Considering switching to a pellet burner?

Forums › Home Workshop DIY › Considering switching to a pellet burner?

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timmmay

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#1775994 5-May-2017 06:41

Stan: @timmmay that's simply not the case with an eco flue system I'm sure I have told you this before

You didn't quote me so I don't know what you're talking about. I had a standard flue back when I had a heater. The house is much much warmer without that heater, dirty annoying thing.

kryptonjohn

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#1782690 15-May-2017 16:59

- Our ski club at Mt Ruapehu replaced the fireplace with a pellet burner and it seems to be pretty good.

- Easy to store the bags of pellets - a whole season's worth fits in a few cupboards. Equivalent to shed full of wood.

- Much cheaper than electricity and I believe cheaper than gas otherwise they would have gone with gas.

- Narrow flue

- Electric start

- Self feeding

- clean/efficient

- burns waste product (sawdust). Better to turn that into CO2 than methane.

- Produces bugger all ash.

mattwnz

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#1782710 15-May-2017 18:14

kryptonjohn:

- Much cheaper than electricity and I believe cheaper than gas otherwise they would have gone with gas.

I presume you mean bottle gas, which would probably be costly in that location?. However mains gas is one of the cheapest ways to heat a house.

Not sure if it is cheaper than electricity, if you are using a heat pump. But probably is cheaper than conventional heaters.

Ge0rge

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#1782716 15-May-2017 18:24

kryptonjohn:...
- Much cheaper than electricity and I believe cheaper than gas otherwise they would have gone with gas.

- Electric start

- Self feeding
...

No power = no heat. Generally in this country power cuts are most experienced during cold weather, when you most need the heater to be working.

mattwnz

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#1782719 15-May-2017 18:42

Ge0rge:
kryptonjohn:...

- Much cheaper than electricity and I believe cheaper than gas otherwise they would have gone with gas.

- Electric start

- Self feeding

...

No power = no heat. Generally in this country power cuts are most experienced during cold weather, when you most need the heater to be working.

That was actually one of the downsides of some new ULEB woodburners, as they actually need an electric fan in them. Really they should be self generating the power.

Stan

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#1782732 15-May-2017 19:19

mattwnz:

Ge0rge:
kryptonjohn:...

- Much cheaper than electricity and I believe cheaper than gas otherwise they would have gone with gas.

- Electric start

- Self feeding

...

No power = no heat. Generally in this country power cuts are most experienced during cold weather, when you most need the heater to be working.

That was actually one of the downsides of some new ULEB woodburners, as they actually need an electric fan in them. Really they should be self generating the power.

Some of them do just that :)

https://www.ferva.co.nz/

vexxxboy

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#1782750 15-May-2017 20:07

Ge0rge:
kryptonjohn:...

- Much cheaper than electricity and I believe cheaper than gas otherwise they would have gone with gas.

- Electric start

- Self feeding

...

No power = no heat. Generally in this country power cuts are most experienced during cold weather, when you most need the heater to be working.

seriously, how often do power cuts occur , in the 15 years i have been in my house i cant remember having a power cut that wasnt because of maintenance, and heat pumps got a bad rep for being costly because people were installing small 4-5kw heatpumps in large areas and they were running non stop to keep the room warm. in a lounge i wouldnt put anything smaller than a 7kw heat pump to heat the room.

Common sense is not as common as you think.

Romn

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#1782751 15-May-2017 20:08

Thanks Kryptonjohn for your testimony. In three years here, I never experienced a power cut yet (crossing finger).

I still haven't took the time to go visit local shop around town to study the local offer.

Ge0rge

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#1782762 15-May-2017 20:20

vexxxboy:
seriously, how often do power cuts occur , in the 15 years i have been in my house i cant remember having a power cut that wasnt because of maintenance, and heat pumps got a bad rep for being costly because people were installing small 4-5kw heatpumps in large areas and they were running non stop to keep the room warm. in a lounge i wouldnt put anything smaller than a 7kw heat pump to heat the room.

Once a month on average here, sometimes for only a few minutes, sometimes for hours. Often enough that I'm looking at converting the water pump over to batteries so we still have water in the house during outages. The joys of living rurally.

kryptonjohn

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#1782765 15-May-2017 20:21

mattwnz:

kryptonjohn:

- Much cheaper than electricity and I believe cheaper than gas otherwise they would have gone with gas.

I presume you mean bottle gas, which would probably be costly in that location?. However mains gas is one of the cheapest ways to heat a house.

Not sure if it is cheaper than electricity, if you are using a heat pump. But probably is cheaper than conventional heaters.

Yep there's no piped gas on Mt Ruapehu!

Not sure if heat pumps work at the ambient temps the club house sees - below zero most of winter. However you may be right about the costs vis a vis pellets. According to Consumer magazine it's anywhere from 8c to 26c per kWh for pellets and 6-12c per kWh for heat pumps ... depends on where you are. However in the Ruapehu district electricity is a shocking ripoff. (See what I did there? Shocking. LOL!)

Aredwood

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#1783825 17-May-2017 18:58

Power is only expensive due to paying separately for the energy and network capacity. See what you can load shift out of load management times. First candidate is the hot water cylinder. If you do things right you can get lower charges without having to reduce how much power you use. It is a shame that Flick electric don't supply that area.

I agree with not getting gas in that area. As NZ LPG is 20% Butane, which boils at 2deg. So in sub zero temps you can't get it out of the bottle. You would need Alpine LPG which is pure Propane. (propane boils at -43 or somewhere around that) So still works even on the side of Mt Ruapehu.

Romn

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#1802357 16-Jun-2017 19:23

I finally got some quote and it seems pellet fire are very expensive, count around $10k with installation:

- $5,500 for pellet fire

- $500 for the protection plate under (can be home made easily)

- $1,000 for the pipe

- $1,500 for installation

+ City Council agreement and other stuff.

In addition, the vendor told me that he is not sure about heat transfer with pellet fire, and he also told me that there is no heat inertia with a pellet fire, it will be like the heat pump, once it is off, the heat drop instantly (and it was a vendor of only pellet and wood fire).

Aside of this, I got a quote for $2,700 to replace my old heat pump with a new Daikin Cora, installation included. I don't think we will stay long enough in the current house so it worth to invest $10k for something not that great, I guess we will stay with heat pumps.

mattwnz

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#1802377 16-Jun-2017 20:05

Romn:

I finally got some quote and it seems pellet fire are very expensive, count around $10k with installation:

- $5,500 for pellet fire

- $500 for the protection plate under (can be home made easily)

- $1,000 for the pipe

- $1,500 for installation

+ City Council agreement and other stuff.

In addition, the vendor told me that he is not sure about heat transfer with pellet fire, and he also told me that there is no heat inertia with a pellet fire, it will be like the heat pump, once it is off, the heat drop instantly (and it was a vendor of only pellet and wood fire).

Aside of this, I got a quote for $2,700 to replace my old heat pump with a new Daikin Cora, installation included. I don't think we will stay long enough in the current house so it worth to invest $10k for something not that great, I guess we will stay with heat pumps.

Some of those prices sound a bit high. You can generally buy a normal wood burner and get the flue thrown in for about 2k. So you are paying about 6.5k for that. So a normal wood burner would be about half.

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