A SUNNY SIDE ?

Just got 10 bags of stove ant for testings and see the difference with nut size.
Anyways, the first difference on the size side is easy to SEE
Rice--------nut------stove

Ha,ha,ha yep for sure. You see that nut is on the small size I think. Is that Blaschack? Or maybe the stove is on the egg size!

SteveZee wrote:Ha,ha,ha yep for sure. You see that nut is on the small size I think. Is that Blaschack? Or maybe the stove is on the egg size!

Yes Steve, the nut are not the biggest ones and the stove may be one of the biggest?
I just opened the stove bag and saw some like that but some are smaller too. Come from Blaschak.
Put about 10 pounds yesterday at 8 Pm and the stove took very long to get the fire back on burning??? This morning I put about 5 pounds at 8 Am and about the same thing.
The fire pot beeing not very deep on these stoves could make burning stove more difficult but not shure of that????. Just one layer of that size and the load is done
I may need to mix nut with stove???

Are you just experimenting with the stove size coal? or are you trying to get more heat out of the beautiful SunnySide stove?
That Stove coal is quite large, and the nut coal you show is about the size of most of my UAE Pea coal. So it's undersize Nut coal..

If you add Nut then top it off with stove that might work better, but your quantities are so small,, 8-10# of stove must be only a dozen pieced
of coal !!

I'm thinking the same as you, a miz may work better.

Greg L

nortcan wrote:The fire pot beeing not very deep on these stoves could make burning stove more difficult but not shure of that????.

You will have a tough time with stove size (the piece you have pictured looks to be "egg" size) coal in a firepot that small. I have some old books at home that recommend stove size for firepots 16" or larger in diameter. One brochure in my collection recommends it for 22" to 30" pots:

Yep agree with the stove size for 16" pot and up and a deep pot. If you can get "good" nut size then your fine with that Pierre. Mine is just small and I don't any other choice but in the 116, the stove size works great anyways so all is good. The mix I have goes into the cookstove.

LsFarm wrote:Are you just experimenting with the stove size coal? or are you trying to get more heat out of the beautiful SunnySide stove?
That Stove coal is quite large, and the nut coal you show is about the size of most of my UAE Pea coal. So it's undersize Nut coal..

If you add Nut then top it off with stove that might work better, but your quantities are so small,, 8-10# of stove must be only a dozen pieced
of coal !!

I'm thinking the same as you, a miz may work better.

Greg L

Thanks Greg for the reply. Yes just making experiments with stove size. I will try to get an average measure on the stove and nut I have in stock now.
But like you said nut covered with stove is a little better.

Rob R. wrote:

nortcan wrote:The fire pot beeing not very deep on these stoves could make burning stove more difficult but not shure of that????.

You will have a tough time with stove size (the piece you have pictured looks to be "egg" size) coal in a firepot that small. I have some old books at home that recommend stove size for firepots 16" or larger in diameter. One brochure in my collection recommends it for 22" to 30" pots:

WOW, very good infos Rob, thanks.
The fire pot is a 16" oval but with the liner(s) I made it's about 14.5"/15" but not very deep. I will try to measure how deep it is.

An other question about anthracite:
the bagged ant I got was outside in bags but for probably 5 to 7 yrs. So when loading/unloading the bags some water was spilling from the bags. Wen I opened the first bag, the pieces were very wet. Sometimes the nut bags I usually get have some dampness in them but not wet ant like that.
So my question is: do you think that ant having been wet for as long as that can gives some problems like recovery time, harder ligting, low heat output...? Usually ant has a bright glossy look but the stove stays black dull and like No. 20 sandpaper, even after a wash/dry test.
Thanks for the help.

franco b wrote:Water on the coal will be evaporated and condense out in your chimney. not good for SS chimney.

Water inside the coal will turn to steam and the coal will pop as it explodes. Good dry coal has almost no pop and snap when it heats.

You don't know where your coal came from so can't compare it to other coal on the basis of water alone.

Hi franco.
The ant comes from Blaschak but was in the dealer's yard for years cause no demand for stove size. Rain/... made it's way inside the bags and the coal got very wet.
I forgot to say that I let the ant dry in my loading buckets( alu. pails) before burning it but was wondering if anthracite absorbs some water inside of it or just outside of it.
Do you think that leaving the bags opened a few time could dry it enough or it will always stay wet if water got inside the anthracite pieces?
Thanks

franco b wrote:I don't really know if hard coal will absorb water over time. To me it is obvious if the coal explodes and crackles excessively that it has a lot of internal water. How and when it got there I have no idea. Blashak that has dried for one year in my garage still pops and crackles while very dry in the bag Reading coal that has been bagged from the bulk supply by the dealer I buy from does not do this at all. Whether that moisture content was there from the mine or later I can't say. Maybe it is a property of that particular coal.

I think it is just the individual property of a given coal and do not believe that ant coal will absorb water just from being wet.

Thanks.
The popping idea is a good point . My nut size do about like Franco said and pops once in a while. When I put stove size in the stove, over a burning layer of nut bed, there is not more popping than with just nut size in.
So that could be the answer to my question about having more water absorbed inside the stove size. The stove ant will dry for a few times then I will see...
This morning I let the Sunny go out for a shut-down . In fact I will enlage the grate's holes I already got smaller thinking that ""al""l the coal bed would fall down in the ash pan when shaking with so big openings. I will also weld some little spikes in the center of the grate to make it more agressive in that area. On the second photo, you can see the smaller openings but I re-re-re-made them even smaller later

The popping could just be the coal on the outside of the peices expanding faster that the center and braking off. I wouldent think there would be many pores in the coal that would hold water.