Lousy Coal

Richard S. wrote:

Rob R. wrote:Every load of bagged coal I have purchased was invoiced prior to delivery.

Just so it's clear Rob I never showed up at someone's door with a bill higher than they expected.

Understood. I was referring to the two loads of bagged coal mentioned by the original poster.

I called these folks today its 50lb bags of No Name Coal they bag themselves at $7.00 bucks a bag !

Glen Burn / Harmony advertises this not sure if they are 40 or 50

Glen Burn-Harmony are #40 I think I posted it when they started the bags.

Glen Burn bagged coal is the same coal they sell at bulk for $170 you pick it up.

Rev. Larry

speaking of lousy coal.

I took delivery today of 1 ton of Reading nut in 40# bags.

Just opened the top bag (had been the bottom of the palette) and it's soggy and FULL of fines.

I compare this to the Blaschak I've bought within the month from another dealer which was clean, dry, and basically dust-free.

Needless to say, I'm unimpressed. I can blame the dealer for it being soggy, but full of fines? It would be one thing if I was starting a fish tank filter company, but I'm trying to heat my shop, so fines are not fine.

Do I have any recourse here? phone the dealer (who, out of respect I'm not throwing under a bus; yet) and tell him I want dry coal? I'm going to dump and screen this bag and see what weight of filter carbon is mixed with my fuel coal.

Opinions? Similar problems with Reading coal?

mjb

What causes the fines or where do they come from?

good question. bottom-of-the-pallet-itis?

in any event, it's a lot, volumetrically.

bear in mind that the nut size is still wet, so each lump is sugar coated in fines. if I washed this down I'd have an even bigger pile of worthless dust.

kinda not happy.

mjb

Unacceptable

skobydog wrote:What causes the fines or where do they come from?

Could be from a lot of places. Most likely scooped from the middle of the pile and/or the loader operator got down into the mud on the stock pile. I don;t know there setup but generally speaking as the coal comes out of the plant and off the chute it's usually perfectly clean, but then it falls onto the pile possibly many feet. As the pile builds up the fines and the flatter pieces stay in the middle and rounder more desirable pieces roll off to the side.

Could be from another source like if they have hopper somewhere and a whole bunch of crap built up on the sides all came down at once.

KingCoal918 wrote:speaking of lousy coal.

That's a crazy amount of fines , that's just one bag? Are they all like that?

Thanks for the insight Richard.

scooped into a shoebox sized bin, it's 4lbs of (damp) fines.

I'm about to crack another open…

(while you wait, anyone know how to fix the 90° rotation that happens on images that are attached properly oriented?)

second bag is just as bad.

for the record, this is bagged Reading Anthracite.

I'd expect a better level of quality control from a major vendor.

extrapolating:

if every bag averaged 4 lbs of useless fines, multiplied by 50 bags in a ton, that's 200lbs of waste.

10% unusable weight. ~$31.00 gone before we start.

KingCoal918 wrote: (while you wait, anyone know how to fix the 90° rotation that happens on images that are attached properly oriented?)

Hold the camera correctly... LOL

If you have windows right click the image and select preview, on the bottom there is an option to rotate it.

I'm about to crack another open…

Beer, bag or both? You expect to have fines especially if it's winter inventory which you don't really know in this case but that's a lot.

Wow it is a lot !
Reading Anthracite is to me a local company I would definitely call them and forward the photos via email with a request for an explanation every company of any product can have a bad run that slips thru quality control or a bad employee on a line . I would really like to know what they say.

Although if you would have tried to bag the original Harmony coal that's what you'd find maybe even more, My coal bin needed to be cleaned out after every ton.