burning coal in a wood stove

Have a country fire wood burning circulating fireplace EPA 2 wood stove with dual blowers. It's a big sucker and with a full load of dry wood It is rated at 100K BTU. I have recently been exploring burning stove coal in this thing and despite the lack of a grate other than an ashpan with a door it's been fantastic. Got caught on the short end of buying wood and the prices are whacky here in NEPA. Found a coal dealer that I can buy stove coal by the bucket at $5 per 50lb bucket so its by my math cheaper than wood. Anyone here running a wood rig with coal ?
Thanks

Are you talking bit Coal?

NO hard anthracite North East PA

With no grate?

Have to be at least a 7.gal bucket to 50# in it.

I re-read it. Never get 50# of stove coal in a 5 gallon pail.

I have a small grate about 10X8 with an ashpan door below. I get a good wood fire going plenty of chimney draft then I layer on the stove coal and it takes off. I crack the ash pan door about 1/8 and it really takes off. Two speeds hot and hotter.

I will reweight my 5gal pail on and off my scale. I weight in a about 175 and with the pail it 223 so close to 50lb this is really big chunks about the size of a fist. I was burning nut but it was a pain needed to tend much too much and add lots of wood then coal then wood then coal. The stove coal I got going around 6 tonight is still glowing orange with about a 3 inch blue flame started it on 2 logs of ash split down.

Here is a picture best I could do with my phone.

Transnationalman wrote: ↑

Wed. Jan. 11, 2023 9:13 pm

Here is a picture best I could do with my phone.

Need to re-hang that radiator cover.

Yeah I installed the stove myself sucker weighs in at over 600lb needed to build a chase and support the underside. Original idea was to plum in a hot air exchanger into the chase above the stove to use the existing HW system to distribute heat upstairs

My goal now is to find the right mix of coal and wood. Were on hr 4 on a load of about 40lb of wood and 20lb of coal. Wood is gone, coal is about 1/3 gone and now not fully glowing orange. I may need to add wood to get it going again full steam but right now my lower living area of 800 sq ft hit a high of 83 degrees so have to figure out how to regulate this puppy better.

Any suggestions. ?

Yeah, don't mix them. Wood ash chokes out the air for the coal. One or the other. Can you get a pic of the grate?

Good job of making it work TMan. Not ideal but its keeping you warm.

I could mix wood and anthracite in the stoves I used that I had to slice (scrape) the grate. The unburned coal did not fall thru so wasnt wasted. Sooner or later it would burn. With a shaker grate its hard to do as theres more waste, coal falls thru. I used to switch from coal to wood depending on the temps outside. Im not going to recommend it, but it did work. It beats being cold.

I am basically doing the same thing. Last night was warm 28 on the low my overnight burn went well with a minimal amount of wood added at 1:30 AM. 9AM still had hot coals and about 1/2 a 5 gallon bucket left of stove coal. Ran my poker through the pile to clear the ash added 3 sticks and popped the ash pan and away we went. Topped off with a few shovels full of new coal and were idling nicely at 10:30. Think I started with too much wood yesterday around 3pm. All about finding the right mix I guess.

Sounds like you got a system. It is very unusual to burn coal in a wood stove, cause they really ain't designed for it. By rule of thumb, You can always burn wood in a coal stove, but not coal in a wood stove.
Sounds like you got that one figured out.

Transnationalman wrote: ↑

Wed. Jan. 11, 2023 9:59 pm

Any suggestions. ?

If you already have hydronic heat distribution, why not get a coal boiler? What was heating the radiators? You can usually find nice second hand equipment if you watch for it.