Farmer tries burning coal for the first time

[themechanic]

 

[WileE]

Back in my youth, I recall the coal delivery trucks that supplied coal to the homes. They'd park in front, while the coal travelled down a chute into the basement. I'd imagine it was more economical than oil.

 

[QuickBpBp]

Our first house my wife and I bought in ‘94 had a coal shoot through the basement window and a bin in the basement. They were told in order to sell the house they needed to update the heater so it had hot air oil furnace installed…Never had a chance to try it. A guy I know still burns coal as he doesn’t like the multiple times you handle wood before it’s burnt…

 

[Detective D]

Someone should tell this guy wood ash is a replacement for lime. He could spread that out on the field without causing any issues, instead of having it hauled away.


My Grandfather's home burned coal in the WW2 and prior timeframe. In the 50's, he swapped the chute to be used for firewood as it was cheaper to go harvest then buy coal on his farm.
Later he installed a propane furnace, but burnt so much wood he only really used less than 100 gallons of LP a year. In WI. That went up as he got older and didn;t want to go tend a fire in the middle of the night in the dark. Too many stairs.

I have been thinking about this the last couple years. I think the modern equivolent is wood pellets. Premade bags of fuel to burn.
Firewood is always lauded as cheap. But really if you are buying it even in bulk and stacking it yourself to burn all winter, it adds up. My brother in law burns only wood. his home is smaller then mine, but it is also less insulated(poor windows) and his cost is about the same as mine and I run exclusively LP. If you can make your own wood, you can call it cheap(lot of work) but you also have to have the land or drive around a lot to pick up the "free"(costs gas money!) wood on FB or some such.

The pellets are similar. A lot of places regionally that have a source for what amounts to a waste product at a sawmill to manufacture the pellets can offer them at an attractive price. I have been thinking about this as a supplement to my LP for a while, but I am focused on the last bit of my mortgage for the immediate future(almost there!) I am curious if there is a pellet/rice coal type out there now after seeing this video. A self metering rice coal type might be very cost effective, even at coal's higher entry price. I will need to keep that in the back of my mind for the future.

One thing is certain, there is more stored energy in coal then wood. Not sure how it compares, probably depends on the wood. For other types, there is more energy by far is deisel(oil) then in LP, and both oil and LP laugh at the energy from electric heat.

This is a good topic as it is -5 out at noon in WI with the sun shining today Next two days are supposed to bring some real winter. We usually get a week to maybe 3 weeks of real winter a year. So far it has been mild, and the forecast is for onyl a couple days. So my heat bill may be spared this season

 

[themechanic]

Those fields around his farmhouse along to neighbors. He is an agronomist and doesn't farm. I thought 'agronomist burns coal' in the title wouldn't look good.

 

[Richard Cranium]

My grandparents lived next door to us and I remember as a kid in the 1960s them getting coal deliveries. I’d get filthy climbing down the coal chute & over the coal pile into their basement when playing hide ‘n seek with friends.

 

[The Rebel]

I remember my great grandmothers house had a window/shute and the bin in the dirt floor basement.

 

[Detective D]

Those fields around his farmhouse along to neighbors. He is an agronomist and doesn't farm. I thought 'agronomist burns coal' in the title wouldn't look good.

Then he should already know about it, and not really sure why his neighbors wouldn't allow? A phone call is easy.
But it isn't my life so to each his own.

 

[MCODECUDA]

As a kid my grandmother lived next to us and burnt wood and Coal in her kitchen stove which provided heat in the house. My job after school was to bring her up wood and coal from the cellar to keep the house warm until the next day. I’m not sure why but she burned both hard and soft coal. After a day of playing in the snow we sit in front of the open oven and get warm.

 

[GTXDAN]

A buddy of mine back in the 80s had a coal stove in his workshop that worked pretty good. The only problem was the closest place to get coal was 50 miles one way. I remember going with him because you had to shovel your own load. Got warm twice with that load.

 

[F4R/T]

I recall my great uncles blacksmith shop using a coal forge and furnace that was dual fuel. I still recall the *** eating from my cousin for burning all the wood while we all sat there and drank a cold night away around the old furnace. I also recall hauling the coal in for it too and wood. Good memories!

 

[cosgig]

When we were kids we lived in an old farm house with no insulation, old single pane windows and old wood doors. It was so cold in the winter that my brother and I slept in the family room where the old Ben Franklin stove was. We were poor because of circumstances from buying the house that caused a lawsuit and consumed all of our parents money. We had no money for fuel oil, so my parents would bring home a snowmobile trailer full of pallets every day that my brother and I had to break up to have enough wood for the night. The grainery up town had coal for sale by the ton, so my parents bought a ton. My brother and I would break it apart with a sledge hammer into little pieces and carry a bucket load into the house. You got a big fire going then tossed in a few “clinkers” of coal into the stove. When they got hot, they would pop and rattle the burners, but man they made a hot fire. You had to be careful not to throw too many into the box, or it would turn the stove Cherry red. My mom hated it because the house always smelled like a train yard, and everything in the house was covered in a thin layer of coal dust.

A short story about the pallets….

Being the competitive brothers we were, we would line up the pallets in 2 rows, and “race” to see who could get theirs done first. There was an old camper behind the barn that we made into a fort, and a couple weeks or so before Christmas one year, we decided to take a few sticks of wood every day and make a stash in the fort so we wouldn’t have to chop pallets on Christmas Day. About 2 days before Christmas, our dad went into the fort, saw the wood, got mad, and made us bring in all of the wood in the house, and he had a big fire and burned it all. My brother and I were pretty crushed about that. We’re still a little red assed about that to tell the truth!

 

[khryslerkid]

When we were kids we lived in an old farm house with no insulation, old single pane windows and old wood doors. It was so cold in the winter that my brother and I slept in the family room where the old Ben Franklin stove was. We were poor because of circumstances from buying the house that caused a lawsuit and consumed all of our parents money. We had no money for fuel oil, so my parents would bring home a snowmobile trailer full of pallets every day that my brother and I had to break up to have enough wood for the night. The grainery up town had coal for sale by the ton, so my parents bought a ton. My brother and I would break it apart with a sledge hammer into little pieces and carry a bucket load into the house. You got a big fire going then tossed in a few “clinkers” of coal into the stove. When they got hot, they would pop and rattle the burners, but man they made a hot fire. You had to be careful not to throw too many into the box, or it would turn the stove Cherry red. My mom hated it because the house always smelled like a train yard, and everything in the house was covered in a thin layer of coal dust.

A short story about the pallets….

Being the competitive brothers we were, we would line up the pallets in 2 rows, and “race” to see who could get theirs done first. There was an old camper behind the barn that we made into a fort, and a couple weeks or so before Christmas one year, we decided to take a few sticks of wood every day and make a stash in the fort so we wouldn’t have to chop pallets on Christmas Day. About 2 days before Christmas, our dad went into the fort, saw the wood, got mad, and made us bring in all of the wood in the house, and he had a big fire and burned it all. My brother and I were pretty crushed about that. We’re still a little red assed about that to tell the truth!

Your story started out like me in my youth. Old farmhouse with a coal furnace in the basement. It had one four foot wide grate upstairs right over the furnace. My brother and I would sleep upstairs and have our next day clothes under the sheets. Jump out of bed, grab our clothes, run downstairs and stand on the grate getting dressed. Man they were some cold mornings!

Eventually dad converted the furnace over to oil fired. Then later installed storm windows, insulation and electric baseboard heaters.

 

[toolmanmike]

Someone should tell this guy wood ash is a replacement for lime. He could spread that out on the field without causing any issues, instead of having it hauled away.


My Grandfather's home burned coal in the WW2 and prior timeframe. In the 50's, he swapped the chute to be used for firewood as it was cheaper to go harvest then buy coal on his farm.
Later he installed a propane furnace, but burnt so much wood he only really used less than 100 gallons of LP a year. In WI. That went up as he got older and didn;t want to go tend a fire in the middle of the night in the dark. Too many stairs.

I have been thinking about this the last couple years. I think the modern equivolent is wood pellets. Premade bags of fuel to burn.
Firewood is always lauded as cheap. But really if you are buying it even in bulk and stacking it yourself to burn all winter, it adds up. My brother in law burns only wood. his home is smaller then mine, but it is also less insulated(poor windows) and his cost is about the same as mine and I run exclusively LP. If you can make your own wood, you can call it cheap(lot of work) but you also have to have the land or drive around a lot to pick up the "free"(costs gas money!) wood on FB or some such.

The pellets are similar. A lot of places regionally that have a source for what amounts to a waste product at a sawmill to manufacture the pellets can offer them at an attractive price. I have been thinking about this as a supplement to my LP for a while, but I am focused on the last bit of my mortgage for the immediate future(almost there!) I am curious if there is a pellet/rice coal type out there now after seeing this video. A self metering rice coal type might be very cost effective, even at coal's higher entry price. I will need to keep that in the back of my mind for the future.

One thing is certain, there is more stored energy in coal then wood. Not sure how it compares, probably depends on the wood. For other types, there is more energy by far is deisel(oil) then in LP, and both oil and LP laugh at the energy from electric heat.

This is a good topic as it is -5 out at noon in WI with the sun shining today Next two days are supposed to bring some real winter. We usually get a week to maybe 3 weeks of real winter a year. So far it has been mild, and the forecast is for onyl a couple days. So my heat bill may be spared this season

Wood ash contains potassium (potash) lime doesn't contain potash but is used to ph balance the soil.

 

[70bigblockdodge]

My father in law always has a fire in fireplace, mostly wood, it was a heat-a-lator. Boiler plate liner that a fan would circulate air around so you recouped some heat from the other 270degrees of the fire. He would pick up random pieces of coke, basically baked coal to remove all the impurities to make steel in a blast furnace when loading at Clairton coke works for U.S. Steel. That stuff would burn completely and so hot it warped the back wall of the heat-a-lator insert. Had to be careful how much and where you placed it on the grate, but when it was really cold outside that room was hot inside.

 

[3sloppydogs]

When I bought this house it had a wood burner upstairs and down. I didn't have much money at the time and could get wood for free. I was in my early thirties so it wasn't any problem sawing, splitting and feeding the stoves
As I got couple years older the wood supply dried up so I put a freestanding coal burner in downstairs. I wished I had done that before. I could heat the whole house cheaply. The nice thing was before I went to bed I loaded the stove with coal and it would burn all night, no need toget up and feed it.
Sadly when I did the renovation I disconnected the downstairs chimney as I thought the new HVAC system would suffice. Nope. I need to get a chimney guy in and see what he can do
Coal was easier, more efficient, took up less space and no dust. I put the ash in a steel trash can to cool then bagged it for the landfill.

 

[Don Frelier]

There isn't a farmer in my neighborhood with a 1/2 ton truck?

 

[toolmanmike]

We haven't had coal available around my area for decades. Probably 50 years or more.

 

[Detective D]

Wood ash contains potassium (potash) lime doesn't contain potash but is used to ph balance the soil.

Ash will also raise PH.