Wood Pellet Baskets

We were looking the other day at pellet stoves. A cord of wood where we are in Arizona is about $400.00. Frankly, we are getting too old to cut and split firewood. We have two chain saws that haven't worked right since we got them.

Not knowing how much electricity a pellet stove uses, we were in search of an answer. Changing the stove pipe which for us, was almost as much as our stove, was not appealing. We still do not know the electrical draw for a pellet stove, but we did come across wood pellet baskets. These baskets can be used in any wood stove. We ordered one for our wood stove hoping next time we can make one.

We was so excited, we were not looking forward to spending another $2000.00 or more to change stoves. We still have the option to burn firewood. We took a look at the price of a ton of pellets as opposed to the bags. Took into consideration the storage and decided that the $.001 cent per pound for the difference was not worth trying to store. For about 11 cents a pound, we can cut our energy cost by about 1/3. Pellets burn cleaner and more efficiently.

There is a small out of pocket expense to start and can be pay as you go. It is like picking up a three or four bags of dog food each week. If it does not work not much is lost and we still have our wood stove.

There seems to be two different types of baskets. One is a wire mesh and the other is tubes welded together. Although, we like the tube better, it would not fit through the opening of our stove so we chose the wire basket.

One of the issues that we may be face is controlling the burn with the damper. We will let you know how that works.