High quality pellets come in all colors and sizes!

There are more to pellets than just softwood or hardwood. Matching pellets to appliance is an important step in order to receive the highest heat output, cleanest combustion, and highest efficiency. Here are some things to consider when choosing your fuel.

Wood Pellet Color

When choosing a fuel, you may notice that there are many different colors of fuel. Usually the lighter fuels are softwood while the darker pellets are hardwood. The fuel in the center of this photo is made from lodge pole pine that died from pine beetle infestation. The enzymes they secrete into the wood makes it blue, so the pellets turn out darker. Some softwood whole-tree pellets are also darker because of the bark and needles mixed with the wood. In other words, it's tough to pick a "best" pellet based on color.

Wood Pellet Length

From one brand to another, or even from one season to another of the same brand, it's very likely that the pellets you buy could be shorter or longer in length on average. This is very normal. There are several variables that determine the length of a pellet during manufacturing and any one of them could be different from brand to brand or season to season. How does this affect burn? Longer pellets will feed less fuel into the firepot with every rotation of the augur than shorter pellets. If everything else in the appliance stays the same, and the only difference in the fuel is the pellet length, the shorter pellets will provide more fuel to the firepot than the longer pellets. You will need to reduce the feed rate or increase air flow through the firepot to maintain the correct fuel to air ratio. If you don't, you could have incomplete combustion, leading to more and darker ash, blackened glass, a lazy fire, and lower combustion and heat transfer efficiency.

Wood Pellet Density

Pellet manufacturers compress the wood fiber to a consistent density of at least 40lbs per cubic foot. That means that if you fill a cubic foot container with the pellets (just pour them in), it should weigh at least 40lbs. But it's difficult to compress to that exact density consistently, so most pellet mills compress to 41lbs or 42lbs. It's not uncommon that the pellet could be as dense as 44lbs or more. If one bag of wood pellets is denser than another, it will deliver more fuel to the firepot with each rotation of the augur than the less dense pellet. If you have two brands of pellets, you can stack eight bags of one brand on top of each other next two eight bags of the other brand. The taller stack is the less dense pellet. Being less-dense or more-dense isn't bad, but it does change the fuel-to-air ration in the appliance. If you switch from a less-dense pellet to a more-dense pellet, you will need to reduce your feed rate or increase airflow through the firepot to maintain the correct fuel to air ratio.