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Old 02-17-2013, 12:02 AM
Rollo MB Rollo MB is offline
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Join Date: Jan 2013
Posts: 9
Quote:
Originally Posted by jaoneill View Post
Sounds as though Rollo has been down this road. Many of the newer coal furnaces utilized "rice" coal with automated feed augers and "shakers".

The theory is that fresh air passing through the grates from below keeps them cool enough that they won't warp. Quickest way to ruin the grates is to neglect cleaning out the ashes. An unfortunate occurance when the automated furnaces came on the scene; not having to "tend" the fire, it was too easy to forget to clean out the ash pit.

Jim
Well I've burned wood or coal as the predominant heat source for a 2500 sqf full Cape for about 20 of the past 23 years, in the course doing that you tend to elevate fire tending to a minor art form. I started burning wood because I ended up with about 80 or so cords of black locust that blew down in a hurricane, so that lasted more than a dozen years. In anticipation of have less timber at hand I picked up a Newcastle Coal Stove (these are fantastic American made stoves, very easy to operate and clean and with high and efficient heat output usually running about 30 pounds of nut coal per 24 hour charge, got a blower and back and top shell wall construction with a good size window for infared radiant heat, 5/16" rolled steel construction and a double walled fire brick fire box, rotary grate on the bottom that is operated with the stove all closed up so minimal ash escapes) and eventually switched over to that. As far as burning and heating coal is superior in my opinion but I've got to buy that, burning wood is good if you've got a steady economical source of it. More work and more clean-up burning wood, you've got to tend the fire more frequently, but there is something about cutting, splitting, and stacking piles of cord wood that is intrisically satisfying. I would process wood in the winter when life and work slowed down always keeping about 10 or more cords ahead. The black locust is probably the best splitting and burning wood you can find, the bark is fanastic tinder, it burns with the finest and least amount of ash than any wood, it virtually never rots, you can cut it today and burn it green if you had to, and I've burned logs that had been cut a hundred years ago, they were so hard and seasoned that when you cut it sparks were generated by the saw chain! But you do have to sharpen your saw chains more frequently.

As a little kid my grandparents had a coal furnace that heated both their home an a couple greenhouses that were their business, so stoking and shaking go back a ways.
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