Missionary in Albania Needs Some Advice.

Hello Everyone,

I work in Albania and need some advice on coal. I know I know, broad topic. Here's the deal, I have a stove (Alfa Plam TERM 20 http://www.alfaplam.rs/en/products/details/47) and it is rated to burn wood and coal. This stove is a boiler stove and provides heat to our kitchen, bedroom and my girls room. I have struggled to keep the temps up during the cold parts of the year here and would like to give coal a try as the stove is rated for more KW when burning coal. After lurking on this board for a bit I have been encouraged by the consistency and heat output you all seem to experience from burning coal.

Ok so here is my question. I have tracked down a guy here who sells "coal" or charcoal from rocks as it is loosely translated. But Albanias are not familiar with the type of stove I have (which is designed to burn coal) and are telling me that if I burn coal inside I will get headaches and bad things will happen. There are two qualities of coal here (simply called good and bad...) So what should I look for? Are there certain types of coal that simply should not be burned indoors even in a properly designed stove? I would like to keep my family warm without killing all of us so let me know what to look out for I have a meeting with the guy tomorrow to get a bit to test, but I am a little wary.

Feel free to ask follow up questions if you need more info.

Thanks,
Andrew LaSavio
http://www.lasavio.com

A lot of misconceptions about coal floating about. A good stove with proper chimney is in my opinion--very safe-- could you post some pix of the stove & chimney (projected) set up?? A pix of what you are referring to as GOOD/BAD rock--a pix is worth a thousand words. Welcome to the FORUM my friends---what kind of winters do you have in Albania???

Do you have a Carbom Monoxide detector?

Is the stove pipe going to the chimney in good condition?

Do you have a sound chimney?

Test out the stove with "good" coal.

If the local guy is selling coal, someone is buying. See who's buying "good" coal and check out their setup(s)

First off you need to see what they mean by good and bad coal. I can tell you up front that there is no anthracite coal in that region. Most of the coal deposits are lignite (brown coal) and sub-bituminous is probably the "good" coal which is a relative term to the lignite combustble dirt. We have some members who do burn sub-bit coal. Kielanders and Short Bus up in Alaska are going to be your best bet for information about burning that type coal.

Start a wood fire and after it has burned down to a good hot bed of glowing charcoal throw a few lumps of your coal on the fire. Soft coal will burn with yellow flames and hard coal with blue.

As Steve has said you most likely have soft coal. Yellow flames are particles of burning carbon and will cause smoke and soot if unburned. It will probably need a lot of air over the fire. Start with burning a bit and slowly learn the properties of that particular coal and what works best if at all.

The dancing girl in the video is very nice but does not give much information about the stove.

franco b wrote: The dancing girl in the video is very nice but does not give much information about the stove.

My instincts do not deceive me, I saw it but didn't bother clicking it.

Having lived over that way for a number of years, I am thinking that the "bad" coal that can give you headaches is used in open fires that are put in pans and typically put under tables with draped heavy cloths so you can stay warm. These are not vented, but just open burning embers. I can imagine there would be "good" and "bad" coal for those. If your stove is vented through a chimney, you will have no problem inside your house with either in that respect.

dj

Thanks all,

I have received some samples of the coal. Yesterday after driving through a rundown village and hollering to passersby asking where the guy who sells coal lives we found him. Well actually we found his house and after walking around the yard yelling his name we walked around the back of the house and roused him. Today we drove to the collapsing communist mine where the coal comes from. There is no actual coal store here, just an old non-operating mine where the guy literally climbed down inside to bring me back some hunks for testing. If I want to buy some they will send miners in and actually pull it out of the ground... I managed to snap a few pictures of the process on my cell phone just in case you are interested:-)
To answer some questions.

[*]I will include pictures of the stove and smoke pipe in this reply at the bottom. I believe the stove is in good condition, I replaced all the rope seals this year and I have also sealed the stove-pipe with high temp silicone and foil tape (the leaks you see in the picture are no longer relevant.) The stovepipe is connected to a large rectangular chimney that extends well above the house. (I paid to have a sheet metal insert made that is fitted in the chimney at the top of the house to increase the draft)
[*]There are also pictures of the coal at the end of this post. How small should I make the final coal pieces once I break them up?
[*]Yes I have a carbon monoxide detector. (I brought several of them from the states because you cant buy them here.)
[*]There are no good setups here for me to look at. I have never seen anyone burn coal here and the state of the mine tells me there is not much interest. The coal was mined during communist times to fire factories and since the collapse has been basically inoperable for the most part.

Thanks for the welcome and all your replies. We'll see if this adventure is worth continuing...

Pictures

I'm not familiar with burning lignite or sub-bit, but as said before some of the guys in Alaska have experience with it. Soooo, hopefully they will chime in. The set up looks good & safe. If you were to go to upper right corner & type in "starting coal fire" & hit search. See what comes up. Thanx for the pix my friend. Have you tried lighting any of the chunks you got to help you identify the type you have there? I believe it's definatly soft (bitimus) break it up & put the fire to it. See what it does. Is your chimney/pipes good & clean???

freetown fred wrote:I'm not familiar with burning lignite or sub-bit, but as said before some of the guys in Alaska have experience with it. Soooo, hopefully they will chime in. The set up looks good & safe. If you were to go to upper right corner & type in "starting coal fire" & hit search. See what comes up. Thanx for the pix my friend. Have you tried lighting any of the chunks you got to help you identify the type you have there? I believe it's definatly soft (bitimus) break it up & put the fire to it. See what it does. Is your chimney/pipes good & clean???

Thanks Fred,

I have not tried burning any yet. Any idea what size the chunks should be before I throw them in? And yes the stove pipe is clean, as for the chimney itself I need to have that cleaned.

Andrew

I can't see the firebox or grates very well--I'm thinking about NUT size--you don't want it falling through the grates before it's burnt--sounds to me like you've got a go there Andrew. PS again--what kind of winters do you get in Albania??

freetown fred wrote:I can't see the firebox or grates very well--I'm thinking about NUT size--you don't want it falling through the grates before it's burnt--sounds to me like you've got a go there Andrew. PS again--what kind of winters do you get in Albania??

Well, I'll buy a sledge hammer and see how it goes As far as the winters go, not to bad compared to what many of you guys weather. Low teens to single digits during the cold spells and low-mid to upper 20's during the day. The problem is that most houses do not have insulation and are very cheaply built. I could see the sky through the roof slats in our rental when we moved in so I covered the whole ceiling with 1.5 inch hard foam insulation, I just screwed it right in to the ceiling boards... It helps a lot. But, making houses "tight" over here is unheard of (new construction is adding insulation to the brick walls but anything more than a few years new is just brick... usually with no air cavity, just plain cold). I grew up in the country and am an Eagle Scout, so I jury-rig what I can and it's been quite passable. My wife spent four years in this part of Albania before we were married and had a hard go of it. I promised her before we moved back that I would make sure she and our kids were warm during the winter.

Anyway, I'll get that coal busted up and take some pics of it burning.

Andrew

Only break enough coal for one trial...you may find that the larger the pieces, the more controllable the fire. Our resident expert on burning bituminous coal recommends that you burn the largest pieces that will fit in the stove:

How Big Is Too Big???

markviii wrote:Only break enough coal for one trial...you may find that the larger the pieces, the more controllable the fire. Our resident expert on burning bituminous coal recommends that you burn the largest pieces that will fit in the stove:

How Big Is Too Big???

Good reading thanks!

When I read the headline, I thought it was a phishing scam.

Cool that you got to see the mine itself.