My Coal Usage

coalnewbie wrote:

The bride of 30 years must of felt sorry for me to get rid of a perfectly good stove, to have it easier.

These modern coal stoves are sooo efficient and so easy to care for I am sooo spoiled. I salivate over Nortcans stove and Williams baseburner and may even take a trip to Emories and Dougs shops to drool some more, but the bottom line is I'm too lazy, old, warm and cozy to change anything about my stoves. Perhaps I will buy a Nortcan type stove and put a red light in it. That way I can dream that one day I will install it.

Sounds just like me! Lazy,old,warm and cozy.

2001Sierra wrote:Many years ago. The early eighties I graphed my oil usage, and compared it to my coal usage. The oil usage dropped off the graph, deliveries went from every 20 days in the dead of winter to 60 or 90 days. Since then I have educated myself on many levels of solid fuel heating. We now get 150 gallons or less once a year thanks to even more efficencies gained by the new Keystoker 90. Yea the old man finally got a Stoker after 28 years with a Buderus hand fed. The bride of 30 years must of felt sorry for me to get rid of a perfectly good stove, to have it easier. I will admit power outages are an issue, but if I am home we have it covered.

I thought about a stoker, but I have always been independent. I have a generator and it is only used for refrigerator and lights and usually not needed right away. I like the hand fed stoves because they are so dependable, and the odds of anything going wrong are very slim. The fewer moving parts the better. As long as my body holds out I think I will always have one.

Uglysquirrel wrote:Zero on my end, may start end of next week when this sauna ends.

It looks like tonight might kick off the start of some cool weather. Are you going to start your stove tonight?

Just fired mine up again this morning. Was 55° out at 6 am ... and by 9 it was 45°, windy, and falling like a rock.

Since I let mine go out so often, I found the effortless trick to restart.

Just leave all the ash/unburnt crap in there. Poke & shake to get the fine stuff out. Throw a layer or 2 of coal on top, dig a space in the center for 2 HANDFULS of charcoal, add more coal to top of charcoal all the way around. Douse with fuel of your choice & light. Once it's going, throw a layer across the whole thing. Fire lit.

Takes a bit longer to catch this way, but requires zero effort & saves cash on charcoal. The better your draft, the quicker it will take. 2 bags will last me 10 years at this rate. I've already started the fire 4 times & the bag is still full to the brim.

(Spelling edit)

SMITTY wrote:Just fired mine up again this morning. Was 55° out at 6 am ... and by 9 it was 45°, windy, and falling like a rock.

Since I let mine go out so often, I found the effortless trick to restart.

Just leave all the ash/unburnt crap in there. Poke & shake to get the fine stuff out. Throw a layer or 2 of coal on top, dig a space in the center for 2 HANDFULS of charcoal, add more coal to top of charcoal all the way around. Douse will fuel of your choice & light. Once it's going, throw a layer across the whole thing. Fire lit.

Takes a bit longer to catch this way, but requires zero effort & saves cash on charcoal. The better your draft, the quicker it will take. 2 bags will last me 10 years at this rate. I've already started the fire 4 times & the bag is still full to the brim.

Is that 2 bags of charcoal or 2 bags of coal?

lowfog01 wrote: I'd have to dig out the old bed and start fresh with about 40 or 50 lbs of new coal.

I let my stoves go out a lot, mostly on purpose. I usually don't clean them out before relighting. I shake down til I hear or see some unburned coal. Then I build the new fire on top of what is left on the grates. Much of it will end up burning. It makes more sense than trying to pick out the unburned coal or throwing it away. Let the fire sort it out.

"How much do you figure you saved so far by keeping your stove running as compared to oil." I save all of it. I threw my oil boiler out the back door. I'm not sure if I will dig a hole and bury it or take it to the scrap yard some day.

Uglysquirrel wrote:

EasyRay wrote:I think Bruce (uglysquirrel) must be very frugal. When we were at the Fall Fest, I think I heard a squeaking sound when he was walking.

HEY!!!

The no tree southern exposure plus some energy reduction stuff in the house helps retain the (this is top secret) body heat generated by several dogs. After all, why do you think I have them?

For a minute I thought you were going to tell them about the missing fuel rods from Millstone!

Coke, ya had to let the cat out of the bag, I told you to wait until the graphite shields were hydroformed and bolted in.

Now I'm forced to go to alternative fuel plan B.

oh, sorrry, "DOG" out of the bag ......(my dog Rosie did'nt like the "cat" bag thing.....)..sorrrryy Rose.....

cokehead wrote:"How much do you figure you saved so far by keeping your stove running as compared to oil." I save all of it. I threw my oil boiler out the back door. I'm not sure if I will dig a hole and bury it or take it to the scrap yard some day.

I would take it to the scrap yard. This way you can get a little return on what you spent on oil. Scrap prices are also higher.

Uglysquirrel wrote:Coke, ya had to let the cat out of the bag, I told you to wait until the graphite shields were hydroformed and bolted in.

Now I'm forced to go to alternative fuel plan B.

Did you implement plan B and start that stoker yet?

Easy, plan B has commenced, the withdrawal of not seeing the blue flame was just tooooo much.

Running 185 watts thru the Kill-a -Watt.

Mine has been running at minimal for 2 weeks (too humid w/o) using 1/2 bag per day. I think we had 1 cold day that ate 1 bag. I start my coal using mind-power (it takes a while as I have a weak mind)

pretty slow in here i guess, but then again so has this wimpy winter.

I go through about 20-30lbs a day into the hopper and up to 40 on super cold days. Still fine tuning the use of my little VC Resolute II coal stove. Going to rebuild it this summer and re-gasket everything to tighten it up some more. So far, side-draft burning seems to be working well and will keep a solid 450 degrees for 10-12 hours before it slowly falls off by the time i get home in the afternoon. Finally got to crank it up on sunday and monday when it was single digits.

My neighborhood cannot use fuels of any kind so the few of us that had stoves before that restriction got lucky. Neighborhood is 100% electric and the first year i lived there i was dying with a $450 electric bill each month that would barely drop to $375 if it was warmer and we turned it down to 63. Last year i spend ~$350 on coal to heat the home 95% of the entire winter season aside from when we traveled. I consider these things black gold with how much money anthracite has saved me.