Coal Jockey wrote:What's with the washing bit? I'll take mine dry and dusty thank you very much. What's the point of shovelling wet coal into a firebox? and the tarry black gucky water that stains everything... Just gimme good honest coaldust...
If you're getting a lot of tarry black crap then it's not wahsed but instead it's just wet. Most breakers will have pockets for loading coal, the pocket has a chute on it similar to what the coal truck is going to have. Before this chute is going to be screen, above the screen is going to be spray bar. As the coal comes out of the pocket it gets screened and washed. All that gunk and dust goes through the screen and you get a nice clean dust free piece of coal. The easiest way to tell is check the chute if they stop in the middle of a delivery, if its nice and shiny then that's what you got. If it's really clean you can almost get the water to run clear.
That's besides the fact you're going to have a a giant layer of dust in your cellar. If you put a dry load of coal into a basement that isn't very clean the dust is ridiculous. You have to understand with a coal truck you dump off 7 ton in 5 minutes, BTU for BTU its the fastest delivery you'll ever get compared to other fuels. This creates a huge amount of dust if its dry. It will create dust even when its wet simply from the pieces shattering off. Besides the obvious reason of you don't want to be breathing that stuff you're going to have a layer on everything in your basement and if you have a old house with gaps where the dust can get upstairs its also going to be all over everything up there.
As far as shovelling into the firebox, it doesn't matter. the only time I've heard of anyone having trouble with wet coal was stoker that used barley which is like sand. It holds a lot of water...
stockingfull wrote:
Now you're losing me.
Why don't we just do it with honest injin, certified weight tickets?
I don't understand what you mean stockingfull? Where am I losing you? I'm certainly an advocate of honest deliveries and have stressed it when I was in business, I even went as far as placing the cubic feet in an ad once. As far as the ticket goes you might as well wipe your ass with that ticket no matter where it's from.
Seriously that's all its good for. As I said above the only way to get an honest delivery that you can absolutely be certain is honest is by having an honest dealer its a dice roll. Most of your dealers are going to be honest but it only takes a few to screw things up.
For example, nearly 90% of the deliveries I made went right by my house. There was nothing preventing me from letting a little fall off the truck into the basement if I wanted. This ins't something that is particular to the coal dealers either, the same thing happens with oil or whatever else can be bought in bulk.