Off Grid Living / Camping > Off Grid Living / Alternative Housing

Anthracite Coal For Cold Weather

<< < (2/4) > >>

dang:
From that narrative of mine its plainly worded small sized pieces are just kindling for the larger hunks - a good crush on an oddball piece gives enough chips to fire up up one or two coal fires. Once a larger hunk fires it keeps a active reduction layer burning toward the center hissing away a small amount of leftover flammable gases - not at all like wood with leaping flames, more like a electric heat gun with the glowing elements and super hot gasses tumbling away from it. Any extra chips or kernels not in the 'burn zone' will end up wasted in the ash box (to be picked out later perhaps) so its only layered in where it will do the most good...

ChrisOlson:
In the coal we get there's plenty of fines in the bag with the stove coal for easier building of a new coal bed.  I pour the bag carefully into a five gallon bucket, shaking it, so the big chunks go into the bucket and I catch the fines in the bag.  There's usually about a quart jar full of fines in a bag.

But truthfully I've never found the fines that useful in getting an anthracite fire going.  Our furnace is pretty big - it'll take 28" wood and if you work at it you can stuff a 30" long chunk in there.  The coal fire has to cover the whole grate area or it won't stay going with the auto-draft turned on.  I don't remember the size of our coal shaker grate but I think it's about 18" wide x 30" long.  It has outfits in it that turn back and forth when you push and pull the shaker rod in and out so it grinds "clinkers".

But the bed has to be even and flat over the grates for it to work right with a slight mound in the middle.  The auto-draft just about shuts the fire down until the thermostat calls for heat.  When the stat makes a heat call it opens the draft and turns the fire up, then the blower starts.  When the stat reaches the set temp it turns the draft off and the blower stays running until the jacket cools down.

The furnace is rated at (I think) 300,000 BTU on coal and 155,000 on wood on continuous burn.

This is a photo of the firebox with the loading door open when the draft has the coal fire on standby burn:


This is the bags we get our coal in, and a chunk of anthracite coal.  This coal doesn't even get any black on your fingers when you handle it, nor will it rub off any black stuff.





Somebody (I think wolv) mentioned something about maybe using this stuff in a boiler.  I don't think it would work because it takes too much heat to get it to burn and get a coal bed going.  You'd blow the steam valve on your boiler long before you got an anthracite fire going in the firebox.  Most boilers, if they're rated to use coal, are designed for soft coal with a stoker.
--
Chris

Norm:
So complicated....Chris ,compared to life when I was growing up.
Dad was a coal miner, so he got his coal free.....$2 for delivery
one load lasted all winter.
Dad banked the fire at night, I got up in the morning went down,
shook the grates, about 3 chunks the size of sockker balls, opened
the bottom draft for awhile until it started to warm up.....toward the
middle of the day on a cold day a couple of more chunks no problem
bituminus coal tho' black smoke if you didn't do it right....but when
dad hollered you knew were doing something wrong so you quickly
figured how to set things right !

Ah Me....what seemed like the good old days.....When $1 a month for
the electric bill was just about right !

philb:
The best pizza I have ever eaten came from an Italian wood and coal burning oven. I tried to buy some coal in Colorado that summer to bring back. It seems it's only sold to individuals through one local dealer for a few months of the year.
In Oklahoma and Texas, soft coal is used by the train loads in power plants but coal burning stoves don't exist. We use propane, electricity, natural gas and wood. I'd like to know where I can buy anthracite without driving to the northern part of the US in winter.

m12ax7:
Chris,  where in Wisconsin do you purchase anthracite?

Navigation

[0] Message Index

[#] Next page

[*] Previous page