Tips & Tricks

Tips & Tricks

The Little Book of Sustainable Heating

Heating clean doesn’t have to be complicated, but it’s probably not what you think. This free eBook is chock full of surprising data points and the thoughtful insights … Read more

Leafblower Hack Instruction Book

In areas where wood pellet bulk delivery (via pneumatic truck) is not yet available, use the Leafblower Hack to load your bulk bin with bagged wood pellets for … Read more

The wood pellet spigot delivers pellets from your bulk bin right to a location in your home near your wood pellet stove with vacuum suction convenience.

Wood Pellet Spicket

Coming Spring 2019! Love your wood pellet stove but hate hefting the heavy bags? Have we got a solution for you! Imagine a wood pellet spicket right next … Read more

Heat Loss

The two variables of of heat loss are a) geographic location, and b) building performance. Together they will determine the quantity of heat needed to maintain comfort.

Geographic location drives the building's “design day." Your design day is the difference in temperature between the inside and outside of your house on the theoretical coldest day of the year; so in the northeast we calculate a day that is -10ºf outside and comfortable 68ºf inside. This is referred to as the “delta-T” value. A typical delta-T for the northeast is 78º.

Building performance is the big one because there’s nothing we can do about geographic location. Today we can build a really tight thermal envelope, but most of our heating pollution comes from the millions of homes built over the last 100-150 years. We are getting better at buttoning-up those old buildings with insulation and weather sealing but weatherization is still  never going to be enough to overcome the heat loss from a 78º delta-T. That means we need heating systems that can quickly put a whole lot of heat back into those old houses on the days that are really cold.