Sunday, September 21st, 2008
I keep trying to tell anyone who will listen that they should get into the wood pellet selling business. I mean it. If you want to get into a “carbon-neutral” business, start selling wood pellets.
The demand for wood pellets has been rising like absolute craziness. There are no licenses and no classes to take. All you need to do is get a truck, find a vendor, put an ad in the Yellow Pages, get a garage and start making money. It’s pretty much a year round business now. You’re crazy…CRAZY if you don’t listen to me on this one.
I visited a website the other day checking out all different brands of wood pellets. This place sold and delivered to the entire state of Connecticut. They prided themselves on having the most diverse and best quality wood pellets in the state. Well, when I got to the order page, guess what? Every single brand of wood pellet was sold out. Even the pellet stove store I bought this pellet stove from stopped answering their phone. Now, you have to leave a message and they will get back to you. I had to stop by in person yesterday just to speak with them.
I am not sure about the margins for selling woods pellets, but I would guess they are flexible. You could probably make up for a lot in delivery charges, but I would expect the rest is pretty easy. Just think about it…if there were blogs back when people started delivering heating oil, you might have seen a similar post.
I swear, if someone doesn’t start doing this, I will.
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Saturday, September 20th, 2008
I know it’s hard to believe, but sometimes, I sit here and think of stuff to write and come up short.
I hear this a lot with blogs…writer’s block. I never thought I would have it. I’m not sure I do, I am really just not in the mood sometimes. I don’t think life is any more boring right now, but it just doesn’t seem like there is anything to talk about. I guess I will just talk about current events.
Ok, I have been playing a lot of tennis. I went to another clinic today and had a good time. The last clinic I went to didn’t go over so well. I think I was hitting too softly. Today, I really nailed the ball good and had a good time. I don’t know what I like more, the game of tennis or striking something really hard. Either way, it’s good exercise and my body is ripped and buff. My aches and pains are even going away. All my strokes are coming along nicely. All I have to do is get my serve semi-consistent and I think I am going to get more involved with playing real matches.
I did win a game today. I lost two right before it, but I did win.
The weather is changing in the Northeast. It has been getting chilly at night and I haven’t been sweating bullets during the day. I even mowed the lawn today and didn’t sweat a drop. I won’t mention that I was on the ride-on lawnmower. I won’t mention that. I am going to start taking the camera out more to get some nice Autumn shots. Also, we can drive places again now that the humidity is gone. See, there are some photo opportunities right there.
The neighbor from up the road stopped by today to introduce herself and give us a big bouquet of Mums. I thought this was very nice. It was a really classy thing to do.
I have had the fireplace going for the past three nights. It doesn’t really do anything, besides look good. To get any heat out of it, I think I really have to pile the logs on. That might happen further in the season when the weather is cold during the day, but not yet.
I tried the pellet stove out today just for kicks. It works great. I went to the top of the basement stairs to see if I would feel the heat rising, and I felt a breeze. I actually felt a breeze, which means that the air was moving all by itself and I don’t need a fan to do it. That’s a good thing. I am curious how the pellet stove is going to heat the house. I am not expecting to have the whole house heated, but a few big rooms would be nice.
Also, after I finished playing tennis this morning, I went over to the pellet stove store and scheduled the delivery of pellets. They are going to drop off all four tons on Monday. Anyone want to come over and help me move four tons of pellets? Yeah, that should be a riot. Ah, it’s only 200 bags. That’s nothing. You bet I am going to be taking pictures of that one.
Still using the Bowflex and am stronger than ever. I think my stomach had gotten flatter. I like that because sitting in a computer chair all day doesn’t work wonders for the body.
Ummm, what else? I don’t know. September just seems kind of slow, doesn’t it? I mean, there is a lot of stuff going on, but the wheels of commerce don’t seem to be turning as fast this month. I wonder if this is the way it’s going to be until December. I keep trying to think back to the way it was last year. I thought things picked up in September, but maybe not.
I have been working a lot, trying to get things to launch in a big way. I have a little goal that is, well, not so little. I am laying the groundwork for the whole thing right now. It’s a bit difficult because there are so many options for things and so much to learn. If I could just get past a few hurdles, I could really move things forward. We’ll see what happens.
Ok, enough of this “not writing.” I guess I did have something to write about after all. The only problem is that there were no pictures. Sorry Mom.
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Thursday, September 11th, 2008
It was a bit chilly last night at around 50 degrees. It wasn’t chilly enough to make a fire, but I did anyway. I wanted to see how everything worked. I mean, I know how everything works, I just wanted to see it in action.
I made a fire with some fairly green wood I took out of the woods a few weeks ago. It was a little smokey and hissed, while the moisture evaporated out of the ends of the logs. I know that kind of wood isn’t meant to be burned, but it had to be done.
After a while, the fire got going pretty good…
I am not sure how much heat this fireplace is going to produce this Winter. From what I have been reading, not much. Fireplaces aren’t too efficient. I guess the issue is that when the fire goes out, all the heat in the house goes right up the chimney. This fireplace does have glass doors though, so I can close them before we go to sleep, stopping some of the heat from escaping the house.
I really want the Hampton Wood Insert HI300. This wood burning stove insert has a nice, glossy baked on enamel so it looks really good. It has a BTU of 75,000, an efficiency of 77%, can handle a log size of 18″ and has a burn time of 8 hours. Also, this wood stove has an optional blower, so you can really pump up the heat.
I hate the fact that I have been thinking about this wood stove so much, because that means I am most likely going to get it. I just want to get into the season a bit to see how the pellet stove does.
I like the idea of having both a pellet stove and a wood stove.
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Thursday, November 15th, 2007
Well, we found out last night.
Back when I was trying to make my decision between purchasing either a pellet stove or a wood burning stove, I heard that a major benefit of the wood stove is that it will keep burning if the power goes out. Ok, that was a factor, but not a huge one since we could probably figure out some other way to keep warm if the power went out and the heat shut off. It might suck, but I think we would figure something out. The other argument was regarding the pellet stove. Some people told me that if the pellet stove was burning and the power went out, the fans would stop and the house would fill up with smoke.
Last night, I was laying in bed having a dream about me running nude through a field of marigolds, when I was suddenly awakened by the sound of our computer battery backups beeping. I said, “Uh oh.” I jumped up to see everything pitch black. It was about 2AM. I knew the power went off because our white noise filter shut off and the neighbor’s lights weren’t on. I got out of bed and powered down the computers and checked on the pellet stove, which was humming right along a few minutes before. The pellets were kind of sitting there glowing. There was no smoke coming out anywhere, because I sealed up the exhaust pipe earlier, nice and tight, with high temperature sealer. I was walking around trying to find the flashlight, which I couldn’t. I silently blamed Laura for this until I found it on the bathroom floor this morning. I kind of left it there. Whoops. I used our oil lamp.
Anyway, when the power goes out, no smoke will escape a pellet stove, unless you open the door, like I did. I wanted to see if there was a natural draft, due to the exhaust pipe being higher than the intake pipe and the stove itself. No, there was no natural draft, which leaves me a little puzzled, because it was the manufacturer’s suggestion to set things up this way, for this particular case. I only opened the door a crack, just to see inside. The instant I opened it, I noticed a thick steam of smelly smoke floating up from the opening. I quickly closed the door, but the smoke already kind of stunk things up a bit. Not too much, but enough to smell.
I went back to bed with no further incident. There you have it. Bye.
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Wednesday, November 14th, 2007
I am a little hot. I just finished bringing the remaining two tons of wood pellets downstairs to the basement. There were one hundred forty pound bags. I don’t even know how many trips I made with the wheelbarrow. I brought down six bags per trip. I am sure if I did a little math, I could figure it out. Nah, that’s asking too much.
So there we have it…three tons of wood pellets for the season. I am guessing that we already went through about fifteen bags, give or take.
Things with the pellet stove have been going pretty smoothly, except for that one small hiccup. It’s half way through November, so that’s not too bad. I say this every year and then it hits minus twenty in January. That’s when most of the pellets get used up.
Big props to you and your family.
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