Wood AND Coal fire

I want to try something I've not done in the past and need some advice. I've burned wood for many years & even with good seasoned/dry hickory or oak overnight burns are still hard to achieve. I'm using a wood circulator with grates, but not shaker grates. All air is supplied under the fire via a bi-metallic thermostat. I use a manual pipe damper. Good 6" Simpson Dura-Plus chimney up a primarily interior chase with excellent draw. Within a few miles of home I can get Bit stoker or lump ($75/ton) or Anthracite nut or lump ($240/ton). Obviously I'd like to try the bit first. I want to burn wood fires all day & evening then bank the fire with coal to maintain heat output throughout the night, then go back to wood the next day. Here's my questions:

Will ths work?
Will I need a barometric damper? If so that's kind of a deal breaker since I still want to burn wood.
What size Bit coal do I want?
How much should I put in at night?
How much dust inside & soot outside am I going to create using Bit only at night?

Ya'll don't know how much I appreciate your help on this, Stephen

I would not attempt this with anthracite without shaker grates.

it should work fine w/ bit, but you'll have more ash, if you have an ashpan it's not a big concern. i would reccomend putting the largest size coal you can find under the wood before you go to bed and then loading it full, coal on bottom wood on top. you should be able to have enough coals left to refire it easily the next morning. soot? well that depends on three factors, the coal (how much soot the coal produces is not necessarily related to how "good" or "bad" the coal is but simply it's burning characteristics and volitile content) and how much coal you are burning vs. wood and how your appliance burns it. with bit coal you will have soot produced and you may have a few small pieces outside around/downwind of the stack that will only really be noticeable on snow; this soot is NOT harmfull to anything, paint, auto's etc. and will wash away with rain. If you have bitchy neighbors real close with white cars parked right under your chimney- bituminous coal may not be for you. another alternative would be to buy a bituminous stoker stove and heat with coal only - you would be able to heat an average home for under $500/year with bituminous coal, and, because it's a stoker, you won't have to tend it often and it will produce almost no soot/smoke. I know someone selling an almost new stokermatic in southern ohio for less than $1000

Thanks for the input. A coal stove (Hitzer 55 I think) is in my future, but I wanted to try this with my current stove this season.

This is a followup to say thanks to Berlin for his advice both in this thread and via PM. I'm very successfully burning bit lump and wood at night and consequently maintaining plenty of heat output to avoid the 2 AM feeding of my stove. Now if I can just learn to leave the stove alone instead of tending it early in the morning!

In case anyone is interested I still allow my stove to go to wood coals around 10:00 pm, then throroughly agitate the ash out with my ash hoe, place 2 small splits on either side of the firebox and load around 20-25 lbs of lump bit in between the splits. I immediately load the stove full of Hickory splits on/around the coal, close the feed door & leave the ash door cracked til the load is well ignited & the wood charred. I then close the MPD about half way & let the bimetallic thermostat run it til morning. I have determined the bigger the lump the better up to about football size.

Hi, i'm a new b on here. just wanted to know if i can do this with a Hotblast 1557M (from US Stove)? any help would be appreciated. thanks

Berlin wrote:it should work fine w/ bit, but you'll have more ash, if you have an ashpan it's not a big concern. i would reccomend putting the largest size coal you can find under the wood before you go to bed and then loading it full, coal on bottom wood on top. you should be able to have enough coals left to refire it easily the next morning. soot? well that depends on three factors, the coal (how much soot the coal produces is not necessarily related to how "good" or "bad" the coal is but simply it's burning characteristics and volitile content) and how much coal you are burning vs. wood and how your appliance burns it. with bit coal you will have soot produced and you may have a few small pieces outside around/downwind of the stack that will only really be noticeable on snow; this soot is NOT harmfull to anything, paint, auto's etc. and will wash away with rain. If you have bitchy neighbors real close with white cars parked right under your chimney- bituminous coal may not be for you. another alternative would be to buy a bituminous stoker stove and heat with coal only - you would be able to heat an average home for under $500/year with bituminous coal, and, because it's a stoker, you won't have to tend it often and it will produce almost no soot/smoke. I know someone selling an almost new stokermatic in southern ohio for less than $1000

It should work fairly well. You will probably burn bit coal even better than his wood circulator. If I'm not mistaken, your 1557 has shaker grates.

I believe you advised you're trying anthracite on another website??? If so, I'm no help as I only use Bit. I think if you search under the hand fired forums you'll find lots of threads about your unit. With shaker grates and obvious access to coal, have you thought about switching to coal altogether?