Calculating the consumption of pellets for heating in advance is the primary task of the owner of a private house who wants to install a pellet boiler. After all, granular fuel is more expensive than firewood, and the price of equipment is higher in comparison with solid fuel or electrical units. One pellet burner is comparable in cost to a whole wood-fired heat generator. To find out the costs of pellet heating, you need to make a simple theoretical calculation, which will be discussed below.
Pellet consumption calculation - initial data
To find out the theoretical fuel consumption for heating a country house, it is necessary to collect the following initial data:
- the amount of heat load on the heating system of a cottage or country house, expressed in kW;
- The efficiency of the pellet boiler model that you plan to install in your furnace;
- calculated heat of combustion of fuel pellets;
- to get the result in monetary terms, it is advisable to find out the price per ton of pellets in your region of residence.
The most difficult thing is to get a figure for the real heat load. It consists of heat losses through external walls, roofing, glazing and floors, plus the cost of heat energy for heating the ventilation air.
The ideal option is to contact a qualified heating engineer for such a calculation, then you will find out the exact figure. Otherwise, you will have to consider the heat load and fuel consumption in enlarged ways:
- Specific heat consumption per square meter of area. For dwellings in central Russia, it is assumed that a room with 1 window and one outer wall will consume 100 W of heat per 1 m², with two outer walls - 120 W / m², with 2 walls and two windows - 130 W / m².
- The same in relation to the volume of the premises. The method is used when the ceilings of the rooms exceed 2.8 m. The total heated volume is calculated, the resulting figure is multiplied by 40 W.
Comment. In the example of the calculation discussed below, the heat load for a private house of 100 m² is conventionally assumed equal to 10 kW, since the consumption of pellets is determined in an abstract building with a pellet boiler of an unknown manufacturer.
The heating unit together with the bunker takes up a lot of space, one of the placement options is in the basement or in the basement
The efficiency of a heat generator that burns wood pellets is indicated in its technical data sheet. If the model and manufacturer have not yet been selected, then the figure of 80% can be taken for calculations. Manufacturers leading the rating of heating equipment (for example, Viessmann or Buderus) declare the efficiency of their pellet boilers equal to 85%. But these are high-quality and reliable units that are not cheap. More affordable heaters are not as efficient.
The theoretical calorific value of pellets is a known value, it lies in the range of 4.9-5.2 kW / kg, depending on the quality of the fuel and the raw material from which they are made. If you do not take into account peat granules with high ash content and low heat transfer, then for calculations it is worth taking an average figure of 5 kW / kg.
Granular fuels
Pellets made by pressing waste from wood processing industry and plant growing are classified as environmentally friendly fuel. During their production, no extraneous additives are used - the particles of plant raw materials stick together due to the lignin released under pressure.
A variety of materials can be used as raw materials for the manufacture of pellets.
The theoretical calculations of fuel consumption given above are based on the calorific value of quality pellets made from pure wood material. Cheaper granules, which include bark and other inclusions, have lower heat transfer, while they burn with the formation of a large amount of ash. If you constantly use cheap fuel, the boiler will have to be cleaned frequently.
The cheapest pellets are granules from agricultural waste. Their heat transfer is about 4 kW per kg. Accordingly, to obtain the calculated amount of heat, more fuel will have to be bought and burned.
Saving on the quality of pellets is not only unprofitable, but also dangerous - unscrupulous manufacturers introduce additives into the composition, which, when burned, can damage the burner of the heat generator. To make the fuel heavier, sand can be mixed into the pellets.
How to calculate the consumption of pellets
The calculation is carried out in several stages, although in general it is quite simple. Its result should be the average monthly fuel consumption of a pellet boiler during the heating season and the average cost of such heating. For the sake of clarity, we will consider an example calculation for a 100 m² house.
The torch-type burner is automatically ignited and extinguished at the command of the controller, this allows you to significantly save fuel
Stage one. First you need to understand how much heat actually gets into the heating system when burning 1 kg of fuel pellets. After all, the heating equipment is not so perfect as to direct all the energy received to heat the house, part of it will fly out into the chimney. To do this, the heat of combustion of the pellets should be multiplied by the efficiency of the heat generator divided by 100:
5 kW / kg x 80% / 100 = 4 kW / kg.
Stage two. For the convenience of calculations, it is necessary to perform the opposite action in order to find out how much pellets need to be burned to obtain 1 kW of thermal energy in real conditions:
1 kW / 4 kW / kg = 0.25 kg.
Stage three. During the heating season, the weather outside changes and the temperature ranges from + 10 ° С to -30 ° С. Specific heat consumption on average for the entire season for a house of 100 m² will not be 10 kW, but half as much - 5 kW. Considering that the units of power are related to the time of 1 hour, the heat consumption per day will be:
5 kWh x 24 hours = 120 kW.
The same, only for a month:
120 kW x 30 days = 3600 kW.
Stage four. Now it is easy to calculate the average consumption of pellets per month for a building of 100 m² during the entire heating season:
3600 kW x 0.25 kg / kW = 900 kg.
If the cold season lasts 7 months, as in Moscow in the Russian Federation, then the total amount of fuel pellets for heating a private house with an area of 100 square meters will be 900 x 7 = 6.3 tons. In the same way, the average monthly consumption of pellets for a house with an area of 150 and 200 m² is determined, it is equal to 1.35 and 1.8 tons, respectively. Since pellets are sold by weight, not by volume, there is no need to recalculate this quantity in volumetric units.
Those who are interested in the approximate consumption of wood pellets on average per day can calculate it in this way (for our example):
120 kW x 0.25 kg / kW = 30 kg.
Attention! The calculated average should not be confused with actual fuel consumption on the coldest and warmest days. In a building of 100 m², it can vary between 15-60 kg of pellets per day.
To get approximate costs for pellet heating in monetary terms, you need to multiply the obtained figures by the price per ton, adopted in your region. At the prices of the capitals of the Russian Federation and Ukraine, the monthly costs of heating a private house of 100 square meters will be:
- for Moscow: 0.9 t х 8500 rubles / t = 7650 rubles;
- for Kiev: 0.9 t х 3000 UAH / t = 2700 UAH.
A retort burner is cheaper than a flare burner, it can be installed in a conventional TT boiler
It should be borne in mind that we carried out an abstract calculation, in the conditions of Ukraine the financial costs for pellet heating will be less due to the milder climate.
Real expense - user reviews on forums
The results of the theoretical calculation reflect only the general picture and give an understanding of the order of the figures of financial costs for wood pellets. The indicators published by users of the forums, for real heating with pellets, may differ depending on many factors:
- the efficiency of the heating unit;
- weather conditions in the region of residence;
- the degree of insulation of a residential building;
- the quality of the fuel used.
Therefore, homeowners who are inclined to heating their country house with pellets will not hurt to study the reviews of real users and, on their basis, collect statistics and draw appropriate conclusions. Here are some of these reviews:
- Vladimir, Sochi, RF. I heat a part of the house with an area of 50 m² with pellets. At an outside temperature of 5-10 degrees of frost, I can withstand + 24 ° C in the rooms. About 20 kg of granules of the first grade, white, are consumed per day. The walls are aerated concrete, there is no insulation. The indicator suits me, I will finish the rest of the premises and I will heat the whole house with pellets (85 m²).
- Alexander, Moscow region, RF. Warehouse 400 squares with a ceiling height of 3.6 m, pellet boiler "Teplodar" with an APG-25 burner. When it is minus 30 ° С outside, it is possible to maintain + 10 ° С in the warehouse. On average, the boiler "eats" 120 kg of pellets per day, and the amount hardly changes when burning different pellets. We tried both white and brown, everything is the same.
- Valery, Kharkov, Ukraine. I put a pellet boiler in a one-story house of 140 m², I heat around the clock, stop once a week and clean for 30 minutes. I keep it inside +22 ° C, the consumption of pellets was recorded at a temperature overboard of -15 ° C - 50 kg per day. The walls are brick with foam insulation 5 cm, the roof was insulated with sawdust, I think to add Isover glass wool. In general, it is acceptable, and it is difficult to refuse comfort, you no longer want to indulge in an ordinary solid fuel boiler.
- Nikolay, Ochakov, Ukraine. Built a brick house with a heated area of 120 m² (total 140 square meters). Wall thickness - 1 brick (250 mm) plus external insulation with foam plastic 15 cm. My first boiler is just a pellet one, I am satisfied with the results. For the whole season I used up about 4 tons of pellets, I will not say for sure, because I bought in addition in the spring in packages.
conclusions
If you analyze the reviews and collect more statistics, it turns out that the estimated consumption of pellets for heating is not too different from the real one. If initially the calculation was done according to an enlarged scheme, the results are comparable to fuel consumption in a poorly insulated private house. When you have real indicators of heat load, then you will calculate the financial costs for pellet heating quite accurately.
When calculating costs, do not forget about the consumption of electricity by the boiler, for which you also pay money according to the meter. It must be taken into account, because the power consumption of the auger motor, electric ignition device and controller can reach 400-500 W / h, which is very significant. The power of an additional auger conveyor can be added to it, if you have one installed to move the pellets from the storage to the hopper.
Features of pellet heating
The solid fuel pellet boiler is distinguished by the ability to automate the process of filling pellets. The main components of such systems are a pellet storage bin, a combustion chamber, a special burner and an automatic feeding system.
Pellet boiler device diagram
With the correct setting, you simply pour pellet pellets into the hopper and you can leave the boiler to work autonomously. The feeding mechanism, as required, delivers the required amount of pellets to the combustion chamber.
