Stove Pellet Shortage

Kind of nice sitting around the fire on brisk January day.

Our pellet stove is certainly getting a workout this year. It seems there is a nationwide shortage of fuel caused by a huge jump in sales of new stoves since Katrina and touble in the Middle East. Prices have gone from around $170/ton to around $250/ton.

The price isnt the real problem. We have people calling stores up here from places southof San Francisco looking for pellets. Right around the first I had to drive up to Burney and get some from Safeway up there....the road less traveled because it's an hour+ drive through the hills upwards of 4000+ feet climb.

Not sure how but our local grocery had a pallet of them yesterday and now after my purchace today I told them to start ordering now and you might get some.  All the pellets I've seen lately seem to be coming from Canada so that drives up the price. Trucking costs and plain old supply and demand take there toll.

Well we are up to $5.49/40# bag up from $3.99 when I bough the place. Seems like alot but I would hate to see what my electric and gas bill would be if I had an A/C unit and gas heat as opposed to a swamp cooler and pellet stove. My utility costs actually are fairly constant year round.

We may try something a little differnt this year because of the shortage. The stove will also burn corn but we need to mix it with pellets to keep the ash and sugar clinkers down that the decent pellets alone don't have. Not sure how much a 50# sack would run for corn but I need to get a barrel with a good sealing lid on it to store it to keep it dry and rodent-free. I'm sure I can get some corn at most any feed store.

BRR!

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