High oil and natural gas costs are leading to a shift toward biomass for heating. Stoves which burn wood pellets and whole wood are especially popular. The Carlisle Sentinel in Pennsylvania reports sales of wood pellet stoves are up for home heating.
Dogas says stove business is up because people “don’t want to pay the high prices” for heating oil— which, he estimates costs $1,200 to $1,500 per year.
The average person needs three tons of wood pellets per year to heat a home, which comes to only about $600, he says.
Or, cut your own wood
Wood stoves are even cheaper. They cost $450 per year, or less if a person cuts the wood, he adds. However, Dogas adds wood stoves require more work.
Wood pellet stoves are hard to come by due to a large recent increase in demand. Wood pellet prices have soared as well.
At Miller’s Stove Shop in Shippensburg, owner Richard Miller ran out of pellet stoves six weeks ago.
He also notes the price wood pellets went from $165 per ton last year to $250 per ton this year.
Weiss picked up 4 tons of coal in September, at $110 per ton, and simply dumped it through the basement window. Getting coal delivered costs more - about $180 per ton, said Groff.
A Binghamtom New York newspaper also reports higher fuel pellet prices.
Pellet stoves cost $1,500 to $3,500, depending on the model, dealers said. It takes 3 to 5 tons of pellets, on average, to heat a home over the typical Southern Tier heating season. Usually, one 40-pound bag is enough to heat a home for the day.
The shortage also has caused a rise in the price of pellets. A ton of pellets, which cost between $150 to $180 this summer, is now going for $220 — if you can get it.
At 2000 lb per ton a house that needs 5 tons of wood pellets for heating would cost about $1000 to heat for a winter.
Even when consumers find bags of pellets, they're often hit by sticker shock. Last year, bags sold for as little as $3, or $150 for a ton. But the additional cost of truck fuel for delivery of the pellets to the stores is being passed on to consumers. One Bowen Farm Supply employee said she'd heard of a gas station selling them for as high as $8 a bag.
But a $5 bag of pellets can keep the home fires burning for 24 hours. That would translate to a monthly bill of $150.
Wood stoves are enjoying a resurgence in Kansas too and the new stoves are much more efficient.
Chimney sweep Jeremy Biswell, owner of Flues Brothers in Overland Park, Kan., says a wood stove is always a better choice for heating than an open hearth, even for occasional use.
"Typically in an open fireplace, you're losing 90 percent of the heat up the flue," Biswell said. That translates to 10 percent efficiency. By comparison, he said, older wood stoves are 50 percent to 60 percent efficient, and new ones are 71 percent to 78 percent efficient. "With a wood stove, you're getting more of that heat back into the house."
But old wood stoves and fireplaces are big polluters. 10% of Washington state's air pollution is reported to be from burning wood and the American Lung Association of Washington discourages wood burning inside the home due to potential health harms. However, wood is popular in the Puget Sound area and newer stoves are at least an order of magnitude cleaner than older stoves and fireplaces.
But burning wood as an alternative fuel already has a following here. According to the federal government's 2004 American Housing Survey, 7,000 King County households — 1.6 percent — use wood as their main heating fuel. In Snohomish County, 14,600 homes do, or 5.6 percent.
If you burn wood, you owe it to your neighbors to minimize emissions.
Make sure you have a wood stove certified by the EPA that also meets Washington state standards. (Check the list at www.orcaa.org/woodstovecert.html.) Uncertified stoves (sold before 1992) and fireplaces may release 40 to 60 grams of smoke per hour, compared with 2 to 5 grams per hour from a newer EPA-certified stove. If you're getting rid of an old, uncertified wood stove, take it to a scrap-metal recycler; it's illegal to sell it or give it away.
But there's a worse polluter for heating: Unfortunately coal is also making a comeback for home heating.
Numbed by the thought of $400 heating bills, people are turning back to the age-old fossil fuel that kept their parents and grandparents warm. While not the cleanest option, the black stuff is so cheap that some customers are waiting three months to buy a coal stove or furnace.
"We can't get the stoves fast enough," said Brenda Groff, owner of Groff's Stove Shop in Boyertown, Pa. "People are so desperate they want the display model."
Better wood pellets or corn for heating than coal. At least the corn and wood do not emit lots of mercury and arsenic.
By Randall Parker at 2006 January 08 04:07 PM Policy Energy | TrackBackBut recall that during the inflationary times in Germany after World War I, cash was so devalued that some people were actually burning printed money instead of wood, because wood was more expensive than money.
Corn at $2.50/bu is less than $90/ton. Someone could have made a heap of money blending corn with pellets to the limits of the stoves they were selling.
And it might pay to bring back potlatch cooking too. The U.N. once promoted insulated boxes for stewing. 20 minutes to boil 4 qts leaves enough heat to simmer an enclosed pot for 4-6 hrs, a cut of at least 30% energy use: even more if solar heat can be employed throughout. the problem is cooking time lengthens, but at least your propane can be saved for searing and braising.
Engineer-Poet is on the right track, but quits too soon. I've seen just plain corn burners advertised. At my first note, I thought of it as a waste of food, but I suppose it's no different than growing trees for pulp or firewood. Buy 100 lbs of corn and try it--cheap enough to experiment.
Not all pellet stoves can burn 100% corn.