The Wood Fireplace Insert Blog

Wood fireplace pellets are small pellets made of compressed wood chips and saw dust that is a by product of other more lucrative wood processing. The chips and saw dust are dried to a specified moisture content, then compressed by a very high pressure machine. They are compressed with so much pressure that no binding agent is required other than the sap from the timber itself.

The benefits of wood pellets are as follows:

- Ease of transport

- Clean burning fuel

- It complies to consistent standards. (Things which have standard sizes, shaped and moisture content can easily be designed for)

Pellets can be purchase by the bag for hand loading or by the truckload if you have a system that is set up for it.

When ordered by truckload the pellets are blown from a delivery truck up to 20 yards to a storage unit. In the past there has been a lot of hassle with dust, but this was largely due to the use of agricultural feed trucks being used to deliver the pellets. As dust is not really an issue for agriculture, they did not have dust minimisation technology, and it was a mess. If you use one of the large suppliers these days, there is little problem.

Understanding Wood Pellet Boilers And.. Combustion

Wood pellets can also be used to fuel a boiler.  The pellets are fed into the “burner” where they are burned. The burner in all boilers does much the same job. It’s a place where the fuel is mixed with air to provide the optimal conditions for combustion, and lit. Before you know it the combustion gases are travelling through the heat exchanger where it heats up the water.

The flame from the burner, and the resultant combustion gases escape into the boiler, transferring their heat to the water circulating through the heat exchanger within the boiler. The heat is then distributed the house using a wet system. In most cases water flows through the heat exchanger in the boiler, absorbing heat from the flame and the combustion gases. This hot water is then circulated around the house to radiators, underfloor heaters and hot water cylinders.

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For those who depend on a fireplace to supplement their home heating a pellet burning fireplace insert should be a serious consideration. Pellet burning fireplace inserts are much like pellet stoves in the way they work and in their heating performance, but they are built so that they can be installed right into the firebox area of an existing fireplace.

Pellet inserts burn wood pellets that are made from wood waste materials that are left over from other manufacturing processes using wood.  These wood chips, saw dust, etc. are compressed to the point that they will stay in the pellet form. 

Compressing the material into pellets makes for a very handy way to deal with this fuel source because they can be easily poured into the pellet insert and they are easy to package and transport.  Pellets can be transported in bulk trucks or in bags that are convenient for home owners to purchase and transport.  They can also be easily stacked for storage.

Pellet inserts are among the cleanest burning heating fixtures on the market.  They are extremely efficient and very environmentally friendly.  Regular wood burning inserts have to be designed to meet EPA standards to be certified but because pellet inserts create such minimal pollution they do not even require EPA certification.  You may see EPA certifications on some model because the manufacturer voluntarily applied for it, but it is not required for pellet burning inserts.

Other differences between pellet burning inserts and regular wood inserts are that most pellet burning inserts require electrical power to run the pellet feeder mechanism and the fan(s).  Another difference is the way they can be vented.  Regular wood burning inserts usually need a chimney to vent smoke and gases whereas many pellet inserts can be vented right through a wall. 

Another feature that is often included in a pellet insert is a thermostat control that monitors the heat coming from the insert and adjusts air flow and pellet feeding to raise and lower temperatures as needed to maintain the desired room temperature.

There are many models and designs of pellet inserts on the market to choose from so you may want to compare features as well as appearance when it comes to installing a pellet burning fireplace insert.

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