Over one million homes in the United States use wood pellets as a heating source. Although pellet popularity is continually rising, there are still many frequent questions and misconceptions about heating with wood pellets. Below, we have compiled a list of the most common inquiries we hear from both new and existing pellet users.
Can I Use a Wood Pellet Stove as My Home’s Only Source of Heat?
Depending on the location of the stove and the size/efficiency of your home – yes. Some stoves can easily heat up to 2,500 square feet of space. A common practice is to put pellet stoves in parts of the house to create zone heat, but lightly use a central furnace as a back up. It’s especially common to use oil heating strictly as a backup to pellets, for example, when the price of oil rises significantly.
How Many Bags of Pellets Should I Buy?
The amount of pellets you can expect to burn through in a heating season depends on the quality of the wood pellets and the efficiency of the stove – among other things. However, one bag of quality pellets will commonly provide a full day of good, steady heat.
The average residential wood pellet customer in the Northeast uses 150-200 bags of wood pellets throughout the entire heating season. There are 50 bags in one ton of pellets, so that’s 3-4 tons.
Green Valley Sleeping Bag
Chimneys carry out the substances produced when firewood burns (smoke, water vapor, gases, unburned wood particles, hydrocarbon, tar fog and assorted minerals). As the hot substances flow up into the relatively cooler chimney, condensation occurs, which results in creosote residue sticking to the inner walls of the chimney.
In a perfect world, you would have big open space indoors to store your wood pellets. Of course, that extra space isn’t always available – especially if you have several pallets of fuel to store.
