Coal Cook Stove

dlj · Post by **dlj** » Mon. Nov. 01, 2010 10:10 pm

Short Bus wrote:Body of stove is 30" wide and 20" deep top is 30 1/2" from top to floor.

Also of note my coal is only 7500 BTU per pound

I guess I never relized how small that stove is.

I filled it full every night when I went to bed, I'd wake up cold, rekindle fire, set whistling tea pot on top when the teapot woke me up I would fill the stove with coal, clamp down the air some, to bed and repeat, get up at 5:30 rekindle, go to work for ten hours, return to cabin low 40s, somtimes high 30s, stoke it up make it glow till bed time. Burned about 12 tons that winter, never was comfortable, I was taking a summer cabin through the winter, sheets would freeze to the floor from the frost from my breath, cabin was up on blocks because we never set it on a foundation or the ground, I bought a twelve pack of Henery Whineharts for Christmas, froze and broke on the floor first night. Should have just rented a place that winter but I'm single and cheap.

I had just come here because my dad rolled his truck, before I could leave I was driving mixer truck, I was headed home at the end of October that year, but ten days before leaving I landed a State job, just to late in the year to work on the major housing problems I had, single didgets are the norm in November here.

If I hadn't done it, I'd have nothing to talk about , Hopfully I'm smarter now

Short bus, I have to agree, a lot of cook stoves don't have a fire box big enough to really work well for heating. They were meant to cook on... What the heck kind of coal did you have that only had 7500 BTUs per pound? Must have been lignite, good grief, you were just about burning peat... I wonder how you would have done with some good anthracite...

dj

mason coal burner · Post by **mason coal burner** » Mon. Nov. 01, 2010 10:26 pm

how can you check for cracks . I think I remember hearing putting a flashlight inside looking for light to come out cracks or maybe lighting a wood fire and closing MPD and see where it smokes ? any idea how big the fire box would be in a large cook stove ?

rockwood · Post by **rockwood** » Tue. Nov. 02, 2010 12:06 am

Just measured my malleable monarch, it's about the same size as Shortbus'.
It's 34" wide 25" deep and 30" tall.
Firebox is cast iron, about 16" long 9" deep and 8" wide.
The fireboxes on most cookstoves are small/shallow and were built that way so the fire is close to the cooking surface. They do make lots of heat but as shortbus mentioned, they can require frequent tending.
Setting a light in the stove and shutting off the lights in the room is a good way to look for cracks/gaps.
Some of these cookstoves have asbestos panels in them. Coating the asbestos with high temp stove paint can take care of it but it's just something to keep in mind.

Short Bus · Post by **Short Bus** » Tue. Nov. 02, 2010 1:55 am

They call it subbituminous, it's like dirt but different, even the web site for Usibeli Coal mine claims 25% water.
**Broken Link(s) Removed**I see they are calling it 7650 BTU per pound now, and 27% water.
The coal trains go by my house about 700 feet away, I chuckle every fourth 100 ton car is a 100 tons of water.
I swear that if you put too much coal on a small fire it sweats and puts the fire out.
We have very low humidity here and I put some on a scale and after about two weeks on my kitchen table it lost 20% of it's weight, I understand if exposed to humidity it picks up the water again, and since it gets shipped out of Alaska by barge it picks the water back up. In the forties and fifties experiments were done to dry the coal and seal it with diesel oil, but that gets expensive.
I think if you got the water out of it, the BTU rating would be much better since every pound has over four ounces of water in it, how many BTU to vaporize four ounces of water?
65$/ton get happy.

The power plant in Healy puts out a columb of water vapor, in the twenty below weather, I imagine it snows in that cloud.

More wagging less bark'in

This stove look familliar?
Monach Mallable, Mallable Iron Range Co, Bever Dam Wisconsin

rockwood · Post by **rockwood** » Tue. Nov. 02, 2010 10:23 am

My stove is a later model with white ceramic enamel on the front and sides. It also has a shelf above the cooking surface.

Short Bus wrote:I put some on a scale and after about two weeks on my kitchen table it lost 20% of it's weight

Wow!
So you have to keep this coal covered like firewood an not let it get rained on?

That's different compared to the coal we have here, it doesn't soak up water like that. I've had my coal get rained/snowed on and I'm able to just brush the snow off and it burns just the same as coal from a dry bin.

Short Bus wrote:how many BTU to vaporize four ounces of water

I don't know that but will this coal soak up more moisture like firewood.....in other words, if the coal has 27% moisture, then it gets wet/rained on, will it soak up even more?
That 3rd photo is really nice. I need to post some photos I took in AK this past summer.

Sting · Post by **Sting** » Tue. Nov. 02, 2010 11:03 am

I like your AK adventure stories Short Bus

Thanks for sharing.

Short Bus · Post by **Short Bus** » Tue. Nov. 02, 2010 10:41 pm

I don't think that rain effects this coal much, just as long as it can drain, don't want a pool in the bottom of your coal bin.
I think that last picture was at about 10:am around the shortest day of the year.

I'm starting to wonder why there dosn't seam to be any standard small coal sizes in Bituminous, Coal Burner posted some standard sizes for Bituminous and they stoped around 1 inch I think. I wonder if the volitals oxidize away at the small sizes or if the piles spontainiously combust, I've seen the pile of small reject where I get my coal and it has been steaming somtimes. Based on EFM's testing and Liesure Line having a dealer in Montana, I wonder if Bituminous would work if it could be sold and stored in small sizes. But maybe the low BTU feature requires more fuel to the burn pot, so it may as well be bigger pieces, this coal in a 100,000 BTU anthricite burner might only be a 60,000 BTU heater with 7,600 BTU per pound. just rambiling.

dlj · Post by **dlj** » Tue. Nov. 02, 2010 10:53 pm

Short Bus wrote:They call it subbituminous, it's like dirt but different, even the web site for Usibeli Coal mine claims 25% water.
**Broken Link(s) Removed**I see they are calling it 7650 BTU per pound now, and 27% water.
This stove look familliar?
Monach Mallable, Mallable Iron Range Co, Bever Dam Wisconsin

Short bus, I'm looking at an older standard of ASTM D388 which is how to classify coals. I'd have to go get the most recent to see if the categories changed, but that doesn't usually happen. D388 states that subbituminous C coal - what your link is claiming it has- that grade of coal has to have BTU/lb between 8300 and 9500. Lignite A has 6300 to 8300 BTU's per pound. There must be something I'm missing. But in any case, compare that to Anthracite that runs pretty much double those BTUs. I'd have to fill my Glenwood up to the top to get a full day burn with the stuff you're talking about.. don't even know if I could burn it that way...Glad I'm in anthracite country...

The cook stove I used to have in my house came out of an old hotel. It was probably twice the size of the one you've got in your photo...

dj

rockwood · Post by **rockwood** » Tue. Nov. 02, 2010 11:15 pm

Short Bus wrote:I'm starting to wonder why there dosn't seam to be any standard small coal sizes in Bituminous

Probably just no demand for it I would guess.
I've only seen two sizes of coal around here (Utah/Colorado) my whole life, lump and stoker. You could get oiled or washed stoker coal. Slack coal is a term I would hear from time to time but as far as I know it's just another term for stoker coal but with higher percentage of fines.

You've got me thinking now....I don't know why some anthracite stokers use smaller size auger/feedscrew...? Why not have a uniform size for all coal? I'm not sure if anthracite stokers have always been smaller than the typical stokers that I'm familiar with (like yours) or if they were developed later...?

endinmaine · Post by **endinmaine** » Thu. Nov. 04, 2010 6:08 pm

I have a Margin Gem from Canada and have been using it for over 2 years using both wood and coal. The specs say it will heat up to a 1900 sqft house. It does have a large capacity burn box for wood or coal , taking up to 60 lbs of nut coal on a full load. It does a great job in cooking and baking.

Charlie Z · Post by **Charlie Z** » Mon. Nov. 15, 2010 2:26 pm

In a perfect fit of insanity, my wife and I bought a reconditioned coal AGA from Moorland Cookers in the UK. We're re-doing the kitchen to handle the blue monster (1300lbs) and adding a chimney. We've included the "Companion" which adds a gas top and an electric oven for the summer. It's est. to burn 15lbs a day and is always lit/on. It's heavily insulated, so only a portion of the heat escapes into the room, but it will warm our cool kitchen, which is the only room our existing coal stove doesn't toast.

These are very common in Britain and are often converted to elec. or gas since they last forever. They're still made for elec, gas or kero.

- Charlie

Short Bus · Post by **Short Bus** » Mon. Nov. 15, 2010 3:04 pm

Nice !

Sting · Post by **Sting** » Mon. Nov. 15, 2010 3:23 pm

Charlie Z wrote:In a perfect fit of insanity, my wife and I bought a reconditioned coal AGA from Moorland Cookers in the UK.

I never considered this -- as I thought the import fee / tax / cost would exceed the value

rockwood · Post by **rockwood** » Mon. Nov. 15, 2010 3:50 pm

There are dealers in the US. There's a few dealers here in Utah.

Charlie Z · Post by **Charlie Z** » Wed. Nov. 17, 2010 5:09 pm

Yes, there are dealers around the US, but only for the elec and gas models. You pretty much have to go to Britain to get a "solid fuel" (coal) Aga. They stopped making them about 5 years ago; I could not afford a new one, anyway. (We bought this beast at the low point of the british pound 2 years ago, so that helped the cost a bit.)

The other 'new' option we looked at was the Waterford Stanley, which is sold as a wood stove here by Lehman's, but has a good coal grate available as a separate kit. Lehman's lists them here. Look around their site and you'll also see the Heartland "Artisan" and "Cookmaster" ranges, which are re-branded Rayburns.

Rayburn was AGA's arch competitor, but AGA bought out all its cooker and stove competitors over the past few years, including Rayburn, Waterford (Ireland) and my beloved Coalbrookdale. The Rayburn 200SFW burns "solid-fuel"(coal) and wood and is very common in British farmhouses. The one Lehman's sells as the "Heartland Artisan" is the Rayburn 300W, which has been redesigned to be wood-only; I'd bet it can be converted back to both with the right bits from england.

The cool thing with the AGA is you can add the "Companion" (AKA "Module"), which bolts to the side and add gas top and elec oven, even on our old one. Wife happy.

- Charlie

Coal Cook Stove

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