In my area, it is hard to find a fuel dealer that still sells ANY coal these days. Apparently it has fallen out of fashion and few people were buying it anymore.
When I was a kid, we had a wood and coal kitchen range in our old farmhouse. It was designed to work well with either fuel, and usually we would burn wood during the day during the heating season and would supplement the wood with coal during the night, as the coal would keep burning until morning. Using coal, the stove drafts had to be set differently than when using wood.
One time I was home alone and was going to get the stove ready for night time use. I filled the fire box with coal chunks and then got distracted by a phone call. About 20 minutes later, I went back into the kitchen and discovered that the whole range top was cherry red, as was part of the stove pipe going to the chimney. I realized that I had left the drafts wide open and quickly closed them. I also opened the oven door to let some heat out. I thought about throwing water on the stove, but luckily did not do that--it might have cracked the plate steel. After a few minutes, things cooled down to a more normal level. I probably also had a chimney fire going when things were really hot, but it didn't seem to damage the chimney. Except for a bit of scorching of the drywall behind the stovepipe, nothing seemed to be damaged. But I gained a whole lot of respect for the power of coal that night.
Every Fall, we would drive into town to the coal yard in our old farm truck. The fuel company would weigh the truck empty and then let us pick the sized of coal pieces that we wanted from the coal pile. Then with the truck loaded, we would go back to the fuel company and get reweighed. It was a lot of work to do it this way, but then we got only the size pieces we could use, and not huge pieces or fines, which didn't work well in our range. Looking back on it, I am surprised that they would let us load up that way. It was not very expensive--I think a whole truck load was only about $40 or $50.
Something else to consider is ash disposal. Coal ashes should not be put on a garden or any place that you want to grow something. I bet the area we dumped our coal ashes still doesn't grow plants very well, and that was 40 years ago. On the other hand, coal ashes are wonderful for adding traction on an icy driveway. You also need to be careful about ashes, as often there are hot coals mixed in with the ashes. Those coals can start fires days after they have been dumped. We always used metal buckets to store ashes, and never left the buckets on or near a surface that could burn.
Good luck in trying coal. I hope it will work OK for you. But just remember that coal is a very concentrated fuel that REQUIRES careful use or it can come back to bite you! My misadventure really scared me. Undoubtedly I nearly burned the house down. Be careful!
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Today's Featured Article - Listening to Your Tractor - by Curtis Von Fange. Years ago there was a TV show about a talking car. Unless you are from another planet, physically or otherwise, I don’t think our internal combustion buddies will talk and tell us their problems. But, on the other hand, there is a secret language that our mechanical companions readily do speak. It is an interesting form of communication that involves all the senses of the listener. In this series we are going to investigate and learn the basic rudimentary skills of understanding this lingo.
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