Oil vs Wood pellet boiler/ Eco Eye recommends wood pellet!

mollzer

Watched Eco Eye on RTE, Duncan Stewart recommending wood pellet boilers.
He chatted with a rep from a company called Clearpower too.

Seems wood pellets are the way to go, but I have been reading alot of horror stories on Boards about people going back to oil from wood pellet.

I am in the process of researching oil vs wood pellet as we need to replace an indoor oil burning stove (20 yrs old & on its last legs).

Any good things to be said about having wood vs oil?

nophd08

mollzer wrote: »

Watched Eco Eye on RTE, Duncan Stewart recommending wood pellet boilers.
He chatted with a rep from a company called Clearpower too.

Seems wood pellets are the way to go, but I have been reading alot of horror stories on Boards about people going back to oil from wood pellet.

I am in the process of researching oil vs wood pellet as we need to replace an indoor oil burning stove (20 yrs old & on its last legs).

Any good things to be said about having wood vs oil?

I watched that program but in reality it seems that a lot of problems arise from the pellets, check some of the forums here. My neighbour has a gerkros wpb and while it can be troublesome it does work well and is cheaper than oil but you need dry storage for bulk delivery's.
Do a lot of research before you buy and have a look at one in operation but not in a showroom. Check out some that have been fitted and working properly. I think its a good idea to have a reasonable mechanical knowledge of a wpb so you can at least service it and do a basic troubleshoot.

mollzer

Thanks for the reply & advice nophd08.

nophd08

Check out some of the threads on wood gasification boilers in the renewable energy forum. A few lads there have a superb set up. I think its the way to go if you have a decent size out house/shed.

creaghadoos

did a bit of research on these a few years back. my main concern is that the price of wood pellets is 80% linked to the price of oil due to the amount of fuel used during harvesting, processing and manufacture of pellets

Kashkai

I've got oil and 2 wood pellet stoves, one a room heater, one for the central heating.

We've blown through almost 1,000 litres of oil in the past 8 weeks and at €650 for a fill, this is a lot of money on oil.

The wood pellet room heater is superb at blasting out the heat and a 10kg bag of pellets (€3 a bag) lasts about 7 hours. We open the doors off the room this heater is in and it heats other parts of the house. The wood pellet central heating stove is a complete waste of space. It eats through 30 - 40 kgs of pellets a day and the rads only get lukewarm at best. Thats why we put in the oil burner as well.

Depending on the size of your house, I'd look at getting one or two pellet room heaters and have the oil for hot water and for heating rads as a back up. Stay away from wood pellets for the central heating as the one I have is worse than useless, and bloody expensive to run to boot.

vicar1

Glad to get advice from someone using a system. i had intended going for wood pellet stove and stove / boiler for central heating but may now just get space heaters - do they give out the heat quoted - any idea what kw would be needed for room 18 x 29 x 9ft ceilings? Any advice re makes - have been looking at Artel and Enviro. Thanks!