physical size of a bulk wood pellet delivery is the need for storage space that is sealed and damp proof. The danger with a bulk delivery is that over the winter period the wood pellet, if not stored correctly, will start to degrade. This means that the moisture content of the wood pellet is likely to increase which in turn means more clinker deposits on the wood pellet stove. Eventually this will lead to higher maintenance costs for the pellet stove.

In conclusion, wood pellet is generally cheaper and more efficient to buy than other solid fuels and home heating oil. In order to extract the maximum value and keep the cost of the wood pellets as low as possible it is necessary to be aware of the hidden transportation and storage costs.

Up until relatively recently manufacturers simply did not make small pellet stoves for homes less than 900 square feet. The problem was that most of the pellet stoves could not handle a slow burn rate which in turn meant a big feed box was necessary.

Any of those pellet stoves that catered for 900 square foot houses were not very highly regarded. The main problem being that given their small size they could only limit the rate of pellet feed before the fire went out.

Another issue with small pellet stoves is that they tend to be expensive relative to larger pellet stoves. It seems that the smaller the stove the more expensive it is likely to be. Also small pellet stoves generally require manual ignition and tend to produce more ash than larger stoves.

The key thing when considering the size of the pellet stove required is to find a balance between the amount of heat required and the physical space in which the stove will be located. Even with a thermostat control there is a danger of overheating a small space if the stove used is too large – on the flip size there is a danger of under heating a large space if the stove used is too small.

Some manufacturers have made moves to address the space issue by creating small pellet stoves. Again the main issue is value for money. While the technology exists to create smaller better regulated pellet stoves, manufacturers tend to focus on the mid to large range where both heat and value efficiencies can be achieved by both the householder and the manufacturer more easily.

As wood pellet technology progresses and demand for small wood pellet stoves increases manufacturers will be forced to address this demand. Until then householders will face the prospects of expensive small pellet stoves.

Here is an ideal scenario, you buy and install a wood pellet stove, you have unlimited supplier of sawdust from a local saw mill and you happily spend the rest of your life making wood pellet and thereby saving yourself a fortune in the process. It couldn’t be any simpler – could it?

Okay that is the ideal scenario but what is the reality of making wood pellet? While in theory the process is relatively straightforward – gather up sufficient quantity of wood sawdust and put that sawdust into a wood pellet mill and hey presto – wood pellet for life. In practice making wood pellet is not that simple.

Wood pellet making mill:

The most common type of wood pellet making machine is the small scale wood pellet mill. To ensure consistency of raw material you will also need a hammer mill. These two machines can be quite bulky and storage will be an issue. Couple with storage the noise generated by these machine may also cause an issue.

Sawdust for wood pellet:

Believe it or not, not all sawdust is made the same. The key to making good quality wood pellet is having good quality sawdust. So what constitutes good quality sawdust? Well to begin with sawdust from hard work is preferred.

One of the main issues that you will face when you make your own wood pellet is consistency. If the raw material is larger than 1.5 cm in length then you can use the hammer mill to reduce the size further still so that it can be used in the wood pellet making machine and won’t clog the machine.

When the raw material is processed by the pellet machine it is heated with steam and placed under immense pressure. This causes the sawdust to bind together. The bonded material is then squeezed through a pelletizer to form pellets.

To find good quality wood pellet for sale it may require a good degree of research. While many suppliers claim to have a good quality wood pellets the moisture tends to be higher that you would expect. Given that wood pellets are made from a mixture of wood shavings and sawdust it is essential that the moisture content is kept to a minimum.

One of the key issues with wood pellets is their availability. The lower popular of wood pellet stoves compared with other solid fuels and home heating oil means that the market for wood pellet is small and therefore the number of suppliers is less. To find good quality wood pellet for sale you need to have an awareness of what constitutes good quality wood pellet. 

The quality certification is the responsibility of the manufacturer and every bag of wood pellet should clearly state the properties of the wood pellet as outlined in the table above. One simple rule of thumb to use when examining wood pellet for sale is the amount of excess dust at the bottom of the wood pellet bag. For a 15kg bag of wood pellet there should be less than a tea cup of dust at the bottom of the bag. 

The other key consideration should be the ash content of the wood pellets. The higher the ash content of the wood pellet the more likely it is to result in clinkers which in turn may cause problems for the operation of the stove. Given that manufacturers may have issues finding high quality material for their wood pellets some stove manufacturers have been forced to redesign their stoves to burn lower quality wood pellets. 

Ideally before you purchase a wood pellet stove you should know where you can source your wood pellets. There must be a reliable supplier in your area with good quality wood pellet for sale. Apart form the internet the best place to look for suppliers of wood pellets is your local tree nursery or garden centre.

Wood pellet prices can vary depending on a number of factors. Such factors include the moisture content of the pellets, the quality of the wood used. Wood pellet prices average about $5.50 per 15 Kilogram bag. If delivered by the tonne it can cost about $200 per tonne.

One tonne of wood pellets is the energy equivalent of about 500 liters of heating oil. To get an idea of how much it will cost to heat your home with wood pellets for a year understand that the average household who use wood pellets as a main source of fuel use approximately tow to three tons of wood pellets per year.

When considering wood pellets prices it is important to realise that there is a trade off between the amount of heat a wood pellet produces and the amount of ash it produces. The more heat a wood pellet produces the higher the quality, the higher the quality of the wood pellet the less ash it produces however good quality wood pellets come at a cost. The cheaper the wood pellet the more as it produces and as a result the more maintenance and cleaning is require for your wood pellet stove.

Given the technical nature of a wood pellet stove it is very important that good quality pellets are used. The temptation can be to buy cheaper wood pellets in order to save money. However, over the long term this is not a good strategy as it is likely to result in additional maintenance costs.

If you are on a budget and sensitive about wood pellet prices then the simplest thing to do is to buy in bulk from a reputable dealer. The issue then becomes storage. While a 15kg bag of wood pellets is easily stored, storing a 3 ton load is a different matter entirely as it will take up a huge amount of space. Couple with this is the fact that if the wood pellets are not stored correctly in the right conditions then they will start to deteriorate.

In conclusion, when analysing wood pellet prices it is important to strike a balance between quality, convenience and price. While no one wants to be ripped off, very few of us is likely to have the storage capacity to store 3 tons of wood pellets. All that being said, wood pellet prices, even when bought in small quantities can work out significantly cheaper than other solid fuels and especially home heating oil.

Pellet Stove Prices can vary significantly across brands. When buying a pellet stove the objective is to make sure that you get the best value pellet stove for your needs. While the initial price of the pellet stove should be a large consideration, the key determining factor should be the match between the pellet stove and your heating requirements. 

The price paid for a wood pellet stove should take into consideration the long term savings that the stove will offer. While purchasing and configuring the wood pellet stove may involve a significant outlay over time the savings on fuel bills should more than offset it. 

Coupled with the long term economics of the pellet stove there are other significant non monetary cost factors to be taken into account when considering pellet stove prices. Simple considerations such as the reduced smoke emissions and therefore reduced need to repaint the room in which the pellet stove is located as often as a you would with a wood burning stove. While this is a minor consideration it illustrates the point nicely that wood pellet stoves have hidden benefits.

On the downside any pricing decision should factor in the need to maintain the stove itself. Wood pellet stoves are more technologically advanced than traditional wood burning stoves and as a result they need a higher level of care and maintenance. It is for this reason that you should always check the manufacturers warranty prior to purchase. 

Pellet stove prices can range from $3000 for the lower cost model to $6000 for the more advanced models. In between these two prices are a multitude of models to cater for all home heating requirements.

Installation costs can be significant and care should be taken to shop around for the most qualified supplier with the keenest prices.

In conclusion, when analysing Pellet stove prices the key is to find a balance between the following factors. 

• The initial cost price of the pellet stove.
• The long term maintenance cost of the stove.
• Your heating requirements.
• The long term savings that can be achieve from a wood pellet stove.