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Important Facts about Wood Pellets

  • Wood Pellets can not claim to be carbon neutral, as energy is required to harvest, ship and process wood into pellets. Compared to Oil, wood pellets have about 10% of the carbon footprint.
  • The Maine Forest Service concluded after extensive study that, given our current forest infrastructure, we can easily convert 10% of our homes to pellet heat.
  • Wood Pellets, delivered into a hopper in your home, currently cost the equivalent of $1.92 a gallon of oil, or about 25% LESS THAN OIL TODAY.
  • For every dollar spent on Oil, about 85% leaves the region. For every dollar spent on Pellet fuel, about 90% stays in the region.

Resources to Learn More

Pellet Stoves

Wood pellet Stove Maine InstallationIf your winter heating load is down in the 3-500 gallon per year range, a wood or pellet stove is an appropriate technology. Larger loads may be better served by a boiler that heats the whole house as well as domestic hot water.

Keep in mind that wood and pellet stoves are not usually a silver bullet, but one strong step in the road off oil. Many of our clients combine a stove with insulation upgrades. Many will eventually install solar hot water or an on demand hot water system to keep the oil boiler from coming on just to heat water. Location is very important in deciding on a stove location, you want it where it will heat as much of the space as possible. In situating a pellet stove, we like to think about how heat moves around a space, and put it where it will heat as much of the space as possible.

Life with a Pellet Stove

Pellet Stoves are a very convenient and economical way to drastically reduce your dependence on foreign oil. Most pellet stoves require daily tending but some of the better stoves need only to be cleaned weekly. They are easier to vent than wood stoves and because they draw air from the outside for combustion, they do not dry the air the same way that a wood stove does.

If you’re going to install a Pellet stove, you’ll need either a spare flue, through which a stainless steel liner can be added, or you’ll need an exterior wall through which a direct vent kit can be installed.

There is a huge difference between a good pellet stove and an inexpensive pellet stove. The less expensive stoves are noisy and not very efficient. Better pellet stoves are quiet, stylish and something that you would like to have in your living room. The Rika, shown below is fantastically quiet and is a beautiful stove. It also has a self cleaning feature where it blows out it’s burn chamber daily, requiring daily or every other day loading and only weekly cleaning of the bottom of the stove.

Pellets can be purchased through a number of channels. You can buy pellets in bags from your local hardware store. You have have pellets delivered to your home on Pallets. You can also arrange for bulk delivery of pellets, blown into a special 3 ton hopper. No more bags!

Quality Pellet Stove Examples

rika pellet stoves of austria

 

High performance, high design pellet stoves from Rika of Austria

Rika is a line of high performance, architecturally designed pellet stoves with extremely quiet operation and highly refined control systems for precise operation. The Rika is digitally controlled, super efficient, very clean to operate and maintain, aesthetically beautiful with small-footprint sizes and offered in a range of designs and decorator colors.

Used in free-standing, convection-only installations, the Rika stoves supplement central heating systems to substantially reduce heating costs. In addition, reVision heat’s engineering team can design and install air movement systems for quiet distribution of heat.

The design and operational details of the Rika product line can be best presented to you by visiting our reVision heat product showroom at 320 Wilson St. in Brewer, Maine or by contacting us by email.


bosca kozai pellet stoves

 

Economically priced pellet stoves from BOSCA of Chile and from APR Industries Ltd. (Kozi stoves) of Canada

reVision heat’s search for the best pellet heat stoves in a variety of price ranges brought us to the Bosca and Kozi products.

Bosca stoves come in a variety of modern stove designs with extremely attractive appearance, very high-quality workmanship, high heat output and efficiency at an economical price. Noise level is an issue with many pellet stoves, especially many inexpensive units. The Bosca line is very quiet, and it presents a very attractive, modern design.

The Kozi stove line works very well where a traditional “stove” appearance is desired. The Kozi workmanship produces a no-nonsense product that makes very efficient heat in a rugged unit with simple and clean operation and few of the bells and whistles that can add cost. The father and son team of Kozi’s production company has been making very high quality pellet stoves in Manitoba, Canada for many years. They have a strong and loyal following in a part of the world that gets even colder than Maine.

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