Blaschak Coal

Welcome to the FORUM my friend. Soooo, what did you learn from your Blaschak experience compared to other bagged coal??

HighHopes wrote:I emptied one of the bags onto black plastic to sit out in the warm sun to dry. We've had nice, dry 82 deg F weather in Wilmington, DE today. After drying in the sun all day, the coal looked and felt dry, I rebagged the coal and weighed it. It weighed 37.2 lbs. I did not loose any coal in the process. I have not weighed the other three bags that I've opened.

please keep us posted, and weigh your other 3 bags and let us know what you find. could be very interesting...

I have been buying bags of Blaschak also and noticed the wet bags. I started stacking them two-by-two up against the garage wall and then I stick a screwdriver in the bottom of the bag to let the water drain out. We'll see if that helps because I don't want wet coal in the hopper but I bet it keeps the dust down...lol

dutch wrote:
please keep us posted, and weigh your other 3 bags and let us know what you find. could be very interesting...

Interesting only if you weigh it first..
Maybe it was, but if it wasn't, you do not know that you had 40# to begin with...

If you are saying there is ~3# of water in a bag,
that is about 15 gallons in a ton..
Seems high... I dunno could be I guess....

Dan

i was more concerned with the bag weight regardless of water,
8lbs a gallon, so 3 lbs is almost a half gallon of water, no way that
could be contained in their bag with the vent holes,, right???

Yea, I don't get all this. I've bought a few bags in my day--of Blaschak Nut and yes, it was damper then the bulk I normally get, but all this quarts & gallon talk is just real peculiar--I guess the bottom line is---if you're not happy with one brand, use another. I know for a fact that Blaschak does a real good packing job & the damp that I've seen is more from sweating then anything else--but---water pouring out??????????? HEy, where did high hopes go??

Yeah water poured out of mine ... but that's because all the pallets sat outside covered in moisture-trapping plastic, through a hurricane AND a tropical storm. More rain than has been seen in these parts for decades. Plus I think the dealer stored them outside as well .... and then the 500 mile trek to MA on a flatbed ..... lots o' opportunities for moisture to get in & not get out.

I hear that & agree with you 100% I guess I'm just a kinda Blaschak advocate being I've never had any problems with their coal--except like you said my friend--when it leaves Blaschak--who the hell knows what goes on.

I just put 4 tons in my basement, and got a puddle maybe the size
of a pie plate. Came from a couple of bags.
All of the coal comes covered and wrapped. (to us anyway).
Like Fred says, there is a lot of sweating, but it comes from being wrapped,
and the moisture not having anyplace to go..
The outside of the bags were wet, the inside, not bad at all.
We also delivered 4 tons to a guy that has a bin, so we unbagged it,
and it was damp.. but no significant water..
(this was nut BTW... we have noticed the rice IS WET!, but that is from the process
to keep the dust down)

As for the weight, I'd weigh a few bags to get an average.
also, did you use a bathroom scale?

Dan

Chuck_Steak wrote:As for the weight, I'd weigh a few bags to get an average.
also, did you use a bathroom scale?

Dan

Good point. Anyone trying to determine if the the bag contains 40 lbs or not would need to weigh quite a few bags, and should use a calibrated scale/balance.

I got about 8 ton in bags have not weighed. Just glad the LP man is not rapping me. Coal is like 1/4 of what the LP cost.

One of the reasons why there is more water in rice coal than in pea or nut is because the surface area of the rice is so much greater. The water clings to the surface of the coal. This why you will have a harder time drying out rice coal than pea or nut.

For me bagged coal has always been wetter than bulk. The holes in the blaschak bags are not to let moisture in or out but to vent the bag while filling it and stacking it. Once water gets in there it will not get out. Fiber weave bags breath more than the plastic ones and they do drain easier.

When I got my Blaschak coal this spring, the bags were dripping water like a lot of you experienced. Now that I am burning, the coal is nice and damp inside the bags which cuts coal dust out of the equation when emptying the bags. I say, wet is better!!!

WNYRob wrote:... wet is better!!!

Except when the storage temperature drops too low and freezes half the bag into a solid block. Or when there is an actual pool of water in with the coal, and you dump it into the stove and out comes a big whoosh of steam.

Blaschak coal comes out of the breaker dripping wet. I watch drivers drain water before scaling full. Some of these trucks owned by blaschak are likely delivering to the bagging operation. I just shoveled a ton of blaschak today. All of it wet. I will move onto the red ash coal when winter hits us.