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my generator ran the pellet stove just fine. Pellet stoves burn much cleaner than traditional wood stoves with hardly any smoke. In comparison my neighbor's woodstove chokes the entire neighborhood. Pellets are a lot cheaper than oil. 3 tons will last the winter - that is $750. versus double that in oil costs.
That's highway robbery. My neighbor paid $80/ton for pellets and still has a high electric bill. Pellet stoves are a waste of money - unless you're in a one room cabin.
I have a hotwater boiler that produces very little smoke burning pallets. It produces 760 gals of water which keeps the house toasty at 80F all day/night long in cold Montana. That replaces 1500 gals of fuel oil a month. If I had ready access to hard-coal I'd save even more money.
To answer the OP, Montana has no sales tax and the prices are lower than surrounding states. WY & SD have no income tax, but the fees make it regressive. ND and ID have small taxes and many come here to do their shopping - taking the chance of not being caught for the "use taxes".
WHEN was that? last winter they went for $350 ton, because there was a severe shortage. I heated with oil instead because it was cheaper. This year the price has dropped to $250/ton.
The manufacturer in VA pays about $80/ton for the raw materials (sawdust) and an additional $37/ton to truck the sawdust into their facility. Their landed cost of the dust therefore is $117/ton. After producing the pellets, where there are many other costs involved, the pellet is wholesaled to me for $175/ton.
Comparing Montana with NH. Maybe Montana has more logging than we do in NH now making pellets cheaper but I haven't seen any pellets selling at that low a price and it's even hard to find a place that is even selling Pellets up this way. Pellet stoves are not hot selling up here.
Plus, having to split and stack logs during the summer gives me my much needed workouts that I otherwise would not be doing.
Call me wierd..... but there's something about the smell of a wood stove burning outside on a cold winter day that i like.........
I don't think that's weird at all.Thats one of the things i miss living down here. Even the wood fires burning when it gets down to 40 don't smell the same.
We make the pellets here in Montana and have been doing so for close to 15 years. Some commercial operators were using them to heat factory floors. But, it became abundantly clear that they weren't cost effective and abandoned it and returned to LP gas.
Before we went to the boiler 1500 gals of fuel oil is what it took to run electricity in the backwoods. Heck I'm 16 miles off the paved road and up a mountainside and there's no power line up here. We had two 35kw gensets that ran 24/7 to power the house and two barns.
Down to one 17kw genset our electric bill for running the house is $100/mo and the boiler costs virtually nothing b/c we cut our own.
WHEN was that? last winter they went for $350 ton, because there was a severe shortage. I heated with oil instead because it was cheaper. This year the price has dropped to $250/ton.
Three years ago, the average price was $100/ton.
Two years ago, before he switched to a boiler like mine. He figures he's saved $3600 in those two years on heating alone. More than enough to pay for the boiler. This year I see Arbor (UT) is selling them for $150/T and Little Mill (ID) for $180/T. Everything I've seen from MI Eastward is charging premium prices up to $325/T
Consumer products, except for oil and fuel, are not more expensive. Services provided by the state are. Vehicle registration in VT is something like $20 or whatever for everyone. In NH it is based upon the value of the car and can be a lot more. I have found in my experience that there is no perfect state. If one thing is cheaper, you can be guaranteed that some other thing is more expensive. For example, a friend of mine had allergies here in NH, saw that in Arizona it was dry and that there was a lot of construction going on. 1) He ended up getting allergic to the things that were there in Arizona, 2) He still had trouble keeping a job. He came back to NH. If you have high wages in one state, you might find higher prices too. To me the difference is whether I like the area in terms of things that money cannot buy: peace of mind, quiet, low crime, fresh air, nice scenery, less traffic.... These are some of my most favorite things... No State income tax and no sales tax is a benefit. Are some things more expensive? Perhaps some. Are they worth it? To me, yes!
I was born in Vermont, love Vermont, my parents live in Vermont, but I am right on the border and can visit them a lot. So, I am where I want to be. Finding it for yourself is as simple as listing the real things that you like and going where they are.
It is unfortunate that real estate is so expensive. I doubt I will ever be able to buy a home in any condition despite having the skill to not just build a house, but to design it also.
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