Cord Wood Vs Pellets

Thinking of adding wood stove for back up heat. Most likely use it when home and let the gas furnace take over when gone and at night. I have asked many people what the cost of pellets is compared to a cord of wood, but haven't ever gotten a real answer. Has anyone on were done the math?

For starters you need electricity to make a pellet stove work.
That's a deal breaker for me.

You'd also need to compare different types of wood. What you need to figure out is the cost per BTU from each in order to make a valid comparison.

X2 what Waggler mentioned.

not much a a backup if it need power.

will you cut your own wood or buy ?

I went from a cord wood stove to a pellet stove and I can tell you one thing the cord wood stove will put out a lot more heat than a pellet stove ever will.

But he is talking about using the wood stove while he is there. Still, I wouldn't want to be dependent on electricity

Never did like pellets. As mentioned, when there is no power, you're sunk. That's what it was like for friends of mine who bought one when they first came out. They were thrilled that the pellets were not messy to deal with, like wood can be...but when the power went in winter , that changed their minds.

Nothing in the world like wood heat.

Another thing to consider is availability of fuel. Cord wood is a primary product that makes it fairly readily available at consistent prices. Pellets are a byproduct of the sawmill industry. The sawdust they are made out of has many other uses. When sawmill production goes down or demand for the sawdust goes up, pellets can get difficult to source and price goes up.

So I guess I'm asking the wrong question. What I want to know is how many 50lb bags of hard wood pellets does it take to equal a cord of dry oak fire wood? Growing up we used 10 or 12 cords of wood a year. I'm trying to figure out how many bags of pellets to do the same.

Wood for me I’m to cheap to buy pellets when I can cut my own wood. What about a gas heater I would think that would be the best option and easiest if your buying your fuel source anyway.

It depends on the type of oak but generally between 25-30 million BTU's per cord. I don't know about the pellets

We have a pellet stove, it was in the house when we bought it. The downside I see in it is that, as stated above, it requires electricity so it can’t be used as a true backup, it doesn’t put out as much heat as a cordwood stove does, and I have to rely on someone else for the wood. Last year many stores had a limit on how many bags you could buy. Over the past 5 years, pellets have averaged $5.25/bag around here.
The upside is that they’re darn convenient. Drop a bag of pellets in and push start. Very little ash, no mess with bark, sawdust, and constantly carrying wood in the house. One bag of pellets will run our stove around 15 hours but of course each stove will be different. We run our stove much like it sounds you would run yours; just when we’re home on the weekends and for a couple hours after work and before bed most nights. We go through around 40 bags of pellets a year. I will say that the pellet stove is much cheaper to run than the in floor electric heat we have in our living room and while the pellet stove runs, our propane furnace virtually never runs so the pellet stove offsets some propane cost as well.
I’ve thought a lot about replacing the pellet stove with a cord wood stove. What it always comes down to for me is, what’s my time worth? I spend less than $250/year to use my pellet stove with my only time investment being a trip to the store. How much time would I spend cutting 5 or 6 cords of wood per year, chainsaw maintenance, gas, etc? Is the hassle worth it for $250?

pellets were a good answer for my 80 year old aunt

no she couldn't really lift a 40 pound bag , she had a scissors in the garage she would slide a bag off the pile and then tip it into a pail , cut the top of the bag let half the bag empty into bucket carry that in then dump the rest of the bag in the bucket and carry that in.

it ran 6 1/2 days a week she turned it off when she went to church and cleaned it and fired it back up , the igniter lasted only a year or two then she had a little bottle of gel alcohal and a match and a hand full of pellets

it lasted about 8 years like that then really needed replacing or rebuild the auger was having issues it had 2 control boards

a wood stove you can basically keep rebuilding with new fire brick and door seals for a very very long time
I got my wood stove in 2007 it had been a floor model for 4-5 years at the store.
one partial and one full fire brick replacement in 15 years I can order the fire brick from Ace hardware and cut the few I need cut with a tile saw.


I should add her son in law had a country store and could get a semi load of pellets delivered to his doc and sold them to people but she would go through about ton and a half to 2 ton a year

I have a co-worker with a pellet stove he orders a pallet at a time which i think is 800 pounds if you order in pallet quantity the price gets a little better.

I did a quick perusal and found this...

13.6 million BTUs per ton of wood pellets

25 million BTUs per ton of coal (I assume that's anthracite)

36.6 million BTUs per cord of 'live' oak. It dwindles considerably by species from there.

I'm sure there are many variables.

I have a wood pellet stove and it has been a decent heater chugging along for a decade pretty much trouble free. Coal is my preference, but snow has taken the metalbestos chimney off the house twice. I'll build a brick chimney next summer.

I found this.

A good quality hardwood pellet has about 8,000 BTU's/lb- 320,000 per bag. American Wood Fibers Ultra Premium Softwood pellets have about 8,700 BTU's/lb- 348,000 per bag- 28,000 BTU more! A good quality hardwood pellet has an ash content around 0.50%.

Very true. I remember a few years back a friend with a pellet stove was having a tough time finding them and they were very expensive due to the short supply.

A rental property I remodeled a while back had a pellet stove. we used it to heat the place during the remodel. I was not impressed with the heat output.

And, as said above, the need for electricity to run them would be a deal-breaker for me.

Although think they make gravity-feed ones now?

A friend of mine has a pellet stove with a computer and a thermostat in it that he can control with his phone. He can adjust the temperature and turn it on and off with an app. It also tells him when to add pellets.

Keith

A backup generator can keep everything going during extended power outages for us towneys!

ALSO we can have fires all summer some years but don’t you dare fire your wood stove when the borough says the air is too bad or we will fine you! Not worth the hassle.

The biggest drawback to the pellet stove would be the electricity.We've had both wood and pellet stoves,in a turn of the century two story farmhouse.Cleaning the chimney after the woodstove was a real pain in the *+$#,with the pitch of our roof,I hate heights and the older I got the more I balked at doing it.This is the first pellet stove we've had ,but that stove,if cranked up to the high settings,will run you out of the kitchen where its located.Throwing heat out of it is no problem.Had it for 3 years now pretty much maintenance free,other than cleaning it once a week.With the stove pipe coming out of the wall about 4' off the ground cleaning it out won't be a problem and climbing the roof is a thing of the past.We buy our pellets a ton at a time delivered,for $300.Our winter hasn't been too bad so far,we had some left over from last season so we've had one delivery so far and one more load the end of February or so should do it for this winter.

My local gun store sells pallets of pellets as a side line... A one ton pallet runs about $260 after tax.

I can run a saw and log splitter for a minute for $260 worth of gas. But there's also gas for the truck to consider, saw chains, hydraulic oil for the splitter, and my time.

Cost wise it might be close to a wash. But there are virtually zero moving parts and no reliance on electricity for the wood stove.

Mike

Aldo Leopold says in a sand county almanac that good firewood warms you twice. Cost favors cord wood hands down. I run around the field edges cutting down branches and trees that lean to far out on our farm ground to keep my wood burner running every winter.

One variable is, are you home all day? Pellet stove with a thermostat keeps things warm if your gone kick it up when you get home and things warm up quickly. Whereas with wood if you gone during the day and build evening fires wood will last longer but more effort.

Family room in my house had only wood heat. Started a fire about 4pm let it burn out overnight. Got by on 2 cords per winter +/-. Put in a pellet stove, room stays warm all day nicer when we are home. go through about 120 bags per winter.

So 2 cord at $130 =$260 for 8hrs a night x 240 days= 1920 hours $260 divided by 1920 =.13 per hour
120 bags x $5= $600.00 divided by 24 hrs day x 240 days (5760 Hours) = .10 hour

My cost, give or take.

So if I had 10 cord of oak that would be 366 million BTU and divide that by a ton of pellets that would be 26.9 ton. Is my math correct?

One other thing to consider is the noise that the pellet stove makes. There are fans and augers that run all the time on the pellet stove. I am lucky that there is a pellet mill about 45 miles from me and can get pellets for $185.00 per ton. Some one said in an earlier post that there was other uses for saw dust and that it may get hard to get. Around here they fill gravel pits with the stuff because they have no place to get rid of it. It does make good trap cover after it has been in the pits for a few years.

Just a stray thought here... Anyone familiar with Biolite camping stoves? I have one I use for camping that generates it's own electricity from burning wood. Wonder what the cost of such a thing scaled up for a wood furnace would be.?

There are pellets stoves that run with out electricity now and have seen them for several years. TSC lists this one, Gravity Feed Non-Electric Wiseway Pellet Stove, 2,000 sq. ft., GW1949 I have no idea how well they work, I never played with one.

Stay away from Englander brand. They quit answering their phone when comes time for warranty work. It was a corn or wood pellet stove. on high they said 70,000 BTU when bought it then later dropped to 30,000. It would grind the corn like a hammer mill and had to be shut down daily to beat the build up from the auger. Feed auger gear box cooked within a couple months. Ash from it covered the outside of the house too when burning corn.

I've heard this before,and being this is our first pellet stove I'm no expert ,but our stoves fan and augers noise level is next to nothing.If a person complains about that they'll complain about anything

Your math is correct. Even at the lowest posted cost of $185 you are still looking at ~$5000 for the pellets.

I'll stick with real wood that I cut and split. A cord of dry hardwood is usually over 1 1/2 tons.
I don't need electricity to run my stove, another bonus both in cost and as an emergency heat source.

Plus it keeps me active and I enjoy making my own firewood.

I live in town my mail man asked why I never have a fire going one day , he sees all the wood and he sees the chimney but never any smoke

there is almost always a fire going , there is no smoke , some heat waves if you look careful.

there was a fire going when he asked

You would think a generator could take care of the power needs my boiler pumps don’t require a lot of power my furnace heats the house well just with the pumps running but if it’s really cold the fan is needed but my generator could run that also.

It all depends on your situation. It’s easy to find low cost wood to put in your stove. Not very easy to find pellets.

They do make gravity feed ones nowadays, costly but they do make them



We average about 1 1/2. Bags a day so just do the math for how many days you need heat

Some of the new pellet stoves put out double the heat as the older ones, mine is an older one but still keeps the house nice and warm, not as comforting as a wood stove more like an electric heater but still around 70 even during the subzero temps we had recently and my house is old and leaks like a sieve though I do plastic sheet over the windows every year it still is drafty

Not all pellet stoves are created equal, hard to beat a Harmon.

In Northern NY a ton of wood pellets is anywhere from$200-$300/ ton. A 16” face cord of firewood is around $60. On average a facecord of hardwood weighs around 1 ton.

Mn. is a blue state. Burning wood puts carbon in the atmosphere. I’m sure your Biden kissing governor expects better!!

One word generator!!

Lots to consider beside the price. Storage ,handling , maintenance. They giving 2 ft of snow stack your 4 bags of pellets beside the pellet stove . Last for several days. Beats wading thru the snow to the wood pile when your "rick" gets low.

For some strange reason I always loaded the wood now pellet room on the coldest day of the year, no matter how big the wood room is!

You can't do the math that way . You are wanting to compare them to by cost per pound. You have to compare them on cost to HEAT the house. 5000 dollars worth of pellets at 185 a ton!! That's 27 tons of pellets. That's a lot of winters worth of heat. Plus no one wants to add the cost to haul the wood, cut the wood, handle the wood. You have to figure in the cost of a saw. Yes you may have one but any cost analasis has to figure part of it in. NO saw needed for pellets. Just have them delivered or 1 trip to rural king tsc, southern states, tons of places.

After 50 winter in the Arctic I could care less about burning wood. When I built our house it was electric to heat with. That lasted for 10 years when the price tripled. We went to wood for the next 10 years then to oil fired boiler and wood backup. I had a wood room that would hold 1/2 cord of split wood and chute that held a week of wood just across from the wood stove.
Now our backup is a Harmon pellet stove and has a 12 volt car battery if the power goes out. I have a 7 k generator for backup so the battery is good for up to 16 hours.
At my age and physical condition this all works well for us. Just need $.

The numbers are just fine. They are based off of the numbers that posco posted back on page one. With those numbers, 27 tons of pellets have the same amount of BTU's as ten cords of oak. How much does a cord of oak cost? Take that number and add a zero to the end of it and you have your cost analysis. You could also work it in reverse. Take the amount of pellets (in tons) that you use a year and multiply it by the BTU's that are in it. Then divide by the number of BTU's in a cord of wood.