Burn coal?

[schmism]

So i knew i was in coal country... just never gave it much thought.

So the fall fair was last weekend and i got to talking to the steam engine guy that runs the engine that they use to run the 52" circle mill. Its coal fired (100PSI) and i was talking with him about the coal.

Turns out he had the trailer of raw coal over in the corner loaded with raw coal (chunks that were the size of coolers) Turns out the coal mine about 20 min north of me sells raw coal. pull your trailer up and they dump in in the back before it goes to the crusher.

$55 per ton.

SO it got me thinking about being a kid and my dad tossing the softball size lump of coal in the wood stove.

A quick google search says 1 ton of coal is about the same as one cord of wood in BTU.

anyone heat with coal? run a combo stove on those really cold nights in the middle of jan/feb? whats your usage? does the ton per cord hold up?

Is it really that cheep?

 

[bp fick]

Since we do not have natural gas out here, only electric or propane, I am interested as well. Couple things come to mind. I too grew up with coal and remember the somewhat pungent smells and the dust. Disposing of the clinkers would likely supply my driveway with material. Finding a stove that is able to handle coal shouldn't be too difficult, but that is an assumption.

But alas, I am not in coal country. Let us know how this works out for you.

 

[Kays Supply]

There is quite a hubbub going on here in "coal country" right now. The EPA has passed a rule about coal ash being hazardous. They are going to start taxing it. The local university is going nuts trying to figure out how to get away from coal. They produce all their electricity and heat with it. I tried to burn coal in a wood burner many years ago. It got so hot it almost melted my stove. The door was glowing red for hours even with the air shut totally down. It was drawing through every little carack and sounded like jet plane. There was flames coming out the flue on to the roof like a blow torch. Be careful.

 

[SpringHollow]

You should never burn coal in a stove not designed for it as the poster above found out.

I burned coal for a few years. Nice long burn times but the ash is super light and does get dispersed into the air even with a covered ash pan. It would be great in an outside boiler or furnace but i would not want it back in my house again.

Ken

 

[jbooth]

When I worked for a coal fired power plant in Wyoming in the late 70's we were allowed to buy coal for $2.50 a ton. We whined when they raised the price to $3.00 a ton. Needless to say I burned coal. I also had a heat pump but with Wyoming winters it was pretty ineffiecent. At that price I couldn't pay for the gas to drive to the Black Hills to cut wood. I set up a large coal stove in my attached garage and just blew the hot air into the house. Garage roof wasn't even insulated so I didn't have to shovel snow off the roof. Didn't care for the smell or ash disposal but the kids were young and saving a nickel was the "game".

 

[forgeblast]

Living in hard coal country (anthricte) we burned coal when i was younger. My dad had also run pipes through the stove to preheat hot water (hes a welder). Messy, dusty, heated well, and you need some place to store it. I use coal in my forge, but heat with wood.

 

[Car Doc]

I have toyed with the same idea for years we don't have coal close by at this time or I would have tried it by now in something probably home built I am all about saving money.

 

[dodge man]

There used to be a lot of coal mining in this area, not so much anymore but some. I work with someone that has a Morniging Glory? coal stove. Kind of the old pot bellied looking stove, and he says it really throws out the heat.

Like others have said, coal gets really hot, so the stove has to be built for it. I have a Vermont Casting fire place, and they test it with coal for saftey, but it isn't desgined for it. I also think the cooler sized chunks sound to big.

 

[clemsonfor]

They burn it all over appalachia, you see the soot stains running from around the chimney pipes onto the shingle and tin roofs throughout the moutains. Even in the big city of greenville they sell coal in like 50-80lb bags and i am told that the low income folks in town use it to heat , i guess in the old fireplaces in the houses around there? I dont know i never bought it, i did not realize it would get so hot, thanks for the warnings.

 

[schmism]

To be clear, Im not considering it a full time heating option. Generally Ill stick with propane. But i monitor my propane usage in the winter and i can tell you that when the temp dips to single digits and especially below 0 my usage almost doubles. its for those few VERY cold nights/weeks that i would fire up the stove.

Storage would be under the barn lean to, not an issue.

I also know about how hot it gets and mixing it in reg wood stove, which when i was a kid it was no more than one softball sized chunk when you loaded wood.

 

[Kays Supply]

I just got a lesson on propane last year. I had an electric backup heat pump. The big storm got me to thinking, my son is in HVAC, he installed a propane backup heat pump for me. I ran it on propane only last winter because it was the best heat I had ever had, including the boiler I put in for myself at my last house. When I refilled the tank I almost passed out. It had cost me almost double the price of the winter before. I will go back to heat pump and propane backup this year. I have a new lap blanket for the couch.

 

[LBrown59]

I was born in 1940 and we heated the house dad built in 1943 with coal in a coal stove for many years .
When we finally switched to a gas furnace [Late 40s or
Early 50s] it felt to me like we were really comming up in the world.
But the new but simple house was a far cry from the log cabin where I spent the first 3 years of my life.

 

[techwrtr2]

My parents who live in the coal regions use anthracite. They have an interesting furnace designed to burn coal,wood and oil. Mostly they burn coal but also a fair bit of wood. This time of year where you only need heat some of the time they generally use oil. Nice thing about it is you don't have to go outside to fuel it.

I think this is the one they have. Eagle I Husky Wood Furnace by Yukon-Eagle

Down side is it's totally hand fired unlike some dedicated coal furnaces with a hopper and a constant feed. They still have to remove the ashes daily and have a substantial pile of them in the lower corner of the property. Sometimes those ashes land on the drive way in icy weather though.

 

[Dirtball]

Northern Pa.--we heated with coal 1996-1999 in a rented 2 story 4 bdrm home built less than 10 yrs prior. Had heat pump / so full ducting with humidifier. Modern ?Belgian made stove on 1st fl family room. Stove would run 12 hrs without being touched( shaken down). Heated all winter for under $150, the colder it gets the hotter it burned. At 20 deg F we'd have to open windows. Ran air handler with humidifier 24/7 which circulated the warmth "unevnely" throughout the house, but we never ran the heat pump. Ash is minimal, but does contain some clinkers. Stove ran for months nonstop unlike my wood burning fireplace now that has to burn out to clean out ash. SO I think coal is great, it's alittle dirty,but cleaner than wood and took up some garage space-huge bins. SOme cities ban it. But if they can make your power with it to run your electric heat , why cant you burn alittle to keep warm and save a bunch of money in tough times.

 

[Larry Caldwell]

I tried to burn coal in a wood burner many years ago. It got so hot it almost melted my stove. The door was glowing red for hours even with the air shut totally down. It was drawing through every little carack and sounded like jet plane. There was flames coming out the flue on to the roof like a blow torch. Be careful.

Wow, you really over-stoked that stove! The coal gasses flaring out of the chimney must have been quite a sight.

At that, you were lucky. Air tight wood stoves are very dangerous to stoke with coal. The coal outgasses when it gets hot. Open the door, and BOOM! Just imagine a coal gas explosion in a stove as hot as yours was. You can open the draft and burn off the coal gasses before opening the door, but one thoughtless or ignorant person, and you have a disaster on your hands.

 

[Kays Supply]

The wife saw this all take place that night. The next day , after the glow went away , the stove was out in the yard. It left shortly after. That was when the new gas boiler was installed.

 

[sal64]

So i knew i was in coal country... just never gave it much thought.

So the fall fair was last weekend and i got to talking to the steam engine guy that runs the engine that they use to run the 52" circle mill. Its coal fired (100PSI) and i was talking with him about the coal.

Turns out he had the trailer of raw coal over in the corner loaded with raw coal (chunks that were the size of coolers) Turns out the coal mine about 20 min north of me sells raw coal. pull your trailer up and they dump in in the back before it goes to the crusher.

$55 per ton.

SO it got me thinking about being a kid and my dad tossing the softball size lump of coal in the wood stove.

A quick google search says 1 ton of coal is about the same as one cord of wood in BTU.

anyone heat with coal? run a combo stove on those really cold nights in the middle of jan/feb? whats your usage? does the ton per cord hold up?

Is it really that cheep?

hello i have a coal wood stove combo and have burned coal the last 2 winters when i ran out of wood but i prefer wood becase the coal burns to hot and im worried about melting my stove,also very hard to get going.in my oppinion if u are going to burn coal u should get a coal only stove its set up better for burning coal.

 

[jbooth]

I posted earlier about burning coal when I was working in Wyoming. I don't think Wyoming coal burned as hot as the eastern anthracite coal. I did have an old Warm Morning coal stove that heated very well. I also had a Vermont Casting wood stove and combined wood and coal in that stove. Don't think I ever had excessive heat in either stove although the Osage Orange wood I now burn in my vermont casting stove has warped the fireback and it is not as effecient as it once was. I have the new parts and need to get it repaired prior to winter.

Wish I still had access to cheap coal.

 

[Larry Caldwell]

After coal outgasses all the coal gas, it turns to coke, which burns very hot. When heating metal at the forge, charcoal is much more forgiving. Coke will melt the steel before you expect it, and is much hotter than charcoal.

I think the thing that surprises people is the smaller volume of coal vs. wood. A ton of coal will fit into 27 cubic feet. A cord of wood occupies 128 cubic feet. They both have about the same amount of heat in them. If you shovel a stove full of coal, you have severely over-fired the stove. That said, modern EPA approved stoves with a re-burn chamber and a fire brick bed should work really well with coal. I don't think a cast iron grate would last long. A catalytic converter would quickly be poisoned and be worthless, so stay away from them if you plan to burn coal.

 

[Airedale]

I have been burning coal for about 10 years now. I burn it in a kitchen cook stove made by Heartland. For the most part it heats my house for the winter in addition to cooking use. I used two tons last winter.

There is a knack to burning coal, controlling the burn is different than when using wood. There is coal dust to contend with but other than that I like it better than wood mainly because of long burn times and no creosote.

Al