Heating with wood pellets

Dear community members,
I have read the annotation for the article "The Technologies of Biomass and Coal Co-Combustion in Pulverized-Coal Furnaces" located wood products and the idea of installing both wood pellet heating and coal heating systems in a house.

Do yo know any examples when such an experience was successful?

I've known several people that got their primary heat from either a pellet stove or a coal-fired burner. At one place, they had electric radiant baseboard heat...New England has some of the highest electric rates in the country...he saved over 1/2 over electric.

Pellet stoves don't produce much ash if you get quality fuel. Coal produces a lot more.

The way I evaluate things is $/million BTUs. You want to find a place to buy coal in bulk; not 50 pound bags. Coal at $200 per ton is about is about 1/3 of the $/million BTUs of #2 fuel oil, which is currently about $3.50 per gallon and going up.

Most of the specialtly fuels (pellets, corn, . . . ) are on the high side of cost compared to coal and hardwood.

We burned coal in the 40's when I was a youngster in Michigan. The clinkers were used as aggregate for the driveway.

Pellet Stoves

jadnashua said:

I've known several people that got their primary heat from either a pellet stove or a coal-fired burner. At one place, they had electric radiant baseboard heat...New England has some of the highest electric rates in the country...he saved over 1/2 over electric.

Pellet stoves don't produce much ash if you get quality fuel. Coal produces a lot more.

Click to expand...

I use my pellet stove to heat the main living room. This winter my cost for pellets was less than $200.00. @ $5.00 per bag
Intial investment: around $1500.00 or more for a premium brand stove.

That being said-I have serious doubts about using one stove to heat a large home.

Mike50

You've got to have some means of moving the heat around, or it just gets colder the further you are from the thing. One friend has a townhouse with 4 levels built up and into a hillside - split level. The stove was in the lowest, and with the open stairway up the middle, it kept all but one of the rooms fairly comfortable without overheating, but that was an unusual layout.

The guy with the coal stove had a vent through the floor and used a fan to get heat moved around between levels...it worked pretty well, too.

The bottom line, though, unless you've made provisions to move that heat, it is very unlikely to be even.

I have read the article in russian продажа пеллеты сбыт which conserns Improving the Cofiring Process of Wood Pellet and Refuse Derived Fuel in a Small-Scale Boiler. They describe good results