What Size Coal to Burn

I've got my furnace going and it's making fairly good heat but, I'm not sure it's operating quite the way it's supposed to. I'm using nut in it, getting a pretty good bed of coals in it but I seem to be having fun getting the house warm enough for the wife. This stove has a big firebox in it and I'm wondering if I should give 'stove' a try before buying in bulk. So far I've used Blashak and Kimmels and had about equal results. Nice fine ash and very little unburned coal now that I've got my settings tweaked. Right now the house is plenty warm enough for me but sometimes in the dead of winter here in upstate NY it can get pretty blamed cold! We've seem temps as low as -40 some years.
I've got an idea of making a fixture to mount a small fan in the draft door to force the burn when it gets real cold. Give me some input folks. Thanks.

What does the owner's manual/manufacturer recommend? Stick with that.

Where in Upstate NY are you located? Depending on where you live, you might have a hard time finding stove size anthracite. Most dealers that I've talked to only stock rice, pea, and nut. If you can find stove size locally, you definitely want to try it out before you invest in a big amount.

How well does your chimney draft?

You will be better off installing the combustion blower for the ocassional really cold night.. Stove coal is hard to find, and hard to regulate to burn slow and cool enough for most of the weather conditions..
You could by some stove coal if you can find it, but I'd not try to burn it exclusively.. since you are having success with Nut size coal..

Greg L

I'm in eastern Otsego cty., near Oneonta. My chimney has excellent draft. It's a good fireclay chimney. I got busy last night and did some more tweaking and I had the house up to 78 earlier this morning. The biggest thing I found is that with only 1 air intake in the ash door, I really think it was starving for air. A hole saw took care of that problem in no time. I also made a cover for the 2nd intake, bolted it to the door, backdrilled through it. Now I've got more than enough air getting to my fire and, almost a foot deep glowing bed of coals. Think I've got the problem solved. I'm still going to make the blower just in case for those really cold days. I'm thinking I shouldn't need anything more than a computer fan to provide the air.

Stove coal is available but a bit of a drive to get to. Over an hr. away. The local Blashak dealer has nut for $245 a ton if I go pick it up. Getting ready to go grab a ton here directly.

The daughter came up with a good question about her pellet stove too. It's an older one that burns pellets, corn or cherry pits. She's wondering how it might operate using rice. Any thoughts on that? I might just grab a coffee can full just to try it out.

If you get some stove size, save it for when it gets really cold out. I used it a few times in my hand fired boiler but it isn't needed. The stuff can be pretty clumsy to hande even with a very large coal shovel as there are some VERY BIG chunks in it.

Hi Deacon3, be carefull with the rice coal in the pellet stove.. I'm not sure if the pellet stove could handle the heat from 100% coal.. You might try a 30% or 50% mix of coal an pellets to make sure you don't melt down the firepot..

Take care, hope this helps.

Greg L.

deacon3j wrote:I'm in eastern Otsego cty., near Oneonta. My chimney has excellent draft. It's a good fireclay chimney. I got busy last night and did some more tweaking and I had the house up to 78 earlier this morning. The biggest thing I found is that with only 1 air intake in the ash door, I really think it was starving for air. A hole saw took care of that problem in no time. I also made a cover for the 2nd intake, bolted it to the door, backdrilled through it. Now I've got more than enough air getting to my fire and, almost a foot deep glowing bed of coals. Think I've got the problem solved. I'm still going to make the blower just in case for those really cold days. I'm thinking I shouldn't need anything more than a computer fan to provide the air.

Stove coal is available but a bit of a drive to get to. Over an hr. away. The local Blashak dealer has nut for $245 a ton if I go pick it up. Getting ready to go grab a ton here directly.

The daughter came up with a good question about her pellet stove too. It's an older one that burns pellets, corn or cherry pits. She's wondering how it might operate using rice. Any thoughts on that? I might just grab a coffee can full just to try it out.

I drilled a 2nd hole in my ash door also.Mine is 2.5" and I have never needed more air than that.When the weather gets colder the draft will get better and you will be making Much more heat.I don't think you'll need a combustion fan.If you need more heat run the draft higher .07 or .08 isn't to high with these furnaces.
DON

Oh BTW if you're thinking about getting stove coal from Dennis coal don't bother,it's Reading coal and it's full of shale and rocks and for me at least made some of the biggest clinker that I ever saw.Crappy coal!

Big Beam do you mean Dennis Wells over in Laurens?

I'm pretty close to you guys I guess. I went over to Swantak and got Chestnut bags to check how it would work before getting tonnage. So far so good.

I went over to Swantaks fri. and got a ton of nut dumped into the back of the truck. So far it's doing pretty good. The house was a little cool this morning but I'm thinking I didn't shake it down good enough last night. Tonight it has a full load and there's a good bit of blue flame. House is at 72 right now and I'm planning on checking it again before I sack out for the night.

stove is really hard to shovel......get some 5 gallon buckets full for the really cold weather if u want

Did a bit of an experiment today since it was nice and cold. I took the cooling fan out of an old computer, made a mount and installed it in the draft opening and turned it on. It wasn't too long and the firebox was like a forge!!! House tonight is nice and warm and I'm looking at putting a rheostat in to control the fan speed. Think it's going to work just fine!!! I'm ready for anything 'Ma' nature might throw at us now!!!