coworker keeps telling me to burn coal

[ttamoneypit]

my coworker bugs the hell out of me, he heats with coal and goes on and on about how much cheaper it is to use coal if you factor in your own labor he also has a corn stove

he has 3 or so acres and a bunch of trees to use for fire wood but he is to lazy to cut them,he has offered some of the wood to me but i haven't gotten around to going to his place and cutting them up


I try to tell him I have no interest in coal right now--maybe when I get older but right now I'm fine with my woodburner--an old round shenendoah with magicheat

my house is a raised ranch with electric baseboards ,about 1,600 sq ft and we don't use the lower level very much so it isn't heated at all down there until I start a fire--I burn wood when I feel like it usually only on the weekends or vacation-when the temps are 20's and lower, we turn the heat down to 50 at night (10pm) until about 3pm ,the kids are in school and the wife is at work during the day, I work 3rd shift and sleep from about 9am to 4pm

now if the electric bill really jumps here soon with the whole deregulation of rates then I will be burning a lot more often and will have to think about getting a coal/wood stove or add on type furnace , I won't go with a coal only unit because I want to keep cutting wood and using it because its fun and its cheap

 

[Rookie1]

Im no coal expert but does your stove burn coal? If not youd have to buy a new stove. How much is coal? How you gonna get it?How you gonna store it?
If your set up for wood and you OK with doing wood I wouldnt change.

 

[savageactor7]

If I didn't have all this free wood in the back yard I'd be burning coal. Of coarse my experience is with the big irregular shiny coal that sat outside on concrete pads...stuff was bullet proof. Soaken wet with rain or covered with snow made no difference it was easy to start on fire and provided good heat.

I don't know anything about today's bagged coal.

 

[oneoldbanjo]

Back when I was a teen I burned coal in a pot belly stove in our garage. I lived in northeastern Ohio and it was a kinder, simpler, more gentle time and lots of people still heated their houses with coal. There was a local underground mine and a coal tipple that was down the street and people could just stop in with their trucks and get loaded up with coal. I would stop and get about half a pickup load of basketball sized pieces I picked up out of their pile. I took them home and piled them behind the garage, and would just wack the large pieces with a sledgehammer and break off smaller pieces for the stove. It burned hot, lasted a long time and was cheap. It could easily be banked up into a pile that would burn all night and keep the garage warm for 8 - 10 hours and solved my need for heat pretty cheaply.

I have no idea what coal would cost these days - or if it would be any cheaper than any other domestic heat source. The old local coal mine is long gone and I don't know of anyone that still heats with coal. Coal smoke is not nearly as pleasant smelling as wood smoke!

 

[Woodcutteranon]

Pit...

Don't do it...move to the light. Do not go to the dark side. If you burn coal what will you need your chainsaws for?

 

[pipe welder]

I moved over to coal last Feb. and it's the best thing I ever did. Way more user friendly, easier to control, burns longer and also runs through the night with plenty of fire left. Your neighbor told you right on on the money end. If I count all the chains and fuel for the saws not to mention the fuel for the tractor splitter and the hauling and all the labor. Its just as cheap to burn coal. I have to drive a ways to get it but no big deal. No way would I go back to wood. If you can get it close and easy it would be foolish to use anything else. It also has the added bonus of no creosote in your chimney, so no chimney fires.

 

[Dalmatian90]

If I count all the chains and fuel for the saws not to mention the fuel for the tractor splitter and the hauling and all the labor. Its just as cheap to burn coal.

Your labor only counts if you actually plan to work for someone else for a cash income.

Sitting on your ass watching football instead of cutting wood is not an opportunity cost and thus does not count as costing you money in "labor."

Per cord expendables, let's see I figure on one chain sharpening @ $4, maybe $2 worth of chainsaw gasoline & two cycle oil, $4 worth of bar oil, have to go around the block to get to my woodlot, so that's 1 mile round trip x 5 trips per cord @ 18mpg = $0.72 gas. Let's throw in another $4 for chains that get rocked, gloves that wear out once a season, etc and so forth to add up to $15 bucks/cord variable costs.

Fixed costs are harder to figure out because it's more a hobby then business.

Truck cost is neglible since I'd have the Ranger whether I cut wood or not, and 15 miles of driving to bring in a season's worth of wood isn't statistically significant on a six year old truck with 190,000 miles.

I own the land whether I use the wood or not, and the taxable value is 99% it's development potential, not the timber. So no need to calculate in taxes and interest on the mortgage as part of my wood costs.

Over the last 12 years, on one new saw, two used, couple bars, handful of new chains, one repair bill once, few parts...I probably have about $1500. Let's call it $15/cord, and that's well over-priced since I have more saws then I really need.

Fiskars Super Splitter, Logrite Peavy w/ timberstand, couple wedges, helmet, chaps is another $250, let's call that $2.50/cord. Let's add in another $2.50/cord for tools I bought but don't use, and for tools I mostly bought for other needs but sometimes use woodcutting.

So I'm looking at $20 in equipment + $15 in expendables per cord, that's $35/cord for me that it costs me.

Yeah, it's time consuming especially when you're not in the greatest shape...but like I said, time only counts as money if you're giving up an opportunity to earn income doing something else instead.

 

[danrclem]

I never even thought about burning coal before I started burning wood. It might not be a bad idea but since I've got my wood cutting equipment that should last me a lifetime I can't see any sense in switching over. I've got enough oil and chains to last me a few years. Gas is the only thing that I've got to buy for quite some time unless I find something cheap that I want to stock up on. I am going to buy another grinding wheel soon but it's not necessary.

When I get too old to cut I will check on burning coal. I sure don't want to go back to the propane heat.

 

[STANG302]

I have been told to mix a bit of coal with your wood at night to extend burn times. Whether that is true or not, can't tell ya, never tried it. But it sounds like a viable option. How much does a ton of coal run? Guesing it's sold by the ton?

 

[Mud23609]

If I knew of a place that I could get it localy I would burn it, at least for the overnight burns and when I am at work. I have plenty of poplar on my farm but if I want hard wood it is about a 40 mile round trip, plus the time to cut, split, and load; or I have to buy and process it at 75 to 100 dollars a cord, plus time and consumables.

 

[woodbooga]

Pit...

Don't do it...move to the light. Do not go to the dark side. If you burn coal what will you need your chainsaws for?

Good point. Anthracite is mighty tough on the chains.

 

[Nandy]

So, anyone had the price of coal?

 

[7sleeper]

Pit...

Don't do it...move to the light. Do not go to the dark side. If you burn coal what will you need your chainsaws for?

Do it!

And I'll give you a bag of coal for every chainsaw!



7

 

[LipDawg]

I bought some last winter for use in the hunting camp pot belly. Got 600lb of baseball size lump loaded into the truck at the tipple and I want to say it was around $9/100lb. I will call tomorrow and get an exact price if I get done hunting early enough.

 

[fubar2]

I burn both wood and coal whenever I find myself with a pick up I don't care about and some extra bucks in my pocket. I really don't have a preference, one is as good as the other. Coal burns hotter is harder to start and the fire lasts longer. If you don't have cast iron grates you may as well say goodbye to them before you start coal. If you live close to a mine you would be foolish not to use it. If I remember right last I bought was like 50.00 a half ton pick up load and it is heavy. You won't think you got much till you unload it.

 

[BlueRidgeMark]

Good point. Anthracite is mighty tough on the chains.

:hmm3grin2orange:

 

[smus]

I bought some to use when it gets REAL cold to try. Bought 3.5 tons of lump coal for $46/ton from S/W Indiana (Farmersburg area). Cost about as much for fuel as coal in my little dump truck.

 

[zipper1081]

I live right in the middle of coal country. Southern West Virginia,northern Ky. There is only one place I can buy coal About 45 min. away $ 140 ton. All the coal ternimals here will not sell it to the public. They all say the Gov. does not want the general homeowner to burn coal.

 

[sesmith]

Coal does burn well, but...
You can feel good about your wood burning. Besides the exercise you get, and saw bonding time, wood burning is carbon neutral, coal burning is not. You want more reasons to burn wood rather than coal? Sustainable wood harvesting does not do this to the environment:

http://earthobservatory.nasa.gov/Features/MountaintopRemoval/

 

[unclemoustache]

I managed to get a couple tons of bituminous coal for free. Burn it in my shop when I spend enough time out there. I usually start a wood fire, then throw on the coal. It's dusty, smelly, smokey, and has lots of annoying 'clinkers' left over, which are hard to get out of my stove. I mainly want to get rid of the stuff now, since it's a pain to deal with. If you decide to burn coal, do youself a favor and get the anthracite coal, which (from what I hear) is better for burning.