Coal burning 101

       What follows is just for information. Maybe it might help you where you live.

            Even I have lived in places where the coal soot disgraced a lot of old buildings. But if times get hard, and I have to be warm as a priority during the cold season, then this post is what I choose to share. It is somewhat from emails to my relatives.

            Of course, during the warm season priorities will change. This includes how we choose to heat for cooking and bathing.

            Anyway, what follows is partially just cut and paste stuff to my relatives.

            The room with the French doors has a coal setup in the fireplace, which is covered right now.

            I don’t think anyone has burned anything, to include coal, in this fireplace for a long time, like probably over a half century. This house was built in 1905.

            The other side of this fireplace/chimney is the big fireplace in the main room with a wood stove insert in it these days. It gets used all the time. 

            There is an anthracite coal seam about 1/4 mile away from the Compound. 

            The mapped location is in the infrastructure folder in the front room. 

            There was a lot of coal under the main house, but I discarded it years ago. 

            Last, burning coal is not like burning wood. Basically it takes hot fire to get it burning, and then takes O2 coming up from below to burn best. And when it burns, it burns hot, so expect the heat to erode the stoves it burns in quicker than a wood fire does. 

            Now how to build a hot fire is another subject. People do it all the time. 

            Plan B is to get a designed coal stove, which has extra insulation in it. 

            And some coal smells better than other coal, to include when burning it. Basically, some coal has a high sulfur content, which smells like rotten eggs. Those who have lived in volcanic areas also know about this smell. And as one who has used Korean built kerosene stoves, even I got used to the smell of kerosene burning when I got cold enough. The smell was subtle, but still could be smelled. 

            And last, there are different "qualities" of coal. The best I read is "bituminous" coal, which does not exist where I live. The next best quality is "anthracite" coal, which is still around where I live. Now there are other qualities of coal, too. But mostly one will hear about the two best qualities of coal, if times get hard. And mostly the quality usually implies it is harder to light and get to burn, but does have more heat in it when it gets burning. And then there's the sulfur content problem, and one can go from there.  In the end, it is kind of like getting married; one just has do the deed and then figure it out from there.