My Adventure With Bit Coal in My Parlor Stove

grizzly2 wrote:oros35,

I think I have discovered you main problem. After closely looking at the pictures you posted, I noticed that you have mounted your stove on the wall and are exhausting through the floor.

Heated concrete floor.... Isn't that how your supposed to do it?

Is that like a "downdraft" carburator?

Kevin

Tim, when you have bad bit coal, good anthracite's the clear winner, if you had gotten your hands on some good bituminous coal, things might have been different. comparing a bad grade of one coal to a good or decent grade of another doesn't give you a representation of all bituminous coals.

There's a lot of people that seem to think if they've tried one or two bit coals they've tried them all -nothing could be further from the truth. The large variation in bit coals means that, unlike anthracite, you have to look when step further when purchasing bit coal, and look at its properties, it's very simple, but few do it; rather they try some bit coal someone has available (usually for cheap/free) and then decide that it's crap, all bit coal burns like that, and is "not worth it", "garbage" or "dirtier and more of a PITA". It doesn't have to be that way, but if you take bad bit coal and, on top of that, use it in an appliance not well designed for it, it's likely to be a real PITA.

Ok so I think I have it figured out. Been burning KY Bit for a few weeks now. Major learning curve and I had to make some modifications to my stove, but with patience, I have been able to get the Bit to burn as well as Anthricite.

Keys to my success: I had to remove the bypass damper because it restricted the draft too much. The process to load and set the draft takes time and patience.

To keep the soot out of my house I have to get the draft built up strong before loading, and then load quick. It only takes a few seconds for the coal to light and start making heavy black smoke. I close the doors and give it lots of air and draft to heat and light the pile of coal. I watch the fire for 10-20 minutes this way keeping an eye on the temperature. It will easily make the stove glow red hot if you let it cook this way too long. Once the temps get real hot, I try to keep the barrel under 800, I start backing down the air first with the under fire air, then I set the recirc air (works like a baro), then cut the over fire air, then if needed close the pipe damper (Use the MPD to cut draft short term, but need to open back up once the fire has come to equilibrium at the heat output needed). Gotta be careful, many times I waited too long and had a red hot stove with smoke pumping out of gaps. I just had to wait for the fire to die some. A few times I didn't wait long enough and had a smouldering fire that never really caught and really sooted up the pipes. Once I plugged up the screen cap on the chimney this way. Had to smother the fire and go clean the chimney cap, it was 100% plugged.

So after much trial and error, I've got a loading and shaking pattern down that works.

One thing that I have noticed is that I am using way more coal. The amount of heat going up the chimney is much greater based on the pipe temps. I am also running the stove hotter to keep the soot under control. I think I am using twice the coal per pound than when I was burning Anthracite.

It's nice to know I can burn Bit in a pinch, but I will stick to Anthracite. I picked up 3 tons of UAE harmony nut at the beginning of the week, had to go east for something else so I brought a load home, so it's now sitting on the trailer ready to go. Gonna shut it down this weekend and clean the pipes and replace the recirc damper so I can switch back to Anthracite.

I'll probably toss a lump of Bit in the bottom after a good shake, and cover it with a good layer of Anthracite. That seemed to work pretty well before. It made coming back from an almost dead anthracite fire easy as the KY bit doesn't take much to light.

Back to Burning Anthracite . picked up 3 ton of UAE Harmony and boy is it some nice coal.

It was a fun experiment, but nothing beats some clean burning coal, no smell, no smoke, just very even hot heat. I can tell that my efficiency has gone back up. Stove temps 700 pipe temps 200 or less.

Although I do miss the smoke out of the chimney. Compared to my neighbors who burn wood, it looks like I got lazy and quit burning!!

I still have a ton to play with at some point. Next experiment, mixing Antracite with Bit.