Using Wood Logs For Heat and The Benefits Of Wood Pellets

Many people today due to the costs of using oil, gas or electricity to heat their home still have a fireplace and log fire. Within the fireplace usually sits a log stove, and as well as saving money a log fire really does provide a relaxing atmosphere. However a log stove can be a lot of work. You need to get the fire going, which can be tricky. You then need to watch the fire pretty frequently to make sure the fire does not go out. This all requires quite a lot of work and effort. Not to mention that for the fire to burn well you need to have a good supply of dry logs. Many people use wood that has only had a short time to dry. These logs do not light very well, and also generate a lot of smoke when burning

Using Wood Logs For Heat and The Benefits Of Wood Pellets

Even for just using one small log stove, you need a fairly large store of logs. Again trying to keep these logs dry can be tricky, and it can also be messy bringing them into the house. However there are alternatives to using wood logs in your stove, such as pellets. Fuel pellets can be made from a wide range of materials, these include wood and other materials such as straws and grasses are referred to as biomass pellets. Pellets have a very high density, even higher than oak logs. This density means a lot of energy is stored within the pellets. For instance just one kilo of wood pellets can last for an hour in your average log stove and provide about 5KW of heat. This is equivalent to a stove full of logs. The best way to use the pellets in a stove is to put them in a pellet basket.

Wood Pellet Boiler Benefits

Pellet Stove and Grass Pellets

Using Wood Logs For Heat and The Benefits Of Wood Pellets

Another reason why wood pellets and other biomass fuel pellets burn so well is that they contain so little water. As you obviously know, water in fuel is not good news. Most logs used in logs stoves still have between 20-30% moisture. If you compare this to pellets with an average moisture content around 8%, you can see why pellets burn so well. All a pellet is wood or biomass compressed through a pellet mill to produce a high density, low moisture fuel. Also while pellets may seem more expensive than logs, you really have to think about what you are buying. With logs a 1/3 of that fuel is water, where with pellets less than 10% of the fuel is water. Therefore with pellets you are getting more fuel for your money, therefore in reality they are not more expensive. Add to this that pellets require less work and produce much less ash due to better combustion.

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