New York May Be Attempting to Slow the Sales of Coal Stoves

jremington wrote:I had to take the coarse for NYSERDA and within a couple minutes I asked the guy if he realized he used the words clean and efficient in the same sentence with pellet stove. I don't think they liked me after that. It seems this program is to help bail out the pellet makers for the money they lost last year. It's also going to drive the cost of firewood and all wood products higher. People can't afford to buy wood in our area any longer. We have Fort Drum that's burning an estimated 11 acres a week in their co gen plant. It's driven the cost of logs sky high. If you can get a load. Our last load cost 40 a face cord before touching them with a saw.

ad356 wrote:i burned pellets for 6 years. what a waste of money. there is no amount of money the government could throw at me to buy another one of these green energy boondoggle pieces of garbage. started out with a piece of junk tractor supply stove. it was terrible, consistent problems with clinkers building up in the burnpot. absolutely terrible design. I ended up selling that and buying a Harman P61. I was told I would burn 4 ton, I burned 6 ton and the house was still lucky to break 60 degrees on a cold day with the stove running full out. sure it produced less ass but I would put 4 or sometimes even 5 bags in the stove per day when it was extremely cold. the stove did heat and perform better then the tractor supply stove, but how could it be any worse? after 3 years of burning the Harman P61, lack of pellet availability in the dead of winter, and costs per ton that kept climbing I got fed up. I sold the stove for almost 1/3 of what I paid for it just to get rid of it.

i found a wonderful keystoker 90K off of craigslist for $800 and I could not be happier. it produces much more heat, it burns less "fuel" and saves me significant amounts of money even in the first year running it. I burned around 3 ton. the cost to run it last year was less then $800 to heat an old plank construction farmhouse built in 1895. the house has some newer windows and some improved insulation but its still old and not that tight. I really don't have the $$ to throw at making further improvements in the home at it this point. even if I improved insulation I will still keep the coal and just reduce the amount of coal used.

i discovered further benefits of coal. I was able to safely reuse and an old chimney that I was told not to use for burning wood. I discovered the lower flu temps of a coal stove, an exhaust temperature of 150 degrees Fahrenheit is hardly a fire risk. its not that the chimney is crumbling and falling down, just that it has cracked flu tiles. I also feel that my family is safe with a stove that would never create a chimney fire, the exhaust just isn't hot enough to be a worry. so long as I have a good CO detector I feel that its safer heat then almost anything else. wood carries risk of chimney fire and natural gas carries the risk of explosion in the event of a leak. coal is no dirtier then wood pellets, that's a big fat lie they are probably about the same.

i would not burn pellets again even if a stove was given to me. the cost of running it isnt going to be economical, they are a waste of time, money and energy. pellet stoves have glaring problems. they don't heat that well, pellets cost as much as coal and if you are getting 1.4x less heat, it makes no sense.

educated people arent going to be fooled so easily. I think they are probably more people that move to coal from pellets then vice-versa. I think people get sick of pellets, I know I did. it never saved me a penny and the heat kind of sucked, especially on a cold day.