The majority of biomass boilers used in modern commercial buildings are fed automatically in the same way as an LPG or oil boiler and therefore business owners notice no differences when it comes to fuel handling with no need to handle fuel manually. A delivery truck feeds wood pellets automatically into a fuel store with a gravity fed or blown system via an access hatch or retractable roof. Once inside the fuel store, the wood chips are stirred with an agitator and they are then dropped into an augur which smoothly moves the fuel into the boiler. If wood pellets are used instead, the fuel store is built at an angle which allows the free flowing pellets to be fed automatically into the boiler. 

The boiler then uses a process called gasification i.e. the burning of the fuel at a temperature of 600 degrees Celcius in order to produce gases which are then re-burned, generating temperatures that reach 1,200 degrees Celcius. Thermal stores, or buffer tanks, store hot water and this is distributed throughout the central heating system, meaning that the job of the biomass boiler is to boost tank temperatures instead of starting from cold every time heat is needed, and this means that the heating system is a lot more efficient. The majority of modern biomass boilers generate around 1% of ash to the volume of biomass fuel used and this means that emptying of the ash bins is only necessary every six to eight weeks. The ash that results from burning these wood products is also an excellent fertiliser.