Wood Pellet Burners

[Julie Clare]

Hello, looking for info from anyone brave enough to have installed a wood pellet stove.  Owing to our advancing age, OH and I are begining to think we will not be wanting to be stacking a cord of fire wood away in the cold and wet in a few years time!  Hence the pellet burner theory. At the moment we have an insert wood burner which vents warm air upstairs as well and as our house is now pretty well insulated, we managed to get through last winter just using that.  What we  would like to know is the unknown on cost of electricity as these stoves are need it to function.  The lady in the store we have just visited said about the cost of running a 60 watt light bulb per hour, which leaves me aprehensive!  Also where to stack a pallet-load of pellets, we have a decent sized woodshed, but the mouse problem concerns me, will we have to put in something mouse-proof?  More on cost.  I would be grateful for any feedback on your experiences.

[Quillan]

I looked into this about five or six years ago and gave up, below are sme of the reasons why.

The price of the boiler was quite high.

Pellets attract moisture like a sponge and need to be kept very and I mean very dry.

The boiler comes with a basic hopper that takes about a sack of pellets at a time.

To make the system properly automated you need a very dry store for the pellets and a hopper feed to the boiler hopper. An old woodshed is not good enough you need something that is 100% dry and close to the boiler.

The pellets come in sacks so if you use a store with hopper feed you need to empty the bags into the store. If not you empty the sack directly into the fire hopper

You can buy boilers or stoves. The stove replaces you fire but it is normally a kombi type device i.e. it produces hot water for heating and domestic use. Typically these days a typical 20kw stove produces 17kw for heating water and 3kw for direct heat.

Boilers are for water and central heating so you need to install radiators.

You need to sit and calculate exactly what form of heating you have and its running costs.

 We have an insert and that can feed hot air into other rooms but it is not ‘real heat’. It will raise the temperature by about 10 to 15 deg but you still need a secondary heating source like an electric heater. The idea is that because of the warm air raising the temp to say 15 deg you only need to get an extra 5 deg on average from your electrical heaters which means they become cheaper to run.

We used to spend (we have a big house) about 1,700 Euros on electricity over the year. About 600 Euros on wood and about 300 Euros on paraffin making a total of 2,600 per year. This total as we don’t need so much wood or paraffin plus the drop in electricity use to around 1,100 Euros per year, a saving of about 56 to 58%

At the end of the day having calculated the size of boiler (well the company did), its price and all the other extras like the pellet store and hopper, cost of pellets (which seem to have jumped in price over the years) etc we decided the best way forward was reversible inverter air conditioning units (air to air heat pump).

However by far the best method which I have helped a friend install off and on over the last three months is a ground source heat pump. The problem with this is it is very difficult and very expensive to retro fit to an excising house. My friend is building (or should I say has built) his own house and installing it from scratch has been very simple although hard physical work. In my house I have been gradually replacing my existing electrical "High tech" (well they were when they were installed) electrical heaters with the air to air heat pumps and have watched fuel bills (as mentioned above) reduce quite dramatically over the last three to four years.

As I said my information is based on my research five or six years back and technology marches on as they say but I hope it helps.

You can click on the link below which is to a discussion we had back in 2010 about this very subject.

http://services.completefrance.com/forums/completefrance/cs/forums/1942831/ShowPost.aspx

 

 

 

[Julie Clare]

Thanks very much for your comprehensive answer.  I appreciate your input.  I have also read the links on the forum that you gave me and I have to say that they are begining to confirm our suspicions re on-cost. Although we are not looking to run our water system from it, we tick over quite nicely with our chauffe d'eau - there are only 2 of us.   One of our major concerns was the storage and from what I gather from yourself and the other contributers means we would be looking at spending as much on somewhere dedicated to keeping the pellets dry as on the heater itself!  You have given us much to ponder on[I]

[idun]

Friends have one, they got one for the convenience of it and it gives off an excellent heat. They are very very happy with it. However, it costs them a lot to run. I know that another friend was asking about it and that is why I had asked that question about running costs, but can I heck remember what they said.

I just know that when I told my friend, she said they'd stick with their wood burner. Light bulb costs, no, most certainly not.

[Julie Clare]

Thanks for that info idun.  It goes to prove you need to do a lot of your own investigation into these things before commiting.  What started all this off was visiting a restaurant recently which had one installed and we were very impressed with the amount of heat given off for the minimal amount of fuel being used.  Obviously all is not what it seems![8-)]

[NormanH]

Perhaps I am wrong but I had the impression that the OP was referring to a pellet stove as a replacement for a wood burner, not as a source of central heating, so the lifting and moving of logs could be avoided by replacing them with bags of pellets

Something like this http://www.castorama.fr/store/Poele-a-granules-ou-a-pellet-cat_id_760.htm?navCount=1&navAction=push&wrap=true&sortByValue=relevance

the stove uses a little electricity to manage the supply of pellets to the fire

if this is the case all the business about boilers etc is irrelevant

Of course I may have the wrong end of the stick.

[WJT]

We had a pellet boiler (Hargassner) installed last November and we are very pleased. It costs a fraction of what our old oil boiler cost to run and will more than cover the cost in a few years.

Our oil boiler was very inefficient and very expensive to run so it is a pleasure to run our pellet boiler in our old drafty stone house all day without worrying about the expense.

We do have a hopper (silo) that holds a little over three tons of pellets that is housed in our cellar near the boiler that automatically feeds the boiler. We have the pellets bulk delivered by a local company that delivers three tons at a time and blows them in the silo.

We also received a rebate on our tax return that helped offset the cost as well. Can highly recommend it.

[Catalpa]

[quote user="NormanH"]the stove uses a little electricity to manage the supply of pellets to the fire [/quote]

I think that point is important if someone is in an area where the electricity supply is unreliable in winter - no electricity, no pellet burning stove. We've researched them too and concluded that the high cost of the stove, the annual maintenance costs of the equipment and the need to source (not necessarily difficult) and carefully store the pellets (which aren't cheap) just doesn't make the idea appealing... yet.

[EmilyA]

We have a pellet stove in our cottage in the garden. We buy bags of pellets for it, either 10 at a time from a proper supplier, which is slightly cheaper, or one at a time from the supermarket. We store them in an outhouse and have no problem with damp getting into the individual bags. They are heavy and awkward to carry and I find a basket of logs much easier, though obviously you avoid the annual stacking chore. I can't comment on cost as the cottage doesn't get used very often, but I do think it is noisy. It works well for occasional use but I wouldn't want it in the main house.

[Théière]

[quote user="Quillan"]

 We have an insert and that can feed hot air into other rooms but it is not ‘real heat’.

[/quote]

Can you explain a little more what you mean "not real heat"?

[Quillan]

[quote user="Théière"][quote user="Quillan"]

 We have an insert and that can feed hot air into other rooms but it is not ‘real heat’.

[/quote]

Can you explain a little more what you mean "not real heat"?
[/quote]

I already did. What I ment was that it does not heat an room to 20 deg or more like say central heating. It simply raises the temp so the primary heating source does not have to work so hard to get the room to 20 or more. It costs you more to use central heating to raise the temp from 0 to 20 than it does to raise it from 16 to 20. In short it saves on energy costs.

[Théière]

Q that just sounds like an undesized insert or under efficient which France is particularly good at but they are slowly improving. 

[idun]

Teapot, I don't think he was saying that, excess heat from the chimney breast is taken to other rooms, bit like a heat recouperation system, that wouldn't heat completely but certainly keep the chill off and for me, 16° in a bedroom would already be 'hot', I just like a hot bed and not a hot bedroom.

[richard51]

Idun, wow .

[woolybanana]

IDUN, you are giving away our secrets!

[nomoss]

We are fortunate to have a mild climate, and live in a (now) very well insulated house, so one (8.69 kW) pellet stove in a central position, with doors kept open during the day, is sufficient to heat the main part of the house, a floor area of about 75 m2, to around 21º. A third bedroom, mezzanine, utility room, and office are not heated, and may get down to 16º or even lower, but I use an electric radiator in the office as required.

Having installed three pellet stoves I can recommend them to

the extent that they avoid handling logs and removing and disposing of ash for

a wood stove. The bags of pellets are much cleaner to store and move around,

although at 15kg per bag they are becoming harder for me to carry around. The

ash which has to be removed manually is minimal, as much of what is produced is

exhausted via the chimney. I clean and service the working parts and sweep the

flue as per the instructions.

However, as already mentioned, the pellets must be stored in

a dry place, preferably indoors, especially if bought by the pallet (ton),

which will take some weeks to use up. If there is a supplier nearby, smaller

quantities can be bought, avoiding storage and dampness problems, but the price

per bag will usually be substantially higher.

I used to collect pellets myself, loading my van and trailer with half a ton

each, but this year I had a ton delivered, costing 349€ compared with 312€ last

year. About half the extra cost was saved in the fuel I would have used to make

the return trip, and I was more than pleased not to have to load and unload 67

bags.of 15kg each for an extra net cost of only about 15€.

The forklift truck which unloaded the pallet could not get

into our remise, and left it on the pavement outside, so I still had to carry

the bags a few feet and stack them; this should be considered if there is no

suitable access to your store.

While the pellet stove is certainly cheaper, cleaner, and

less work than burning the logs we used to buy, I find that it is still cheaper

to use our air to air heat pumps for heating, until the outside temperature falls

below about 10º or so.

Once that happens, the efficiency of the heat pumps drops,

and they can’t cope with heating the house any longer, and the pellet stove is

used.

 

[BIG MAC]

I still see a lot of talk about heating appliances, a little about insulation and very little about heat recovery.

When we have finished our 'stop the water getting in works' it is my intention to use a VMC as a vital component in our heating strategy (along with Photo voltaic panels to offset running costs). A ground source heat pump and evac tubes to heat a thermal store once I figure most economic way of doing it along with the best insulation we can afford should see our log burners being a 'nice to have' and a good fall back for when it's really cold. I toyed with the idea of installing an air to air heat pump in the upper loft as a means of pulling heat back down into the lower rooms not sure if the benefits are there though. The secret has to be to insulate, insulate and insulate again then extract as much use out of the heat you generate.

[Quillan]

If you're building a new house the French spec is so tight now you're almost building a 'passive' house and insulation as you quite rightly point out is the most important thing. Heating is the second most important thing and the best systems really need to be installed when a house is either built from scratch or you are doing a floor up renovation because to fit them to a normal and existing house is way too expensive which is what I said in my initial post.

[BIG MAC]

Hi Quillan, long time etc... The part of the house we 'live in' is essentially a patch up for now but done in a manner friendly to future addition ie ducts in walls and eaves ready to receive services, new kitchen has a false wall to conceal extraction etc (and to square off the most irregular shaped room) The heat pump and plant come into play when we do the adjoined hangar and while re roofing make use of its south facing roof slope (Thankfully not too visible from the road as PV panels on old buildings are hideous IMHO) Will check with the Mairie before hand as we front into the Commune. Chances are it should be ok as the roof in question is concealed by another two buildings 'end on' to it but not concealing the sun too much. Ground source bore holes will be sunk when we get the footings done for the replacement hangar walls ( corrugated iron is so 1950s) I did wonder about using our existing well as a borehole and passing pipework up and down it but suspect the powers that be would be very protective of the aquifer.

[Quillan]

Providing the well is on your property and not used by anyone else just do it as that is what a friend of mine has done. He has also built a unit that extracts heat from the air being expelled from the house and pass it to the air coming in by using a cheap air conditioning unit from Brico Depot. I went to see him a few weeks back because I wanted to see it working and I have to say impressed is too small a word to use. It works out much cheaper than buying the 'proper' VMC based system or so he tells me and the parts are easy to replace. It is a method I will consider when I build my house.

[Théière]

A good review Nomoss, I enjoyed reading it. The only comment is that pellet burners are really efficient and that technology has filtered down to good wood burner stoves too, still not as efficient but very close and those produce tiny amounts of ash too, still marginally more than the pellet burners but we are talking dessert spoonfuls not shovelfuls as in the old ones that most people will have.  That would narrow the gap taking into account extra storage as you have detailed.

[Théière]

[quote user="Quillan"]Providing the well is on your property and not used by anyone else just do it as that is what a friend of mine has done. He has also built a unit that extracts heat from the air being expelled from the house and pass it to the air coming in by using a cheap air conditioning unit from Brico Depot. I went to see him a few weeks back because I wanted to see it working and I have to say impressed is too small a word to use. It works out much cheaper than buying the 'proper' VMC based system or so he tells me and the parts are easy to replace. It is a method I will consider when I build my house.[/quote]

Would there be a problem with the well?  you are not taking anything but the heat so if it's suitable why not?

Q, what heat expelled from the house?  surely the idea of passive is you are not expelling heat at all, that's the issue with out drafty old stone houses.

I would think your friends unit would work much better as it's using a refrigerant and pump to extract the heat to re use on the incoming air but that's a very active system so how is it on electricty?  Double flux is a passive system so no aditional electricity.

[NormanH]

Have any of you practical chappies got a specific recommendation for  a modern wood burner and a pellet stove remembering that I am a pauper.

[woolybanana]

Well, Norman, for paupers, I recommend body heat as it can be moved and varied easily, can do self-maintenance as well as other jobs round the house when needed.

So, a couple of nubile young things will soon get you warmed up and keep you that way indefinitely, and they do housewrok, cleaning etc.

Just tell them it is the French way.

When you get fed up with the model, pack it off to Calais and get a new one or two or three.

[nomoss]

WB's suggestion is probably more suitable for a non-practical pauper with mobility problems than having a pellet stove supplied and installed in France [:(]

The gain from any subsidy from the gov't is more than offset by the outrageous prices and installation charges here, as the retail prices seem to have been adjusted to take the subsidy into account, and the savings on heating costs would probably take many years to offset the total price.

I solved this problem by driving to Italy, where I bought the pellet stove I had chosen at about half the price here, plus the chimney sections and all the other bits and pieces I needed for the installation. These were not only much cheaper than here, but better quality and in stock, rather than items to be ordered for delivery at some indeterminate date in the future.

The Italian supplier was not so much further away then the nearest French supplier, in Nice, who seemed rather reluctant to sell the package without installing it when I called him. In the event, the total exercise, including travel and hotel costs, still resulted in a huge saving, and allowed us a short break in San Remo [:D]