Centralia Rice

Picked up some bags of centralia rice to hold me over until my pilgrimage to NEPA. As unhappy as I was with Blashak, I wish I still had some. This looks more buck than rice, nothing uniform. I went from 80 lbs a week to 150 lbs a week for my DHW needs, and the amount of ash is unbelievable!! I'm burning almost twice as much for the same load, and producing al least twice as much ash pound for pound. It also seems to not burn as hot, as I've noticed at idle it doesn't maintain a temp as well as the Blashak did and takes longer to bring it up to high limit. As usual, your milage may vary this is just my experiance. I'm looking forward to my trip, and picking up some high quality coal.

Thanks for the "Heads-up" from your experiences. Blashak is very good coal, and once you get over the bag issues, you know you have a great product. Kimmels is also very good, and I hear nothing bad about them either. Reading is a big supplier up here also, and I also have heard no bad reports about them. Apparently some types of stoves don't enjoy a Reading diet, but nothing is perfect. BTU's and ash content are 1 & 2, but clinker formation is up there at the top also.

I picked up 10 bags of Centralia nut last year and it was good stuff. While researching about Centralia I don't think they actually mine any coal. Rather the company is a coal broker who buys from several mines and then sells the coal under their company name.

If this is correct I suspect you could have some great coal, some bad coal and mediocre coal. It would all depend on the who, what where when how and why of that particular coal that they sold.

ONEDOLLAR wrote:I picked up 10 bags of Centralia nut last year and it was good stuff. While researching about Centralia I don't think they actually mine any coal. Rather the company is a coal broker who buys from several mines and then sells the coal under their company name.

If this is correct I suspect you could have some great coal, some bad coal and mediocre coal. It would all depend on the who, what where when how and why of that particular coal that they sold.

That is exactly what I'm thinking. It looks like what I have is "whatever is left". It seems like it is literally a mix of acceptable. Nothing is uniform, and there is some much smaller than rice to almost pea sized coal in the bags. On the bright side there is actually 40 lbs of coal in each bag!

We have folks that have burned Reading for 40 years, and NEVER a bad bag. I hope luck has nothing to do with it, and they are still burning if as we speak. I wish I knew where all the coal we drag out of basements came from, but that has been excellent also. Dozens of tons from most all the mines or yesteryear. Many times the leftover is from the 20's and 30's. 20 ton coal bins were very common. Unique secret doors to load it into the basements......we still can learn volumes about those who those who preceded us. The big steam boilers are gone now and a tiny gas unit humms away.....progress.....at what cost?