Sivu 10 |
Timo Vitikainen is one of the many Finnish homeowners who uses wood pellets to heat his home. W hen Timo Vitikainen bought his house some six years ago in Espoo, a city neighbouring Helsinki, the home had an old oil-fired boiler that was in poor condition.There were telltale signs that coal had been shovelled there at some point in time. Not too surprising. After all, the house had been built back in the 1950s. The new owner had to decide what kind of energy to use to heat the 250-square-metre house in the decades to come. "I considered geothermal heat, but what bothered me was how much electricity it would use during the coldest periods of the year. An old house is not nearly as energy efficient as a new one," Vitikainen says. He decided on another renewable energy source, wood pellets. Pellets are little cylinders a couple of centimetres long and as thick as a pencil. They are made from compressed sawdust and woodchips. Where the oil tank used to sit, there is now a storage silo from which the pellets are automatically fed into the pellet boiler. The burning pellets warm the waThe heating bill for a single-family home using pellets is half the bill for oil heat. ter that flows through the burner into the radiators. In addition to the pellet boiler, the household water can be warmed also by a solar collector. Vitikainen spreads the ash from the boiler into his garden, as, he explains, "it improves the soil." Driven by heating bill Wood pellets are a renewable energy source and a by-product of sawmills and planing mills. Is that alone enough to justify a purchase? "The ecological aspect certainly factored into my decision, but ultimately it was price that was most important," Vitikainen notes. Matts Kempe, Marketing Manager of Vapo Pellet, the biggest pellet producer in the Baltics region, estimates that a pellet burner will pay for itself in two to seven years, if the alternative is an oil burner. Pellets are a more economical fuel than oil. The heating bill for a single-family home using pellets in Finland is half the bill for oil heat, and less than half the bill for electrical heat. In fact, Kempe believes that pellets can generate savings also for many electrically-heated households, even if they do not have pipes and hot water radiators. "One pellet stove can keep 120 square metres of space warm. It can cut the electricity used for heating even by half," Kempe assures. Pellets can be burned also in an ordinary fireplace that is equipped with a pellet basket. One litre of pellets generates the same amount of heat as a couple of logs. Kempe adds that "pellets are easier to pick up from the neighbourhood store than logs." Pellets for big and small One single-family home burns about five tonnes of pellets a year. Kempe estimates 10 FOCUS
Page 1
Page 2
Page 3
Page 4
Page 5
Page 6
Page 7
Page 8
Page 9
Page 10
Page 11
Page 12
Page 13
Page 14
Page 15
Page 16
Page 17
Page 18
Page 19
Page 20
Page 21
Page 22
Page 23
Page 24
Page 25
Page 26
Page 27
Page 28
Page 29
Page 30
Page 31
Page 32
Page 33
Page 34
Page 35
Page 36
Page 37
Page 38
Page 39
Page 40
|
|
|
Why do I see this page ?
Your Flash Player is older than version 7 or Javascript is not enabled. What you see is the raw text of the publication.
To read this Digipaper-publication install/update your Flash Player from this link or enable Javascript.
|
 |
For proper operation Digipaper-publication needs Flash Player version 7 or newer.
Install the latest version of Flash Player from this link. |
|