The milder temperatures have certainly benefited us in helping reduce energy consumption the past couple of weeks. Regardless, we still want to make sure we have plenty of fuel on hand, so we made the decision to split a pallet of bear bricks with Keri’s dad, who also wanted to take advantage of those keen little clean-burning nuggets.

As I reported in the past, the cost of a pallet of bear bricks is $250 ($3.09 per case). One pallet contains 81 cases of bricks; each case contains 12 individual bricks, weighing two pounds each. I’m happy to have more on hand as they are my favorite wood fuel by far, though I doubt we’ll be burning much more until next Fall.

As of today, we have one case of bricks remaining from the pallet we purchased back on January 21. Over the course of 74 days, we consumed 80 cases of bricks (960 total bricks). That’s approximately 1.08 case per day — about $3.32 per day in wood fuel cost.

In other news, we’re still sitting pretty with our Oregon-sourced, Oregon-refined, primarily WVO (waste veggie oil) B99 bio-diesel heating fuel. Right now we’ve got a little more than 3/8 of a tank of fuel (apx. 103 gallons) remaining in our tank, from the 275 gallons that we purchased nearly one year ago.

Here’s a few lessons that we learned this heating season:

• Next year we’ll run the furnace more during the day and focus the wood stove on evening and late-afternoon heating; the cost variance between our wood use and B99 consumption are not dramatically different, so it benefits us to focus on full-home comfort during the day, and front-of-house wood heat during the evening.
• Purchasing B99 last year in May proved to be the major factor in keeping our heating costs higher than if we would have waited until the Fall. It’s always challenging to speculate fuel prices, but we’ll do our best.
• Bear bricks are excellent and definitely worth their price, which isn’t much higher than cordwood. Their convenience, low-ash clean burn, storage footprint and predictable heat output make them superior to cordwood. What’s more, they’re made by upcycling a waste product, which makes them especially attractive.