Burning Coal & Wood Together?

[2coldHere]

My fireplace insert, a "Regular Buck" model 27000, is set up right now to burn wood but the manual says it's also fine to burn "soft coal" in it but says in order to burn coal I'd want to get a different grate that's made specially for burning coal; thicker steel/iron, smaller holes to hang on to the smaller bits of coal, higher sides to hold a pile of coal, and a "shaker" system with an ash catcher underneath to keep the ashes cleared out so the coal can stay lifted and clean so it can get its oxygen feed from the bottom up.

I buy cheap firewood (wish I could afford nice stuff) and it doesn't always burn well. Sometimes punky, sonetimes not seasoned well, sometimes pretty wet. It also sometimes burns up really fast and I need to re-stoke the stove at about 2am and again at about 5am or else I wake up with only a tiny amount of wood coals on the bottom and a lukewarm plate steel outer layer; time to then get the diesel-soaked sawdust and some kindling and pretty much start the fire all over again in the morning. In the meantime the kids are complaining how cold it is in the house while they're trying to get ready for school and walking around half-dressed out of the shower and with wet hair and so on.

I've heard that coal burns a lot hotter, for a lot longer.

Has anyone mixed in some coal with their wood, just to add some longer burn times before having to refill the stove? Would I need to either "switch to coal" or "stay with wood", or could I compromise and use both fuels together at the same time, sort of?

 

[grapplermi]

I live in the UK, and I do exactly what you are talking about doing. My stoves are dual-fuel, meaning they have the shaker grate, but you wouldn't need one if you just use it to stoke overnight. I primarily burn wood, because I have free access to a lot of it. Most people in the UK do not, so they all burn coal. When we're around to tend it, it gets straight wood. Overnight, it gets banked with coal. The great thing about coal is that once you get it burning hard, about 15 minutes on an existing hot wood fire, you can shut it all the way down and it still throws as much heat as wood going real hard. In the morning, just give it some air and it will be blazing again. Then throw your wood on top and you're set. I would recommend that you stir the coal ash around to get the loose stuff into your ash tray before you put the wood on, otherwise it will clump and prevent air flow. That's how I've done it for years, and the fam loves it.

regards,
Matt

 

[grapplermi]

Forgot to add that my coal burn time is about 12 hours, turned down and then up when the kids wake up for school.

matt

 

[amscontr]

Burn Coke

Burn coke if you can get it(no I'm not saying the white powder stuff), the oil refining by-product that looks like coal. I used to haul it from a refinery to a powerplant. The powerplant mixed it with coal, shredded tires and wood. It burns really hot!
I had an old farmhouse that I was trying to heat(more like heating a corn crib) and my wood supply was getting low. Well a lightbulb struck and I thought if a powerplant burns it for heat hmmm. So I had a fire going one night and the temp. was going to dip in below zero's so I threw a coffee can full in that old wood/coal stove and that thing grunted, crackled, huffed and puffed. I thought the darn thing was going to start dancing, no bull.
So the next night I cut her back to half a can and the old stove did just fine.
Now I don't know about your parts but around here they're wanting over hundred bucks a ton for coal and this stuff was free. Now if you know any dump truckers who haul coal or coke maybe ask them the next time they clean out their trucks if you could get some of the coal/coke.
Just my 2 cents.

 

[pook]

size of the grate's holes determines whether its gonna hold the coal which needs air coming from underneath after its lit which is a PITA. i think u will find that the coal wont burn well. u can tell by breaking a chunk looking at the interior of the chunk. coal produces CO which is odorless so a CO detector is a must if the smell of a leaking stove cant be identified= wood leak usually stinx, coal may not.

 

[woodhounder]

get better wood

 

[pinesawyer]

I just bought a ton of nut coal to mix with green ash in a Harmon boiler. So I am mixing green wood and coal, but its ash, which burns well green, about the only wood that does. I get the coal cooking and then lay a few pieces of split ash on the top. I think the wood helps burn the gases that the coal gives off. I don't know really, but it seems to work.

I bought the coal to extend my wood along, but around me nut coal is 250 a ton. And I don't know how far that is going to take me.

 

[CrappieKeith]

Green wood,wet wood,punky wood and now to add insult to injury soft coal.

I know what your looking for but in all cases you are shooting yourself in the foot. You need dry wood and hardwood species specific to get the better burn times.
Hard coal has more btus in it with less sulfur.

If you could get dryer wood you'd be better off...the same lb. of wood will make more btus per lb if it has less water in it...same wood might give you an extra 4-5 thousands btus per lb...which all depends on how wet it is to start with of course.

 

[BlueRidgeMark]

get better wood

:agree2:



If you can get wet wood cheap, start buying more than you need so you can let it season. Might take you a while to get there, but if you can get to the point where you are buying a year or two ahead, you'll have dry wood.

 

[2coldHere]

Coal Types?

Matt, what "type" of coal do you burn? Hard anthracite type? My stove's manual says the stove won't burn "harder coals"... my guess is they burn better and get hotter, I don't know. But you're doing exactly what I want to do: burning wood mostly, but adding some coal at night to make the burn last longer unattended. When you burn coal do you burn ONLY coal, like just a big pile of it in the stove with just enough of a wood fire under it to get it lit?

amscontr, no I moved here from the other side of the country a few years ago when I retired and I don't really know anyone here. They shut down the only local coal-burning plan years ago; but there's a small operation of a British-owned steel company nearby... I don't know anybody who works there and the place is all fenced & gated off and has a security shack at the entrance gate, so I doubt I could just hang out there and shoot the bull with workers to see if the could point me to some freebies.... If I could score a deal with coal-hauling truckers I'd volunteer to clean out the backs of ALL their trucks!

pook thanks for the CO warning; I have a plug-in monitor that I could put by the stove. But the stove also has a blower fan and I usually set up another fan or two to help circulate the heat (house has old baseboard water heat from a boiler... no existing ductwork)... I wonder if the detector would detect the CO with the air all swishing around from the fans?

Thanks for the replies guys. For those who basically say "get better wood", I know you mean well but that's kind of like walking over to an old well and seeing that a guy fell down into it and can't get out and is asking you for help; and you yell down to him "Hey guy, you'd better get yerself out of that there well or else you'll die down there!" and then you walk away. Your statement might be true: but if he could get himself out of the well don't you think he would've done it already? Did it help to tell him what he already knows?

I'm retired, my pension is my only income. I'm partly disabled and can't do a lot of physical labor, so going out to cut down my own hardwood trees that I find alongside the roads and dragging them to my house to chop them up isn't an option either. I'm new here and don't know many people so I'm not "networked"; I live in a neighborhood in a small town near a city, so I'm sort of stuck with searching for woodsellers online and on Craigslist: and I buy what I can afford to buy. If I had more money I'd buy more expensive wood; if I could find a wood seller who sells me nice clean, dry, seasoned hardwood for the same price I paid for this stuff out back ($30 a face cord unsplit), I'd sure switch to him and drop the guy who sells me the cheap wood.

I tried bringing in a bunch of the wood to let it dry out better in my house and to warm it up, but my youngest boy is really allergic to the natural molds & mildews that are in, on, and under the bark of the wood (and that are in the dirt that's on the wood) and I ended up giving him an asthma attack with that stupid move so I put the wood back outside and I only keep one night's worth of wood inside to pre-warm now.

Moving to Phoenix isn't an option either because I'm upside down on my house; so that's why I'm looking for affordable solutions that might actually work. Augmenting my wood with some coal seemed like maybe an option so I figured I'd ask.

 

[pook]

Matt, what "type" of coal do you burn? Hard anthracite type? My stove's manual says the stove won't burn "harder coals"... my guess is they burn better and get hotter, I don't know. But you're doing exactly what I want to do: burning wood mostly, but adding some coal at night to make the burn last longer unattended. When you burn coal do you burn ONLY coal, like just a big pile of it in the stove with just enough of a wood fire under it to get it lit?

amscontr, no I moved here from the other side of the country a few years ago when I retired and I don't really know anyone here. They shut down the only local coal-burning plan years ago; but there's a small operation of a British-owned steel company nearby... I don't know anybody who works there and the place is all fenced & gated off and has a security shack at the entrance gate, so I doubt I could just hang out there and shoot the bull with workers to see if the could point me to some freebies.... If I could score a deal with coal-hauling truckers I'd volunteer to clean out the backs of ALL their trucks!

pook thanks for the CO warning; I have a plug-in monitor that I could put by the stove. But the stove also has a blower fan and I usually set up another fan or two to help circulate the heat (house has old baseboard water heat from a boiler... no existing ductwork)... I wonder if the detector would detect the CO with the air all swishing around from the fans?

Thanks for the replies guys. For those who basically say "get better wood", I know you mean well but that's kind of like walking over to an old well and seeing that a guy fell down into it and can't get out and is asking you for help; and you yell down to him "Hey guy, you'd better get yerself out of that there well or else you'll die down there!" and then you walk away. Your statement might be true: but if he could get himself out of the well don't you think he would've done it already? Did it help to tell him what he already knows?

I'm retired, my pension is my only income. I'm partly disabled and can't do a lot of physical labor, so going out to cut down my own hardwood trees that I find alongside the roads and dragging them to my house to chop them up isn't an option either. I'm new here and don't know many people so I'm not "networked"; I live in a neighborhood in a small town near a city, so I'm sort of stuck with searching for woodsellers online and on Craigslist: and I buy what I can afford to buy. If I had more money I'd buy more expensive wood; if I could find a wood seller who sells me nice clean, dry, seasoned hardwood for the same price I paid for this stuff out back ($30 a face cord unsplit), I'd sure switch to him and drop the guy who sells me the cheap wood.

I tried bringing in a bunch of the wood to let it dry out better in my house and to warm it up, but my youngest boy is really allergic to the natural molds & mildews that are in, on, and under the bark of the wood (and that are in the dirt that's on the wood) and I ended up giving him an asthma attack with that stupid move so I put the wood back outside and I only keep one night's worth of wood inside to pre-warm now.

Moving to Phoenix isn't an option either because I'm upside down on my house; so that's why I'm looking for affordable solutions that might actually work. Augmenting my wood with some coal seemed like maybe an option so I figured I'd ask.

CO is ambient,it neither rises nor sinks due to molecular weight, but its coming from the stove & will be hot= locate detector in front of the stove where the stove's blower will deliver air in that direction i'd guess. dunno ur setup but i hang 1"x8" strips of toilet paper above my doorways to see how the hot air is flowing.
moving cold air with fans to the heat source is more effective than moving hot air

 

[mlkdvm]

I have the same stove that you do. I used to burn coal but I haven't for several years. Unless I burn really good wood, which I happen to have in abundance now, my fires will not burn all night. The only objection I had to burning coal is that it is messy, but it does make an excellent fire in a Buck stove. The wood I have now is well seasoned red oak and it burns so well that I don't need to use coal but I wouldn't hesitate to burn it if my fires didn't last as long as they do.