Opinions on dirty coal

[celloreiter]

I got a ton of nut anthracite coal from basement mining early this summer. It has a noticable amount of sand, dirt, wood chips and a few rocks.

Is is worth the extra effort of washing, straining & drying it before burning it in a chubby?

[Sunny Boy]

Sand/dirt will go right in and come out with the ash. That does not affect the burn unless there is so much that it chokes the fire.

If you have a hand fed stove, depending on size and grate design, the rocks may be small enough to pass through the grates during ash shaking. If big enough to see, I pick them out when loading the stove. If I miss one and it is big enough to jam the grates, I work it up and out of the firebed with a right-angle poker. Then lift out with long BBQ tongs.

Paul

[Lightning]

Hi and welcome to the forum
I agree with Paul. Could you post some pics of the coal?

[Richard S.]

Assuming you are not referring to "Bone" the rocks should be removed especially if they are larger. They may damage or jam your grates. If it has a lot of rock I wouldn't even both. "Bone" is rock with layers of coal sandwiched between and will burn up enough to not cause any problems.

The wood will obviously burn and by weight it's about the same BTU's as coal. Fine coal can pose a problem because it will restrict airflow but when you have lemons you make lemonade. You can set it aside and use it when you need to dampen the stove off, you also do this with ashes. Can be very helpful if you are in a windy area and having difficulty controlling the draft.

[warminmn]

When I used a stove that used a slicer (riddler) to get rid of the ash, rock was not a problem except it accumulated so did have to be picked out once in a while. Your Chubby is still better than a rocker/shaker as it wont jam unless it gets caught on the edges but you'll still have to pick the rock out.

I had some TSC with rocks once. It was a slight aggravation but would be worth the effort unless really bad. My Chubby Jr with the smaller grate I had to pay more attention to it.

[ShawnLiNy]

I got a ton of nut anthracite coal from basement mining early this summer. It has a noticable amount of sand, dirt, wood chips and a few rocks.

Is is worth the extra effort of washing, straining & drying it before burning it in a chubby?

it takes a lot of work to wash/sift and we lose 1-200lbs of burn able fines mixed
With sand , So unless I get a batch with lots of soil I generally burn as is ( bottom of pile fines I keep separate and ad 2-3 small scoops on very top after reloading) I remove any obvious rocks/metal ( square nuts probably get 3-5 a year as that’s what they used to secure bunker walls /bulkhead) I’ve found when I get small rocks just large enough to caught in my grates I open my intake slightly and increase temps for 1-2 hours that’s generally sufficient to fracture any quartz ( but running with any amount of debris I generally need to shut down and clear every 14-20 days )

[celloreiter]

Hi and welcome to the forum
I agree with Paul. Could you post some pics of the coal?

See below attached pics. Sounds like it will burn just fine based on what I'm hearing.

[Sunny Boy]

Looks like real old basement coal. Turns dull and sorta grayish as it loses a lot of the volatiles.

A friend gave me several buckets of old basement coal like that. It burned fine and made good heat, just not with any dancing Blue Ladies to watch.

Paul

[waytomany?s]

That first pic looked like ash.

[coaledsweat]

I had a load from a friend that had a lot of sand and soil in it due to scraping it up with loader. I ran it through my AA 260, it made a lot of glass like clinkers. One almost the size of a basketball. I had to bust that one up in the firepot to get it out.