Pellet fuel is a renewable, clean-burning and cost stable home heating alternative currently used throughout North America. It is a biomass product made of renewable substances – generally recycled wood waste. There are approximately 1,000,000 homes in the U.S. using wood pellets for heat. Pellet fuel is a way to divert millions of tons of waste from landfills and turn it into energy.
Many pellet manufacturers take by-products (like wood waste) and refine them into pencil-sized pellets that are uniform in size, shape, moisture, density and energy content. Why not simply burn raw biomass? First, the moisture content of pellets is substantially lower (4% to 8% water-compared to 20% to 60% for raw biomass). Less moisture means higher BTU value and easier handling especially in freezing situations with green raw biomass materials.
Fireplaces by Design believes that it important to use only the finest highest quality pellets. Some professionals endorse using less expensive products, but we do not agree with that line of thinking for the following reasons.
- You would need to burn a larger quantity of lesser quality wood pellets to produce the same amount of heat as a premium brand of pellets. The dollars here even out, but you will have to spend more of your energy to deal with the higher volume of wood pellets when you must haul them more often.
- Burning lower quality wood pellets translates into more emissions into the atmosphere and potentially more dangerous creosote emissions.
- Burning more lower quality wood pellets means you will have more ash to clean up. A premium brand produce less than 1% of ash.
- Using a lower quality product will also increase the amount of material your heating system must handle. his puts more stress on your heating system, creating more need for maintenance and leads to more costs in the long run.
Fireplaces by Design offers two quality brands of pellets to purchase, Lignetics and Energex.
Lignetics has more than 30 years in the wood pellet industry, they are one of the founding pioneers of manufacturing wood pellets for home heating. There wood pellets are 100% renewable and are generated from recycled sawdust at lumber and flooring manufacturing facilities that could otherwise be destined for landfills. Only all-natural materials are used in the production of Lignetics wood pellets ensuring a clean and safe burn.Since all Lignetics premium wood pellets are kiln dried to specific moisture content, they burn hotter and cleaner than many other brands, making our wood pellets one of the most efficient forms of renewable biomass fuel.
Energex began operations in 1993 after acquiring the Lac Megantic, QC facility from the Shell Oil Company. Shell Oil constructed the Lac-Megantic facility in 1981, making it one of the oldest wood pellet plants in the country. After being purchased by Energex, a packaging facility was added to bag premium grade wood pellet fuel. Energex Pellets are made of the finest blend of hardwoods that provide an ash content well below the industry standard of 1%%. With the BTUs (on a dry basis) between 8,500 and 8,600, these hardwood pellets can put out a lot of heat with low ash.