Wood pellets for heating (granules de bois)

I would be interested to know where you get your wood pellets from and comments about quality, price, delivery. I have been using Total (Alvéa) whose service is excellent, but they are becoming expensive.

Hi Chris,
I use Bioforest super premium. I get them from Point Vert who do bulk buy offers each year. My neighbours and I order 3 pallets of 76 x 15kg bags together to save costs. You do have to collect them yourself but you have 15 days from the actual delivery date to do so. (This may vary from store to store. Mine is quite small so they can’t store much.)
My plumber has always told me that they are the best quality to buy, although not the most expensive. I can’t remember the exact price we paid last time we did a bulk buy but if you have a Point Vert near you, they usually do offers in June and August.

Anyone having trouble finding stock at a good price this year?

Yep, there is another thread somewhere, I think the preparing for winter one. Over 6€ a bag at E.lecclerc

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€10 Carrefour Aubusson today - but no stock :thinking:

Bloody hell!

9 euros a bag in Bricomarche Autun last week, limit of 6 bags per purchase.

We have re-thought our planned pellet stoves.

Not looking good!

The EU are also under a lot of pressure to remove the ‘renewable’ designation for wooden pellets, which if it does, would increase the price even further. This is a recent article, buth there is loads more info out there about this. If I was thinking about heating now, I wouldn’t put in a pellet boiler.

James, FYI we’ve had 2 palettes (each 975kg) delivered (palette = 65 x 15kg sacks) in July and June. Delivery from France-pellets.com was 512€ incl delivery, and Gamm Vert (self collect) was 468€. Price per sack therefore 7.2-7.87€. It was actually quite difficult to locate online delivery companies that were not scams, for example several online sites had no street address or even phone numbers! Very happy with both france-pellets and Gamm Vert.

We have a poêle à granulés installed as of May this year. Not yet used in anger!

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The Guardian article is about Scandanavia, most French granules are a sawmill by-product.

You’re unlikely to ever find a balanced article about woodburners in The Guardian .

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IIRC France is a wood grower and exporter. Fuel from wood produced there should be renewable.

I’m no expert and probably need to do some research, but I’ve been told that quite a lot of the pellets come from Canada, and that the process of making the pellets is not very energy friendly, i.e you need to expend lots of energy just to make the pellets.
Apparently, historically a lot has come from Russia, Ukraine and the US. Now, a lot comes from Romania. The UK is by far the biggest consumer, but mainly due to Drax power station converting from coal to fuel pellets. When it comes to consumption for personal heating, France is high up on the list.

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It seems that now, a lot of EU pellets are coming from Romania, which is felling virgin forrest to supply the EU market, now that Russia and Ukraine are out of the picture. Some does come from sawmill waste, but that can only feed a portion of the demand, which has skyrocketed in recent years. Even before the war, the Romanian supply was increasing.

If you do a tiny bit of research, you can find green pellets, ie. French sawmill waste that has been bound under pressure rather than with resin.

Our main heating source is a modern poêle à bois that burns dead wood from the surrounding oak and chestnut forests. We also have a poêle à granule which is secondary heating for the middle floor of our three storey house. In addition we have heat pumps that came with the house, but these are only used for cooling (dehumidifier function, not a/c)

And, how do you heat your home?

We heat with 2 logburners. Depending how cold it is one or the other running, or both when really freezing (after 1 year running a granules heater as the 2nd). The bathroom (outside :roll_eyes: ) has an above head bar thing for when showering. Our bedroom has a heat pump aircon thing I can turn on if needed to get dressed.

Maybe, but not everyone can. Indeed, nobody but a small percentage can. It’s not what some can do, but what most do that counts.

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Mostly solar. Our electricity bill last year was €20. That’s on top of the standing charge.

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and noting that despite France being high on the list of countries for pellet and wood consumption, obviously people here are far more cooking on wood than needing wood for heating purposes. Otherwise there was no reason to deny UK pensioners in France the winter heating allowance, was there.