Coal Fines??

ok ive got a question? well more of a case study. when getting bulk coal your going to have fines. so the question is to sift or not? got looking at the bin tonight and got thinking,"why don't I sift the fines out of a load". well I had some old chicken wire left over from some thing. so I put it over a can and sifted about three, five gallon buckets of coal "nut". I was left with good clean pieces. and I got about two coffee cans of fines from the sifting. the cans are the one pound cans. now should I burn it with out sifting? or sift and get the stove hotter. since I put the load of sifted coal in the stove three hours ago. it has come back quicker and is giving me higher temps for where I have the damper set. I didn't change the damper from where I had it set for the last 24 hours.

now I know that there is a benefit to sifting but is it really worth the hassle? I know some stoves like to have only one size coal. I just think of the heat that I am losing in the fines.

do other people sift there bulk?

if the do what do they do with the fines?

Flat shovel on a concrete base will gather up the fines along with the full size pieces but the fines will not be excessive. Just burn the whole thing.

I wouldn't sift it, for the simple reason that the fines are coal crumbs and coal dust. Its gonna burn too. Seems like the dust and fines would burn up in the first 30 minutes of being on the fire since they are so small. Seems a waste of combustable material that has been bought and paid for, if it were sifted and disposed of. But thats my opinion It would be interesting to see what others on here think about it.

I'm with Franco on this, thats exacltly what I use. Flat shovel on concrete. I take from the bottom of the pile.

I don't sift. I just burn the the fines with the coal. What I do however is that once in a while I notice that I can't fit as much coal in my little Rubbermaid container next to the stove, so, I'll wait till the bin is almost empty and then drag it outside to sift the fines that gather in the bottom of the bin. I just throw the fines away at that point though.

I go by that old saying....(waste not want not) I burn everything!

I burn my fines also. My boiler burns whatever I throw in it.

The flat shovel works good on the concrete floor. With my coal bin all the fines are concentrated towards the front. On warmer days I dig deeper in the bin and get extra fines, then when I load, I throw the coal up against the fire box wall then rake the clean coal towards the center of the box leaving the fines on the edges and not choking the entire fire but slowing the burn a little.

And with the fines up against the walls, witch I have a vee shaped fire box, the fire burns slower there and not burnig everything against the vee'd firebrick. If you have a vee shaped firebox you know what i'm talking about.

franco b wrote:Flat shovel on a concrete base will gather up the fines along with the full size pieces but the fines will not be excessive. Just burn the whole thing.

Same here

Yeah, just burn 'em up. you can if you want put them in a paper bag, roll it up to create a small 'log'. They don't burn all that well like this, there is no airflow
around the little pieces.. but you can try it, and let us know if it works for you.

Take care,
Greg L

i was just trying something new. when the kids leave you alone long enough to think. you have to get out of your own head some times. if you have kids you know what im talking about. it seems that I can do my best thinking when I have two kids fighting and the wife trying to break them up. if any one has daughters you know what im talking about. us dads just don't understand the whole female thing sometimes.

as for the fines ive never had problems. I just shovel them up and in they go. most of the time they make it to the ash pan. but ive never had a problem burning fines. there nice to have if you want to cool a fire down for a bit. just don't add to much or you can kill the fire.

Mine go right in although the fire bed seems to take a bit longer to take off after a shake down.

i always put it all in. no sense in wasting perfectly good coal.

When I go get a bulk coal it is understood by the men in the coal yard not to scoop my coal from the bottom of the pile. Fines will be heaver the further down in the pile, especially when they scoop from the bottom. The guys at the coal yard are good about taking from near the top of the pile for me. I screen all of my coal as I pull it from the bin. I have a small screen system set up and just screen the coal as I put it into my buckets. To me the time it takes the stove to recover while trying to burn fines isn't worth it. I'm all about saving money, however, their is a point at which the need for a quick recovery time outweighs my trying to burn the fines. I have a friend who uses a screen designed to screen shelled corn. When he gets a delivery, the coal is run through the screen, up the conveyor into his bin. He takes the fines and uses it as fill. This is just my two cents.

The snowman.

Hopper fed stove...
Not a problem with them...
Used to sift with the MarkII...
Because I run a SSM operation the coal fines run a higher %...
I just scoop the coal off the top of the pile and the fines tend to stay in the bottom 8"...
Letting the rain fall on it all summer helps too...

I had a good bit of pea coal and fines in this years 5 tons of bulk nut. What's strange is that it's not disbursed through the whole pile but seems to be in the middle of the bin. I burn it all in the cookstove, but depending on the days I'll fill the hods from the left or right side of the bin on cold days and take the middle (pea and fines) for warmer days. In the cookstove, it doesn't seem to care as much (once its going well) as the cylinder although, the cylinder likes the sifted pieces from the cookstove's grate drops.

I would think fines would be more of a stoker stove issue. Fines will plug up the holes in the grate or fall into the space under the grate thus restricting air flow over time if not maintained well. I usually shut down when we get a somewhat warm day in mid season to do a quick cleanout of this area. I have gone the whole season without cleaning under the grates also with no problems. It really depends on how bad the fines are.