Pellet fueled boilers are a thing?

I know, cart before the horse and all that, but, I have down time so I'm researching. 

Pending any more problems, the house we're getting has a dual fuel boiler, well, trifuel if you wanna be specific. Oil burner connected to a coal/wood stove. 

That tells me it's old. I don't know how old, but I'm guessing old enough that replacing it will be part of the 10 year plan, at the very least to boost efficiency ratings. 

So I've been looking at LPG, NG, and Oil burning boilers, and took a quick side trip to find out that pellet fueled boilers are a thing. 

From older forum posts elsewhere, 2009-2013ish, I'm seeing almost double pellet usage than I currently have at this house with a pellet stove. BUT, I'm seeing $3//gallon heating oil and several fillups per season of the 275 gallon tank according to the locals. 

Cost wise it might wind up a wash, I haven't mathed it out entirely yet, but looking down the road at a replacement or upgrade, would it make sense to conisder a wood pellet boiler?

They seem to be on par with gas and oil boilers price wise, I haven't seen anything special related to fill up other than some have vacuum feeding from a stock room, and some take bags like I'm used to. 80+% efficency ratings make them on par with low budget gas and oil boilers of similar BTU output.

Negating the buy in price, even if i doubled my pellet comsumption with a boiler vs the stove I have now, I'm only looking at around $1300/year for heat, where that would be 2 of the 4 oil tank fillups I would use every year. So big savings right away. 

So does anyone have one, or installed them, or maintained them in the past 10ish years? Anyone with firsthand experience compared to gas or oil burners?

I saw a dude who used sunflower seeds in one. Also saw a cherry pit burner. I guess if you live in Michigan cherry country cherry pits are easy and cheap to get. 
 

my experience is with pellet stoves so sorry can't help. 

Didn't know it was a thing, seems both useful and annoying. They apparently require more upkeep than a normal fuel boiler and take up more space. I'd say yoink the system you have, replace everything including the lines and drop in a gas boiler. We replaced our oil fired with a peerless oil boiler about 5 or 6 years ago and it's been fantastic.

In reply to Grizz :

This recent thread about natural gas work and adding appliances has given me pause. The only gas appliance in the house currently is the hot water tank. 

There's an electric cook top in the kitchen, which makes absolutely zero sense to me since there's gas in the house. So I guess I'm already planning on having the gas people go over things, I'm just trying to get an idea of all my replacement options before it becomes a problem.

I've had a pellet stove for 23 years. I've replaced every part on it at least once minus the glass and body itself. Simple to work on, easy to use, so having found out they can be used for whole house radiant heat, I'm intrigued by my past experience. 

How big is the house? 1 story, 2?

Would you consider replacing it with a forced air heat pump with gas backup? Added bonus there of ac in the summer.

How are the heating bills so high?  Unless you have your windows open...

I still have a 1980s oil burner, talked to a few good HVAC dicks and they all told me right now with the current cost of oil and how poorly modern residential grade equipment is constructed, just maintain what I have.  I used $442 of oil from Nov 1 to Mar 1 in Milwaukee, WI.  That makes an ROI on anything but something completely free a very long term payout.  

I wouldnt mind ditching the oil tank, but as long as it keeps running I am gonna keep running my oil burner unless heat oil gets up to 5 bucks a gallon or more.  

In reply to 93gsxturbo :

Just talking to people I know in the area, I hear 2-3 275 gallon tank fills from September to April. Obviously it's not the full 275 gallons every time, but it was a high enough number to make me think about other options. Especially since I don't know the age or condition of what's in there.

I'm not moving on anything but emergency repairs for the first year or two. I've only spent about 3 hours in the place so far and I was looking more for glaring issues, room sizes, and how the garage was setup. I saw the boiler, oil tank, and wood stove, realized they were connected, and that was about it. Things have moved forward, a lot, but there's a lot of twiddling my thumbs waiting for paperwork that has me thinking about every possibility and trying to figure out what problems might cost before they become problems. Like move in day, the HWT is 16 years old. I'm taping an envelope with $500 to it, so when it gives up the ghost, it's covered.

House has central air already, about 10 years old. Researching upgrades, repairs, or possibility of using it as heat as well will start in the next couple days, but all I know about it at the moment is there is a big compressor looking thing attached to the house. 

Oh if you have central air I would definitely look into doing a heat pump and ditching the boiler altogether.


In reply to 93gsxturbo :

I'm not sure of the nice way of saying this but your hvac dicks are full of E36 M3.

In reply to RevRico :

Here's what I'll tell you having done the same thing.

I installed a Harman PF100 in place of oil furnace because I got a screaming deal on a used one and the cost of oil was pissing me off. At $275/ton to $300/ton it was about  about 2/3 the cost of oil for the winter.  I burned 5ish tons over the winter here in the Poconos last year plus about $90/mo in electric.

The AC gave up the ghost last year and I stacked a heat pump on top of the PF100. It's ~$220 mo to run the heat pump or less than half the cost of pellets.

I turn the furnace on when it gets below 20F sustained outside because it brings up the house temp faster. I've burned roughly 1/2 ton of pellets this year.

I don't regret the heat pump at all and should have done that in the first place.

Is Natural Gas heating not widespread in the NE?

*Sorry, nothing helpful to add, just curious.

Depends on where you live.  many communities are too old or have rocky ground.. the economics don't work.  Like Connecticut.  You can get gas in town, but slighty outside town and no... not even a sewer.

Heat pumps are soo good right now, I was thinking of adding one in CT to my house and then use using the pellet stove during the really cold months..  

In reply to z31maniac :

Depends where you're at. A lot of the large cities and the immediate suburbs have access.

When you get into the Appalachians NG becomes pretty rare because of how hard it is to put utilities in the ground. It used to be pretty common to setup large LP installations and run that to the house or business but those have been going away as heat pumps have became so much better with improvements to scroll compressors in the last 10 years.

Dammit. I didn't read Fueled by Caffeine's post first.

z31maniac said:

Is Natural Gas heating not widespread in the NE?

*Sorry, nothing helpful to add, just curious.

At my current house it stops 1/4 mile down the road. Got all excited 2 summer's ago seeing yellow flags (pa one call says yellow markings are for gas) going down the driveway across the street, but he turned out to be planting trees

At the "new" house, I suspect gas service was added after the house was built. It's on the out skirts of an old coal mining town that never really recovered.

It's a little over 2000 square feet, 2 story, block first floor, not sure on the second floors construction. It's been added on too at least twice through the years, most recently in 93. Some papers I've seen show it was built in 75, some paperwork suggest it's a bit older than that. 

Hot water radiant heat, electric baseboard in the newest bedroom, with a fireplace in the upstairs living room. I kicked around a pellet stove insert for the fireplace, until I saw they cost almost as much as boilers and I'd have to carry pellets up from the lower level every day.

Smart thing to do would be to live there for a year, then crunch the numbers on changes.

In reply to RevRico :

Is it hot water baseboard or radiators?

RevRico said:

z31maniac said:

Is Natural Gas heating not widespread in the NE?

*Sorry, nothing helpful to add, just curious.

At my current house it stops 1/4 mile down the road. Got all excited 2 summer's ago seeing yellow flags (pa one call says yellow markings are for gas) going down the driveway across the street, but he turned out to be planting trees

At the "new" house, I suspect gas service was added after the house was built. It's on the out skirts of an old coal mining town that never really recovered.

It's a little over 2000 square feet, 2 story, block first floor, not sure on the second floors construction. It's been added on too at least twice through the years, most recently in 93. Some papers I've seen show it was built in 75, some paperwork suggest it's a bit older than that. 

Hot water radiant heat, electric baseboard in the newest bedroom, with a fireplace in the upstairs living room. I kicked around a pellet stove insert for the fireplace, until I saw they cost almost as much as boilers and I'd have to carry pellets up from the lower level every day.

Smart thing to do would be to live there for a year, then crunch the numbers on changes.

Yup, I'd do that. I'm sure you were going to, but it's always nice to check around and see what other people have experienced. 

I often wonder how much energy I'd save with modern double/triple pane windows..........and then I count how many oversized windows are in my house and I don't even want to think about how much that would cost. For example, the bay window in my dining room is so large, just doing plantation shutters for the 3 windows was going to approach like $1600 or something stupid like that.

In reply to Fueled by Caffeine :

baseboard

Fueled by Caffeine said:

I saw a dude who used sunflower seeds in one. Also saw a cherry pit burner. I guess if you live in Michigan cherry country cherry pits are easy and cheap to get. 
 

my experience is with pellet stoves so sorry can't help. 

I've seen corn stoves.  

spitfirebill said:

Fueled by Caffeine said:

I saw a dude who used sunflower seeds in one. Also saw a cherry pit burner. I guess if you live in Michigan cherry country cherry pits are easy and cheap to get. 
 

my experience is with pellet stoves so sorry can't help. 

I've seen corn stoves.  

We keep a bag of feed corn for when it gets *really* cold. Our stove will run it no problem, cherry pits too. Corn burns dirty, lots of clumpy ash, but mxing a coffee can full of corn into the 70lb hopper really makes a difference below zero. Not that we've been that cold the past few winters. 

When we bought our house it needed a boiler before we could even move in.  It has city gas, not LP in a tank, but we opted for fuel oil.  The logic was we could shop around for prices or services, but once they got the pipe into you .....

I supplemented the oil with a wood burning stove in the basement, heat rises and all the bark & ashes are downstairs.  6 years ago I replaced it with a coal stove.  Wood you have to baby sit, feed every few hours and then pile a cord or so in the basement, refilling twice a year.  Coal I feed once in the morning and once before going to bed, that's it.  Heat is constant and 6X that of wood.

My concern with pellets it what happens when you lose power?  Don't you need an auger to feed the bunny turds into the fire?

RevRico said:

In reply to Fueled by Caffeine :

baseboard

I'd extend that system and use a Ng boiler. Will be cheapest in the long run. 

In reply to 914Driver :

They're actually pretty efficient.

The power consumption of a modern pellet stove is usually about an amp. My parents have a Harman Allure 50 I helped install to heat their whole house. It'll run off an AGM battery for about 3 days. They also have a 400W wind turbine, and a small solar installation (1.5KW I think?) to recharge the battery.

For larger units, using my PF100, a 100k BTU whole house forced air unit as a reference, the draw is about 5 amps. The distribution fan is 4 amps of that.

Some of the newer units are a bit finicky about modified sine wave, so you have to use a good inverter.

Gas is often offered on sale.  I even got a rebate this year.  Not sure how it was figured.

I replaced the air conditioner with a heat pump to supplement the oil furnace, and with as mild as winter has been i've only burned 55 gallons of oil.  I know this because it's way cheaper to buy diesel at sheetz than have heating oil aka dyed off road diesel delivered.  Last winter i burned around 300 gallons, and it was way colder.  Heat pump works down to 30ish before it goes into stupid defrost cycles and becomes insanely inefficient.