Anthracite Coal

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For some reason, I'm not able to view photo posts on this forum, including my own. Anyone have aclue what I'm doing wrong?
 
laynes, you know what I havent' seen you mention?

What size coal are you burning in the furnace? That could be a major cause of the air problems.....
 
Its nut coal. Some pieces are close to egg size. Its a possibility that there are small leaks on the furnace. I sealed all connections on the flue, and I am pretty sure that I get overdraft on the chimney, so I have a barometric damper. I really need someone to measure and set the draft, for the furnace should be between .04 and .05. The front liner of the firebox is hollow and this is taking some air from underneath and putting it up into the firebox right below the door. This doesn't help. I have called them and talked to them and they said it will burn anthracite, but I can't get any heat from it. Its a big pita. Right now its snowing and its 23 degrees with winds of 15 to 20 degrees. The house is 76 with wood, if it was coal I'd be lucky to keep it 70.
 
Hrm.............................THis has me thinking.


Are the grate slotes too large to allow the burning of pea coal? You could try to get ahold of stove sized coal (next up from nut), but you probably won't be able to and the stuff is SO hard to light without starting with nut coal anyway. The larger chunks would presumably allow more air gaps in the coal bed and allow the weaker draft to burn the coal more easily.

OR

You could try pea coal or perhaps a mix of pea and nut coal (Normally called range coal). Although the tight packing nature of the pea coal would probably allow less airlfow through the bed, a load of pea coal has a much larger surface area available for burning at any point and might generate more heat for you. Just a thought.

We had a stove that was supposed to burn nut coal, but we got pea coal and so tried to burn it like that. The burns were faster and more intense, with less airflow through the bed needed. Not sure if that's a unique example, but that was how it worked out for me.
 
The gaps at the shakers are roughly 1/2 of an inch apart. I don't think my supplier has stove coal. Soft coal would be the thing for me to burn and is half the cost of hard coal. The problem is soot and the smell. We don't get it in the house any, but I can't stand the buildup of soot in the flue and chimney. Not only that but those clinkers.
 
The other thing to try is find a different source for your coal and c if that helps. Also for my handfired coal stove i use a mixture of pea,nut and stove coal which works best. I also have a harman mag stoker that burns rice and heats my whole house. Approx 2000 sq feet 3 floors. I run the handfired coal stove when the temps drop into the single digits just to take some of the load off the stoker.
 
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