It’s a long-honored tradition for people to harvest firewood for their campfires and to heat their homes. It’s an old tradition that goes far back in human history. Anyone can see the great importance and uses of firewood. Some even buy or cut bulk firewood to last them the entire season they need it for. From warming a home through the chimney or serving as fuel for a campfire outside the home, firewood has had many purposes.
There’s even commercial firewood sold by various firewood companies to the people who need it. Companies have the resources to offer other companies bulk firewood for their purposes. There’s even firewood for restaurants and individual people looking to cook their food. Food cooked over a fire always has an amazing, smoky flavor!
Lately, though, firewood has been becoming less popular as a new fire fuel rises to the limelight. That competitor is pellet wood! Like compact boards used in carpentry, pellet wood is wood and other organic material compacted together into logs. It burns just as well, recycles organic waste, and is cheaper than firewood. People like the idea of not having to cut down trees to fuel their fires, making pellet wood a great alternative.
Burning a fire in a fireplace is more than just a way of warming up the house. It is a cozy activity that makes people remember their campfires and other social times around a fire. There are firewood processors that sell great logs for people to burn. Often, people want oak wood for fireplace burning, but other types of wood will work nearly as well. If you can get a mixed premium hardwood bundle, this will burn the longest, and it won’t pop as much as softer woods like pine.
It is always easier to buy packaged firewood than it is to chop up a tree to use its wood for burning. You can buy real firewood in a wide variety of places. Often, you will see a sign on the side of the road offering firewood for sale. It is also available from convenience stores as well as retail stores. Big-box stores generally carry bundles of firewood. However, many people want to cut it for themselves to get satisfaction out of doing so. This can be done by chopping up a tree that is already down, cutting pieces out of large, downed limbs, or chopping down an entire tree.
What Is Pellet Wood, And Why Is It Suddenly So Popular?
If you drive through certain parts of the country, you’ll still find homes being heated with traditional wood burning stoves. You can usually identify these homes because of their tell-tale fire wood storage. Over the past five years, these firewood stacks have slowly started to disappear, but not for the reason you might expect.
Rather than heating wood-burning stoves with firewood, and instead of switching to a heating system that relies on fossil fuels, many Americans are using cheap pellet wood as a fuel source. Not only are these wood pellets cheaper than alternative fuel sources, but they’re actually more environmentally friendly, too.
By 2025, experts expect North American demand for wood pellets will reach five million metric tons. Already there are about one million pellet wood heating units installed throughout Europe, and more Americans are making the switch as well.
Pellet wood is made up of thousands of small, compacted nuggets made from wood, but sometimes contains nut shells, sawdust, corn kernel, and other combustible organic material. These tiny pellets are highly combustible, providing a stable heating source for boilers and heating systems alike.
According to the U.S. Department of Energy’s official website: “Today you can choose from a new generation of wood- and pellet-burning appliances that are cleaner burning, more efficient, and powerful enough to heat many average-sized, modern homes. Pellet fuel appliances burn small pellets that measure 3/8 to 1 inch in length.”
Homeowners who rely on pellet stoves purchase a supply of bulk wood pellets, and this pellet fuel is fed into the heater as needed. When manufactured correctly, pellet fuel is carbon neutral, making it far more environmentally friendly than other popular fuels. In fact, for every ton of pellet fuel used instead of oil, CO2 emissions are reduced by 1.5 tons. That means that every year millions of tons of CO2 emissions are kept out of the atmosphere.
But How Much Does It Cost To Heat Your Home With Pellet Wood?
While going green is attractive to many Americans, it’s a luxury that many people think they can’t afford. Fortunately, pellet wood is actually much, much cheaper than other fuel sources. Because this fuel is made from organic substances, it’s far cheaper to create when compared to fossil fuels which must be extracted from beneath the earth and refined.
Best of all, you can buy bulk pellet wood manufactured entirely within the United States of America, allowing you to save money, help the environment, and keep the country energy independent all at the same time.
