Right Way to Burn Hardwood and Coal at Same Time?

I just loaded about 20-25 lbs of lump Bit between 2 small White Ash splits over a bed of wood coals, then filled the stove up with Pignut Hickory splits. My stove will still be cranking heat at 7:00 in the morning with no further attention. I only use coal on the nights it's below 20 degrees (18 now at 9:00 PM) but it keeps me from getting up in the night to reload the stove or letting the propane FA kick on.

Squeaks wrote:I burn wood an coal together. The wood is nice when you need to get the stove hot quick. It's also nice when you need to keep the fire going. I just get a little coal fire going then throw two huge logs on and I am good for 24hrs. I can get all the wood for free so I am not worried about the expense. I do love coal for the long burn and the smoke free chimney. Personally I think they complement each very nicely.

Im in the same spot - I love coal but have a free supply of wood and am already stockpiled with so much of it that Im bustin' to use some wherever possible.

I found that if I have a small bed of hot anthracite coals I can get a way with adding a big log or two. The key is to have a really hot bed that is not so deep as to starved of air so that when to add the logs you are not suffocating your antracite bed.
It all goes bad if you just filled your hopper and the fire is a bit suffocated and then you toss in wood. This happened to me this week. It took a full day of shouldering creosote to burn thru the coal and wood.

I gotta be carfeul though... I'm an impulsive experimenter. My new yrs resolution is to start paying more attention to coal vets here in the forum and not earn myself a Darwin award

I have been using anthracite and wood in my living room fireplace for a while now and love it. First off I will say that I am a state licensed mechanical contractor of 20 years exp. and my specialty is gas pipe and venting. My main business is fireplaces. In mine I have installed a cast iron log lighter operated by a key valve in the floor.(All black pipe & heavy duty burner) I use a really heavy duty iron basket type grate. I put a small pile of anthracite in a tight pile on the grate then 2 or 3 small logs on top. I just crack my gas burner a little and light it and it takes about 1/2 hour for the coal to get to where it is self sustaining. This combo of coal and wood burns slowly and provides quite a bit of warmth for our living room. I can keep it going all day with maybe an occasional boost from the gas burner. Mind you this is all for fun but it sure is a really enjoyable and easy way to have a nice cozy fire with very little work.

I burn a lot of wood through my 30-95 in my garage. Something that I did when I was running on straight wood and wanted to keep a fire for extended times. I'd put a couple of fire bricks in on top of the shaker grate. one on either side of the stove and leave the middle open.

That way there was an area for the wood to site and burn. It worked great. only down fall was you'd have to let the fire got out before you put the hopper and coal in. but for the weekends when I'm burning it worked really well. Something to try if you want to try a little extended time on just wood.

I burn both, but at different times. I like to burn wood at the beginning and end of the heating seasons.
If the temps get too warm it is just easier to re-start and shut down with wood. I just had to use the windowstats
before though on this last day of February.

DENNIS BAUER wrote:I burn a lot of wood through my 30-95 in my garage. Something that I did when I was running on straight wood and wanted to keep a fire for extended times. I'd put a couple of fire bricks in on top of the shaker grate. one on either side of the stove and leave the middle open.

That way there was an area for the wood to site and burn. It worked great. only down fall was you'd have to let the fire got out before you put the hopper and coal in. but for the weekends when I'm burning it worked really well. Something to try if you want to try a little extended time on just wood.

I have used that firebrick trick with any stove with grates and it works great when burning wood. Probably done it over 10 years now. I ended out covering 2/3 of the grate. One of my stoves is not a shaker grate, and I just let it get deep with hard ash on 2/3 of the grate with that stove, and knock the front part of the ashes thru the grate. I wasnt switching back and forth to anthracite, just burning wood.