wood pellet burner

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padraigsmith

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Can anyone give me any information on wood pellet burners? Is it the way to go? Which one to buy? etc. Thanks.
 
The stanley stoves website also has good info on what's available, going through the products for each service (cooking only, heat only, heat and water etc.) It's also a good starting point for figuring out what you want to achieve. SEI also good for grant information and they have links to approved suppliers whose webpages I'm sure will also have good info.

Sprite

p.s. Just realised my mistake here - the stanley stoves aren't wood pellet stoves - you can choose from solid fuel, oil, gas etc depending on what system you want. Sorry for bungle. SEI certainly has info on wood pellets though.
 
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Had my boiler serviced,the engineer was explaining that 3 of his customers had changed to pellet burners,and have since gone back to oil,perhaps you should post thread asking if anyone is using pellets and there benefit,
 
It must be bad with the price of Oil ! What do you use Yob ?
 
Would be interesting to know why these people switched back to oil.... but I can guess a couple of reasons.....
- they are buying pellets bagged instead of bulk - costs twice as much
- the boiler they have is at the bottom end of the market ie. Gerkos perhaps which I read somewhere has issues with regulating heat & also require regular cleaning & emptying the ash pan every day or so - enough to put anyone off!

- top of the range boilers take care of all that stuff but cost a fortune ie €12-14k.

Have no direct experience myself as I'm using gas - but I did check them out quite a bit in the past.
 
Thinking of putting one in my new house but which model is best ? Anyone ? Cost also ?
 
Windhager, KWB, ETA, Okefen, Froling... top of the range but priced as mentioned above.
Benekov would also be worth checking out - a little bit cheaper.
 
ninsaga said:
Would be interesting to know why these people switched back to oil.... but I can guess a couple of reasons.....
- they are buying pellets bagged instead of bulk - costs twice as much
- the boiler they have is at the bottom end of the market ie. Gerkos perhaps which I read somewhere has issues with regulating heat & also require regular cleaning & emptying the ash pan every day or so - enough to put anyone off!

- top of the range boilers take care of all that stuff but cost a fortune ie €12-14k.

Have no direct experience myself as I'm using gas - but I did check them out quite a bit in the past.
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Just some comments regarding Gerkros - I have a woodpecker boiler myself.
-The only real issues with regulating heat is that it only seems to have half power & full power - not the most efficient way of doing things. However, its still reasonably efficient - am currently waiting for some sort of digital panel that will solve that problem by regulating over 5 levels.
-The ash pan only needs to be emptied once every two weeks at most even at the height of winter.
- Its recommended that it is cleaned out once a year. However, the cleaner it is the more efficient it is so I personally clean it 2 - 3 times a year. And the cleaning itself is effectively what an engineer would do if he was servicing it (bar changing elements etc) so by doing that yourself it saves money on maintenance (I personally wouldn't have a clue how to service an oil boiler).

In short - the boiler is good but the customer service from gerkros is simply crap. If you can buy the gerkros boiler from someone else & ensure you have some sort of service back-up then you should be ok.
 
i use oil louthman,was looking to change to pellets 2 years ago,but got alot of negative feed back,and as has been explained above very expensive(buy alot of oil for 12-14 thousand even at todays prices).
hi ninsaga,it would appear to be due to inefficancey,and the rads didn't get as hot as with the oil.
dont know how they where buying the pelletts,but i believe one guy had difficulty getting them and was without for over a week.so i stayed with the oil.but i did install the solar panels.
 
Borrow the 14K and it ends up at 28K. How long would that take to make up the difference on the savings ? Has anyone done a ROI on Oil and wood chip/pellet ? Take 15 years to start saving ?
 
Spoke with a guy earlier this week who is using a woodpellet boiler(can't remember which brand) he had it installed last year and said he bought the minimum delivery,3 tonne at the begining of November at a cost of €600 and it brought him right through to April this year... thats the winter covered for far less than the price he reckons it would have cost him on oil.

He kept his oil burner and tank for the very reason that people have mentioned, all the horror stories that he'd heard. He said his average burn time on the boiler was for 7 - 8 hours per day over the winter and that the downsides on a pellet system were that unlike oil, you couldnt boost the system for an hour and feel the benefit of heat in the rad's like you can with oil as wood pellet takes a little longer for the heat to get going but, on the cost side, it was far more feasible than oil.

I think he mentioned that he paid 6 or 6.5k for the boiler and got a 4.5k grant but, this is now reduced to 3k but, that was just the boiler, the pluming and that would have been extra I'm sure
 
also have a woodpecker, in a year, going grand, bit of maintenance required but not much. cost me 1500ish net (sei grant) to get it+have it installed, beats paying 15k for top of the range jobbie. effiency is good, pellets easy to get, and they're not oil. nice smell when she starts up, also beats fumes from oil burner.
guy who installed it serviced it about a week ago, nothing wrong with it, just a yearly thang.
just using it at mo to heat water, using very few pellets.
re: using the boost option, they would be as nearly as quick surely as an oil boiler if connected to rads?
 
Kunzel PL15 is a top of the range machine and costs about 8000 from www.whi.ie also i live in N Ireland and wood pellets cost 130 a ton so heating my house with kunzel will save me 1100 a year
 
Eco-Friendly friends of mine had a wood pellet burner installed in their new cottage house - not sure what make but it caused major heartache.. Some trouble with electrics - very bad service from the agent - pellets were stored in a wooden shed and started to get damp and stick in the hopper. In the end they took it out and put in oil!!!

Pity - It was a beautie in the kitchen - nice flame and smell when it was working.

I still think its worth researching with the way oil is going.

Best of luck
 
sidzer said:
pellets were stored in a wooden shed and started to get damp and stick in the hopper.
Click to expand...

You wouldn't store oil in and self made container in a shed and wood pellets need to be treated in the same fashion.

Either buy a proper bulk silo or get guidance on building a proper stroage facility from marine ply.
 
sidzer said:
Eco-Friendly friends of mine had a wood pellet burner installed in their new cottage house - not sure what make but it caused major heartache.. Some trouble with electrics - very bad service from the agent - pellets were stored in a wooden shed and started to get damp and stick in the hopper. In the end they took it out and put in oil!!!

Pity - It was a beautie in the kitchen - nice flame and smell when it was working.

I still think its worth researching with the way oil is going.

Best of luck
Click to expand...
Why do everyone think that wood pellets are eco-friendly? For starters wood pellets need to be dried to 95% dry matter this uses a lot of diesel which is why they are so dear to buy. The drying process is not eco-friendly. They need to be stored very well to stop them getting damp otherwise they won't burn.
 
We have a Wamsler wood pellet stove with integral boiler. We have it a year now and are very very happy with it.

I think you'll find that alot/most of the people with negative stories and things to say don't actually have wood pellet stoves/boilers themselves.
 
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