Burning bituminous coal in an anthracite stove???

I have been looking at stoves now for sometime now and have decided i want one.
I have a single level home that is about 1800 sq ft. I am going to place the stove in the mid way point in my home and plan on pushing and drawing with my ceiling fans.(house has a fairly open layout) I don't think that will be a probem.
I am leaning towards or considering the harman tlc 2000
1 of my main question however is can i burn a high grade of or any for that matter of bituminous coal in this stove or do i have to burn just the anthracite. And if so what problems could or could not ariase?
I live in the base of the eastern pan handle of west virgiana around fairmont.I could really use some help with this one fellers. any help/advice/ past experiance would be more than appreciated.
thanks

Hello H8, take a look at this thread below:

http://nepacrossroads.com/viewtopic.php?t=1604

It describes a few of the issues with burning bituminous in a stove in your house.

You CAN bur Bitum in your house, and with a lot of learning, you will get to a point where you don't get much smoke and soot in the room when you reload the stove with fresh coal.

The TLC 2000 is a nice stove with a big front 'window'. This glass will be solidly black within the first hour or two of burning Bitum coal, and you will be constantly trying to keep it clean.

My experience with burning bitum was in a boiler located in a outbuilding. If I went through the 'learning experiences' with a stove in my house, I would have had to repaint numerous times, and buy new furniture and carpeting at least once, probably twice.

What type, size and height chimney do you have?? If you have a really tall chimney that will have a very strong draft, this will help a lot with keeping the soot out of your house.

An almost-neighbor of yours is a forum member: ktm rider . He has an AHS multifuel boiler in his detached shop/garage. He pipes the hot water underground into the house to be used to warm his big house. He may chime in with his opinions of burning Bitum in your house.

If I were to get a stove for burning Bitum, I'd stay away from a glass door, and get a stove that has an extra-deep firebox, and an extra large ashpan. It must be hooked to a very good chimney.

Read all you can on the Bituminous coal threads. You will find people redesigning stoves, building new stoves from scratch, and figuring out how to best burn Bitum.

Hope this helps.

greg L

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about the only nationally available bituminous burning stove is a hand-loaded VC Vigilant. it burnse mid and low vol bituminous coal nicely. most importantly it's top loading, which is a must for any coal stove IMHO because it allowes you to simply dump a bucket of coal into the stove, so there is no dust created from shoveling in coal

"You CAN bur Bitum in your house, and with a lot of learning, you will get to a point where you don't get much smoke and soot in the room when you reload the stove with fresh coal."

a top loading stove with good draft and remembering never (you'll only make this mistake once) to open the loading doors within 1/2 hour to an hour of a fresh load of coal will pretty much eliminate any chance of ANY smoke/soot in the house. as i've mentioned before i heat with high vol bituminous, i have NO smoke/soot in the house. i know greg likes his anthricite, but some bituminous coals burn very nicely with the proper equiptment, look at the UK and much of eastern europe, Nova scotia, new zealand, and australia, heating with soft coals are common place and it's all done w/out smoke or soot in the living space.

I burned bituminous coal when I was stationed in England in the USAF 20 years ago. My house had a coal fireplace. The house had FHW natural gas for its primary heat source; but, I burned coal in the fireplace for the "fun of it..." The yellow sulfur laden smoke rolled off the coal like crazy! After I got the fire burning it was really nice and threw off tons of heat. I wouldn't want to be down wind though...

I burn bit coal daily in my Harman Mark II. It works just fine. I have no smell or smoke issues at all.It doesn't really have the yellowish/green smoke that everyone always talks about. I should tell you that the Bituminous coal that I burn is usually of very high quality. It only smokes for 3-4 minutes when first loaded and then it isn't even that much smoke all that bad. I also burn it in my boiler in the garage, which is my main heat source.

Believe me, if there was any smell from the coal at all inside the house, my wife would instantly let me know.