NHPR was pushing this one. Wood pellets. They are locally grown, so if you heat with wood pellets, the money stays in NH, rather than going to the Middle East. Groovy. Then they gave some numbers. Unusual that, especially as the numbers are unfavorable.
NHPR gave the price of a wood pellet furnace at $16,000 (WOW). The pellets only cost $243 a ton, and a ton of wood pellets gives the same heat as 125 gallons of oil.
A standard oil burner only costs $2000, new, installed. So how long will it take to get your money back on a $16,000 wood pellet furnace?
I use about 800 gallons of furnace oil a winter at $4 a gallon, total $3200 . In wood pellets that would be 6.4 tons at $243 a ton, total $1552.2. Let N be the number of years to pay off the VERY pricy wood pellet burner.
Cost of oilburner + $3200 * N = cost of woodburner + 1552.2 * N.
Solve for N (high school algebra)
N = 8.449 years.
That's right, it takes 8 and a half years to pay off the wood pellet furnace. That's a long time. I wonder if the price of wood pellets will stay at $243 a ton for the next 8.5 years.
2 comments:
Not sure where they got their pricing from. My parents use a wood pellet furnace in Hudson, NH and it was less than 3K. I can't find any that are $16K.
I think they screwed up the cost of the furnace or are from Vermont and don't know math.
Could well be. I didn't check pricing, I just quoted the figures from NHPR. Newsies are basically innumerate.
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