Smitty's Burnin' Bitty!

Smitty, you've got me thinking I want to try to burn Bit in my aa-130.

Does anyone know if burning bit in my aa-130 is acceptable

I'm thinking even if you had big chunks like I had, you'd be able to beat them to rice size fairly easily. I could break that big chunk right in half no problem.

Try that with a piece of stove ... or even nut anthracite! Wont happen!

I could bust pieces off at will with my fingers. It truly is SOFT coal.

brock, I would highly reccomend against burning bit in your 130, it might be interesting to try it, but really don't think it will work out, especially for any sustained use in that appliance, it's just not designed for it.

Smitty, i'm glad you enjoyed your bit coal If you want to burn bit on a more regular basis, you will want to do three things, remove the screen from your chimney cap, put T's instead of elbows in your connector pipe, and "bank" the coal when loading rather than spreading it out on top- this will reduce the density of the smoke and allow a much cleaner, less smelly burn. Also If possible, you're going to want large sizes of low coke button coal, especially something like a kentucky lump if possible - around 14,000btu's/lb and burns long, steady and controllable with low ash.

as far as cleaning the chimney, other than any horizontal run of connector pipe (or connector pipe smaller than 7") you won't have to sweep the chimney, the soot will just periodically fall off inside the stack, just be sure to check your clean-out periodically.

If anyone around buffalo is interested in trying some kentucky lump or other bit coal, I keep it on hand and will give a couple buckets to you.

When I was shopping/buying my AHS S130 Jeff owner of AHS told me about a heating contractor/plumber that had a big school conversion from coal to oil job. Part of the job was to remove the existing coal. Many, many tons of bituminous coal, KY coal best I remember. Against Jeff's advise, he bought a S130 to burn up the "free" coal. It didn't work even after trying several different combustion blower speeds. The boiler was returned. So don't try bituminous in a AA or AHS stoker.

Yanche and Berlin,

thanks for the advice, bit wont touch my baby now

SMITTY wrote:
I wanted to be able to see the smoke ... and that it did! This is my kind of coal! If only there were some treehuggers around ...

How about some wet leaves on top, that shure will send some signals I made that mistake last fall (outside of coarse),boy they smoldered all night A blast of air from a leaf blower really does aid in the combustion process

Hey Brock, you could burn soft coal in your fireplace.

SMITTY wrote:For about 3 hours, smoke poured off the roof & into the street ... like fog!

I don't get lots of smoke unless I burn smaller sizes with fines mixed in...
Burning larger pieces should help limit smoke because volatile gasses will distill more slowly and burn off better from larger coal compared to smaller size coal.

SMITTY wrote:I noticed my coils looked wet, oily black after burning for a while

Soot may look oily but should be kinda powdery and easily flake and fall off at slightest touch.

Berlin is right about banking the fire...especially if burning small size coal. I don't like to burn smaller size coal (smaller than about softball size) in handfeds because it's harder to control the fire, tends to form clinkers and more likely to puffback.