Heatrola. Should I Heat With This (Using Anthracite)?

[BlackBetty06]

yep stokers with all the blowers will tend to blow way more up the chimney than all the hand fired stoves.My 17 years of coal burning has been at two different locations with drastically different setups although all handfed stoves. Also have many relatives and friends that burn coal and have the same results as me which is some dirt in the pipes and light dusting on the flue in the chimney. Every setup is different so if you see lots of dirty anthracite flues then that is what it is. The long and the short of it all is that the original poster is a seasoned burner with 40 years of wood burning under his belt so im going to assume that he knows the importance of maintaining a solid fuel burning appliance. With that said if he switches to coal he should have no problems whether hes burning anthracite or bituminous. We can agree to disagree on the coal in the fireplace deal. If I kill myself someday doing it, Ill have nobody to blame but myself but Ill be dead so that wont matter HA. My bet is that there wont be any problems.

 

[bholler]

yep stokers with all the blowers will tend to blow way more up the chimney than all the hand fired stoves.My 17 years of coal burning has been at two different locations with drastically different setups although all handfed stoves. Also have many relatives and friends that burn coal and have the same results as me which is some dirt in the pipes and light dusting on the flue in the chimney. Every setup is different so if you see lots of dirty anthracite flues then that is what it is. The long and the short of it all is that the original poster is a seasoned burner with 40 years of wood burning under his belt so im going to assume that he knows the importance of maintaining a solid fuel burning appliance. With that said if he switches to coal he should have no problems whether hes burning anthracite or bituminous. We can agree to disagree on the coal in the fireplace deal. If I kill myself someday doing it, Ill have nobody to blame but myself but Ill be dead so that wont matter HA. My bet is that there wont be any problems.

Ok ill post pics of the dirt i take out of the next natural draft appliance i clean.

What determines the ammout of buildup is the strenght of the draft and the coal. Even stoker furnaces still run negative pressure in the pipe. The draft needs to be strong enough to overcome the blowers so no the blowers dont force more up the chimney. The ammount of dirt varies allot from year to year depending upon the coal coming out of the mines. Most of the coal burnt in homes in this area comes from one of two mines so we know how dirty the chimneys will be after cleaning the first few.

 

[Scandar]

This thread has some very good information in it. I would love to get a parlor burner for the upstairs eventually but being on the second story I am worried I may not be able to get a long enough chimney to properly run one up there. Perhaps a larger unit downstairs one day. Something like a big cannonball 20 would be sweet!

 

[Tacey]

Update 2/8/20. Haven’t bought anything except some anthracite in the 40 pound bags. I got a used basket grate that really works well with anthracite if I open my clean out chute under the grate and open the clean out door outside downstairs. The darling wife is not on board with getting a coal burner but I still window shop. At least I get to enjoy the fire and maybe some day I’ll see one do cheap that it will follow me home.