There are concerns that the supply of pellets may not be able to keep with the soaring demand.

The Providence Journal / Steve Szydlowski

EAST PROVIDENCE — Cathy Medina may be one of the few Rhode Islanders looking forward to cold weather. She wants to try out her new heating system.

“I can’t wait,” she said last week, as her husband helped install a new stove in their small ranch house here in Riverside. The stove burns wood pellets, which look a lot like rabbit food.

Medina, fed up with high oil prices, bought the stove in June. But it wasn’t until last week that she was able to get someone to install it.

That still puts her ahead of an anxious crowd in this region that has suddenly discovered wood pellet stoves, and now can’t get them because manufacturers can’t make them fast enough.

The boom began in June. Local stove shops, which usually enjoy quiet summers, have been flat out ever since. Now, while a few stoves are available here and there, several store owners said they are taking orders for February, at the earliest.

And there are growing concerns about whether the supply of pellets can keep up with the soaring demand. Fireplace Showcase, in Seekonk, for instance, had a wall of bagged pellets last week stretching as long as its building, but every bag was already sold.

“Things have absolutely taken off,” said Dierdre Darsa, spokeswoman for the Pellet Fuels Institute, which represents stove and pellet makers. “Thank goodness it’s happening early enough before winter so manufacturers can ramp up.”

The institute estimates it will cost between $700 to $1,000 each winter to heat a house with a wood pellet stove. The range depends on the size of a house and its location. Any way you look at it, the price is far cheaper than oil or gas.

Darsa said sales of pellet stoves shot up 54 percent in the first quarter of this year, compared with the same period last year. But that jump may not come close to reflecting what’s happened this summer. People are going to store after store just to find someone who will take their order.

About two dozen companies around the country make the stoves, and Darsa said most are ramping up with extra shifts and extra employees to try to meet the soaring demand.

Last year some 2 million tons of pellets were sold for use in an estimated 1 million homes and businesses. That represents a small percentage of the heating fuel market, but one that is growing exponentially.

The number of companies attending the industry’s annual conference grew from less than 50 three years ago to about 130 this year.

“Of course, we all think this is wonderful,” Darsa said. “We think more people will be looking at these heating sources. They are renewable. The pellets come from forests that are managed.

“In Europe, they’ve been using wood pellets for years. In the U.S., we’ve been so focused on oil, it took a clunk on the head to wake us up.”

The clunk on the head for Medina came in June.

Last year, Medina figures she spent about $4,000 on oil to heat her house. This June, as fuel prices soared, she decided she had had enough.

“When I thought about what I spent for oil last year,” she said she decided “I can’t do that again this year.”

Her husband, John, points to his wife. It was all her. She started shopping.

Even in June, many stores were already out of stoves.

But the Stovepipe Fireplace Shop, in Warwick, still had a few models. Medina says she spent $3,500 on a stove and ordered two tons of pellets for $299 a ton. A ton of pellets comprises 50 40-pound bags.

John Medina drove the pellets home in his pickup truck. They hired a local kid to lug them downstairs, where the bags are piled floor to ceiling.

Medina said she shopped around for cheaper pellets, but many places were out.

“I just didn’t want to get caught without any, so we bought them,” she said.

“I always wanted a fireplace, so this works for me,” Medina said.

It wasn’t until last week that she could get an installer to set it up in her living room.

Wood pellet stoves look like typical wood stoves, but there are some differences. There is equipment inside that feeds the pellets into a burner, and a fan blows heat out. You feed the stove by pouring pellets into a hopper on top or in back. The pellets are made from compressed sawdust and wood scraps.

Because they burn so efficiently, the stoves can be vented like a dryer. They don’t need chimneys. They also don’t get as hot as wood stoves, so they don’t have to be surrounded with fireproofing.

Among the advantages are the relative ease of handling the pellets. You have to add them only about once a day. They are far cheaper than oil. And the stoves are less expensive to install than wood stoves.

Among the disadvantages: the stoves won’t run when the power goes out unless you have a battery backup, and they are hard to find now.

Bill Labell, the owner of Stovepipe, said this summer has been unlike any other.

Early in the year, Labell said he took in his normal inventory of wood pellet stoves and expected he wouldn’t have to reorder until October.

But he found he had to start reordering in May.

“If you really want a stove, you’ll get it,” Labell said. “But you’ve got to be patient. The manufacturers can’t make them fast enough.”

Labell says a few stoves are coming in from time to time, but he warns his customers now that they might have to wait until February or later.

And Labell says his wood pellet suppliers warn him not to make any promises to customers.

Over time, Labell says he thinks the stoves will become necessary appliances in Rhode Island households, for those who can afford them.

“With all the uncertainties these days, people will want these as alternatives or backups for heat,” he said. “They are no longer a curiosity, as they were in the ’70s and ’80s.”

The situation was much the same at Wakefield Fireplace & Grill, in South Kingstown.

“It started in June, and now everything is back-ordered,” said Ken Martin, an owner of the store. “It has been overwhelming. We’re now talking February for most stoves.”

Martin is hearing from customers who want to stop using oil, and older people who already had wood stoves but want to switch to wood pellets.

“Summer is usually grill season. It’s quiet. But this summer we haven’t had any slow time,” he says. “We went on vacation for one week, and when we came back, we had 60 messages waiting for us.”

Up the road from Wakefield Fireplace, the Home Depot in North Kingstown had a few stoves on display selling for $1,300 and $1,800. It also had bags of pellets. It was offering 3 tons for $777 or 50-pound bags for $6.47 each.

Wood pellet stoves are usually vented through an outside wall. But the Medinas put theirs in an inside corner of their dining room, so they had to pay a little more to vent it through the roof.

But along with saving thousands of dollars on oil, Cathy Medina discovered another benefit that pleased her: the filigree on the stove matched that on her hutch — it looked like the room and the stove were designed to go together.

For more information, go to pelletheat.org.

For a calculator to estimate heating costs, go to www.eia.doe.gov/neic/experts/heatcalc.xls.

plord@projo.com