Warm Morning Stoves

I have 3 Warm Morning stoves. I am presently using a 523 with some bit coal that I got with it at the auction. The firebricks are in decent shape and I have cleaned the flues. The coal I got is an assortment of large chunks. 5" dia to small bits. My apparent problem is that they seem to fuze togather and bridge above the grate. I also have some Blashek stove coal that I will try soon. My question is what size and type of coal will give the best results in this stove. I am not too familiar with soft coal and would prefer to use hard coal due to the oder and smoke from soft. I also have a 420 model warm morning that I am getting ready. I had to work on the wife extensively to get this far with coal and need to do this right. If the stove will be happy with anthracite I have a very good supply so that would be great. The 523 will stay in the shop so the smell is not a problem. How about the difference in draft setting for bit versus anthracite? I also came into posession of a Weso coal stove. I don't know yet if that is a good thing or not. Seems like an awfully small fire pot and not much of a shaker system. Any help or advise would sure be appreciated. My experience with coal was on the Canadian line in NY with an old hot air coal furnace hand stoked. I loved it. Thanks in advance for any and all inputs.

Welcome coalturkey , I have never burned hard coal but I burn plenty of bit coal in my warm morning 521. This is what I have learned, keep it full , fill it to the top of the firebrick with coal and it will do better. The bridging of the coal is totally normal and and a result of the way it turns the coal into coke. I use a poker after all of the volatiles have burned off ie smoke and yellow flames and break it up good, shake down ashes and add coal on top of super hot burning coke. I never change my draft, just keep the bottom draft barely open overfire air slid closed. If you do adjust draft do it slowly as it takes a while to respond . I have a manual damper to help throttle it back if going too hot and baro damper mostly so I can see what my pipe looks like also a heat reclaimer. But none of this helps you if you are burning anthracite !

I am running a 414A and using blaschak anthracite stove and nut. I start with a small fire of kindling and once it's going good I add about 8 stove chunks over the fire. Once the chunks have started to glow I add a small layer of nut. Once the nut is glowing well I fill the stove to about and inch to two inches below the top of the fire brick. I leave the bottom damper all te way open and then close the top. Once you see the flames coming out of the flues and you have the stove running at the desired temperature, you set the bottom damper back until it holds the temperature you want. You add more air or reduce it from there with the bottom damper to lower or raise temperature. And as others have said, keep the stove full and you shouldnt have any problems.

It lasted all night and it burned down to a nice ash. I was surprised. Anyway, I filled it up with bit again and it ran all day and is still running tonight, One thing I noticed is the coal gets somewhat "gooey". Maybe why they call it bituminous? Anyway, it is working great and puts out a pile of heat. Now I need to try the anthracite. Thanks for all the help.

coalturkey wrote:It lasted all night and it burned down to a nice ash. I was surprised. Anyway, I filled it up with bit again and it ran all day and is still running tonight, One thing I noticed is the coal gets somewhat "gooey". Maybe why they call it bituminous? Anyway, it is working great and puts out a pile of heat. Now I need to try the anthracite. Thanks for all the help.

The WM will work just great with the Anthracite. I see you are running the Big Boy of the WM stoves with a 100lbs coal capacity. You are on the right track with why they call it bituminous. It contains a tar like substance called bitumen.

check out these threads, it has a link to the user manuals: Warm Morning Information and New Hitzer 82UL
Manual for Locke Warm Morning Model 400 ???

another board member listed all these:

WNY wrote:Do a search for WARM MORNING....numerous threads on these stoves. Some of these may help you.

The Care and Feeding of a Warm Morning Stove

Warm Morning Normal Operating Temp?

What Size Coal Warm Morning 400?

Too Early to Fire Warm Morning?

Locke 460C Warm Morning

Enjoy...

we are pretty close to each other, where were you getting the bituminous from? I need a good source of bit coal for smithing.

I got a line on 100 or so tons of coal. I think it is anthracite stove size but I haven't got a good sample of it yet. The soft coal I got at the auction that I bought the stove at. $15 for the stove and $10 for about 1000 lbs of coal. If I get the anthracite, I will sell a bunch of it. I have the storage sheds and a farm scale so it will work out good I think. We'll see. I have a friend who is a blacksmith and I will ask him where he gets his coal and let you know. Mike

coalturkey wrote:I got a line on 100 or so tons of coal. I think it is anthracite stove size but I haven't got a good sample of it yet. The soft coal I got at the auction that I bought the stove at. $15 for the stove and $10 for about 1000 lbs of coal. If I get the anthracite, I will sell a bunch of it. I have the storage sheds and a farm scale so it will work out good I think. We'll see. I have a friend who is a blacksmith and I will ask him where he gets his coal and let you know. Mike

If you want to sell any of the anthracite, I'll definitely buy a good deal of it! I'll send you a message.

I am wondering if my stove would burn anthracite better if the 4 flues were plugged. Anthracite should burn from the bottom through to the top right? I sure am enjoying this stove, it's like an affair.

coalturkey wrote:I am wondering if my stove would burn anthracite better if the 4 flues were plugged. Anthracite should burn from the bottom through to the top right? I sure am enjoying this stove, it's like an affair.

Do not plug the flues. The stove can burn Anthracite and Bituminous and wood. As it was stated to me in other warm morning post, that the 4 flues help to burn off all the volatiles in bit coal quickly. When you have the fire set right, if you open the door slightly or the top damper and take a peak, there should be flames coming out of the four flues and blue ladies on top of the coals, if she's filled close to the top. Anthracite and Bituminous all burn from the bottom to the top. Where it gets different is controlling the burn rate by smaller or bigger sizes with anthracite is the opposite of Bituminous. Correct me if I am wrong but the larger the size anthracite, the more air the fire can get so you get a faster burn, so you use smaller anthracite sizes such as nut and smaller for a slower burn. With Bituminous it is the opposite.

*found the qoute.

LsFarm wrote:You may be surprised to find how well that Warm Morning stove burns Bituminous coal, just north of you in Maryland, over near Frostberg there are many Bit mines selling coal at ~$80/ton bulk.

The Warm Morning was designed to burn Bit coal, it has unique hollow corner firebrick that create preheated secondary air passageways, these burn off the volitiles in Bit coal, reducing or eliminating excess smoke. The lower price and shorter distance to the mines may make Bit a serious contender for your solid fuel needs.

Greg L

Greg,
80$/ton is a gift, should be nice to heat a house at that price a ton! Does bit have the same BTU output and burn time as anthracite? And do they also sell it bagged?
Thanks

nortcan wrote:Greg,
80$/ton is a gift, should be nice to heat a house at that price a ton! Does bit have the same BTU output and burn time as anthracite? And do they also sell it bagged?
Thanks

Thank you for asking that question, Nortcan! Was about to ask the same.... burn times would interest me most. According to what Berlin wrote in another thread in the Bituminous forum Bit coal such as KY lump coal (if I remember correctly) can reach the BTU content of Anthracite, other products may contain significantly less...
@ nortcan: by the way: just payed €2000 the other day as deposit for the Danish Beauty. Wanna make sure no one buys it while I´m struggling with the state office for the presevation of historical monuments.... they don´t want to give me permission to open the sealed chimney

I think you will also find that Berlin stated that the only way to burn bit. clean is with an under fed stoker. That makes sense since a stoker can tailor the feed rate to cope with the large volume of volatile gasses; something a batch fed stove cannot do. The same way a pellet stove burns wood; a little at a time very hot.

Looking forward to a report of how the stove works if you can get the regulations sorted out.

nortcan wrote:Greg,
80$/ton is a gift, should be nice to heat a house at that price a ton! Does bit have the same BTU output and burn time as anthracite? And do they also sell it bagged?
Thanks

An average bit coal from will be around the same btu/lb as anthracite: 12,500, very few bit coals are below that and the ones that are, are only a little below it: you will find some coals in the 11,500 range. Many bit coals will meet or exceed anthracite's btu/lb but a few will do it by a large margin. Certain coals from southern WV, parts of Eastern KY and Virgina/Maryland can exceed 14,000btu/lb with select few breaking the 15,000btu/lb mark.

A good bit coal will have less ash. typically when you cross into the 13,000 BTU range the ash will be less than 8% and many bit coals have ash easily in the single digits. A good eastern KY coal will have around 14,000btu/lb and around 4-6% ash.

Burn times are similar, with certain coals and their tendency off-gas quickly you may lose some of the BTU's fast under certain conditions and have shorter burn-times. With many of the better coals the burn times will be similar to a bit longer based on the additional BTU's available.

The downside to any bit coal fired in a hand-fired appliance (even the good ones like a warm-morning) is that you will have some smoke from the chimney. The amount is dependent on the coal, the technique, and the appliance it's being burned in, but you will always have some. If you live in a relatively rural area and you have a good bit coal available, hand-firing bit coal is the way to go. If you have access to inexpensive bit coal in pea or small stoker size, a bit stoker will burn it smoke-free.

the properties of Bit coal is similar to the IQ scores of men vs. women. Anthracite is the women. Bit coal is the men. similar mean scores, but with two different standard deviations. anthracite is clustered around the mean, bit coal is spread out and has excellent coal but also many poor performers.
- What this means is that "just any" bit coal won't perform the way you would want it to. A good bit coal is phenomenal, a poor bit coal is worthless.

Ideally for hand-firing you want something like this: large lump over 12,500btu/lb, ash under 10%, sulfur under 3% (will reduce pyritic iron and clinkers) and most importantly coke button of less than 4.

Not all (or even most) bit coal will melt and stick together durning burning, this is only coal that has a high coke-button. It can make hand-firing miserable. Try to find a coal with a coke-button less than 4 and you will not have this problem.

Here is the Warm Morning working exactly how it's supposed to.

Thanks Berlin. Very good infos on bit.
nortcan