Enviro Energy’s Pellet Testing
November 25, 2008
In early November we contacted a group of local folks that expressed interest in our pellets to ask them if they would be interested in testing a few bags of our pellets in their own homes. We are so grateful to all those that participated and are very happy to have had so many interested in doing so.
Along with 2 or 3 bags of our pellets, our testers left with a simple fact sheet attached to a questionnaire, that both we and they will find helpful, provided by our friends at the Cooperative Extension.
While we have not received feedback from all our testers, the feedback we have received so far has been very helpful and informative. Below are excerpts from just a few:
“I tried out your grass pellets this week. Here’s my feedback- burning them alone is difficult…. they ignite at a much slower pace than wood. … i found out if you mix the pellets at 70% wood to 30% grass it helps a lot. There is a lot of ash but the auger can handle it on a setting of 2. using the wood pellets to them does help with the amount of ash… I’m think about trying them in my fireplace. They make a basket you load pellets into. Seeing they seem to burn slower it may work perfect for that. Thank you for offering a new alternative to oil and making it locally. Dwight”
We do not know the brand of stove that Dwight has. While we have found that several original wood pellet stove brands do handle burning grass pellets well, we are aware that some stoves intended to burn wood pellets only, will not handle the ash from grass pellets properly. From our feedback we have found that stoves made for multi-fuel work best. We may have corrected your slow ignition problem by making a lower moisture pellet. Some folks are changing the air flow to their stoves for more success. Thanks for your feedback.
“I picked up a bag of grass pellets from you. I found them to burn in my stove the same as wood pellets. They did not break up or cause any problems. My stove is set up to burn all kinds of free flowing product, corn, commercial pellets and wheat. I think you are the right track! Leslie”
Thank you Leslie for the feedback , and for testing our pellets. Indeed, with a multi-fuel stove such as yours, we expected you to have a good amount of success. Thanks again for participating!
“I tested a few bags of your pellets and wanted you to know that I was concerned about burning grass pellets because my daughter has severe allergies to hay. Well, I am pleased to tell you that my daughter had no problems what so ever and the pellets burned just fine”
Thank you so much for the feedback and we are so happy that your daughter had no ill effects from the grass pellets. This is such an important piece of feedback for us and for potential consumers.
And finally, we at Enviro Energy have been burning/testing our own pellets in our outdoor boiler. We have had great success, even using our experimental “cast offs.” The boiler is burning the pellets very well. Even more interesting is that there is no smoke emitted from the boiler. In fact, the gentleman that installed our boiler dropped in one day and asked why we were not using the boiler. We asked why he would ask that since it has been continuously used. He said he had driven by several times and never saw any smoke coming from the stack[pipe?], so he finally had to stop to see if there were any problems! Nope, no problems at all with the boiler or the pellets!
We will keep adding the feedback from our testers as we receive it, so please check back to read about our progress.
All of us at Enviro Energy extend our sincere appreciation to all our testers and we look forward to receiving more feedback. We are still perfecting the formula and continue to work on improving Enviro Energy grass pellets every day.
Our family wishes everyone a very Happy Thanksgiving and a joyous holiday season.