Coalpail.com Forum

Hello, I am buying coal from a coal yard in Escanaba Michigan and it is used by a paper mill and a power plant. It is in various sizes mostly nut and fine rice size. This is my first time burning bituminous coal and it does seems to be awful sooty and I will be cleaning my flue once a month cause I need to. The coal burns well, no complaints there but I guess I am wondering if buying large sized coal would be better for me, I have an Esse Vista stove and have burnt anthracite before but got tired of the high price of bagged coal, it might be worth it though. any advice appreciated.

Bushman

Hello bushman, welcome,

The problem with the large size bitum coal is that it is really large, usually softball size and larger... It's hard to shovel and work with... and I was feeding a big firebox, it held 120+# of coal. Maybe your coal source has different sizes??

If you are able to, sift the really fine pieces out of the coal... I used a fine-toothed pitchfork... Then I put the fines in paper grocery bags, rolled them up to make ~3" diameter 'logs' and added these to the fire on the sides, keeping the loose, larger pieces in the center...

You will have soot with bitum coal, unless you have a stove designed to burn off the soot,, and these are not common. You can try giving the fire a little above the fire air, instead of only below the fire air, but this only helps a little..

I'm not familiar with your stove, can you post some photos?

Greg L

with bituminous coal, you're going to have soot. whether you need to clean your flue every month or whatever is up to you, usually the soot is light enough it simply blows out, and never builds up beyond a point, with a six inch flue however, it is more likely to build up. what do you hope to accomplish by buying larger size coal??, if it's burning well for you as is, what difference do you expect a larger size coal to make??