Premium Coal From Tamaqua Quality

mgrant, a sulfur smell almost always indicates a flue gas leak. Double and triple check your unit to ensure you have no clogged passages, no flue pipe leaks at the joints and you have a proper draft. Double check where your vent pipe goes into the chimney. Check any horizontal runs. 1/2 clogged can really lower your draft.

sorry forgot to add this. Also before you start taking your unit apart, scoop up a bucket of the coal and stick your head in and sniff it. You shouldn't smell anything. If you do, it's the coal.

Does Premium Coal from Tamaqua come from the Mammoth vein?

Well, I guess some of it does, they don't do a whole lot of mining in Tamaqua, their breaker is in South Tamaqua, but they purchase much of their coal from other suppliers.

I had my plumber come out and look at it after I had told him about the sulfur smell. He check the draft and indicated it was very strong (.08) he called AHS and discussed the draft and where it should be (.04 - .07). At that time the joints were not sealed on the flue pipes, my plumber said with the high draft he didn’t feel it necessary to seal them. I sealed them up myself and I have noticed a vast difference in the air quality (much improved) I still have a slight smell on some days but it has only been a week now. I purchased a Bacharach Draftrite Pocket Draft Gauge and check my draft daily (Plumber said it was .08) but I have not seen it rise above .05 since starting to check it. Prior to sealing up the joints it was around .03. My draft seems to be holding steady at .04 on most days but nothing less. Happy Thanksgiving to all and thank you for the post

I was looking for newer posts, but I guess I'll just resurrect this old thread. Anyone burning rice using Premium Coal in Tamaqua? Any comparisons to Lehigh? I've used Lehigh for a couple months now, I really like it, great stuff, but they are stopping their retail sales on 3/28, and I cannot make it there to get more, and I need a bit more coal for April. So I thought about going the following week to Premium Coal, for at least one small load (like 1000 lbs), but wondered what others thought about the quality. Thanks.

They will be back on 09/12/15

Just by way of keeping up with progress. I got 1200 lbs of rice from American Premium yesterday, much cheaper than other options. Lehigh has bagged rice, but for my quantity it comes out to around $300/T. I figure for the remainder of April, cool nights, hopefully any rice will do OK. Having said that, I will say the process of getting the coal at AP is very easy, very fast. I mean like in and out in less than 5 minutes fast.

One note on the finer aspects of suppliers. I have a Dakota with a 6.5 ft bed. The first time I went to Lehigh, the scoop on the loader was about the same width as my truck bed. The guy could tell that some coal was going to fall outside the tailgate, so he had another guy stand there with a grain shovel to deflect that coal into the truck bed. I'm not fanatical about my truck...BUT...it is a 1996 with still-prefect pain and chrome bumpers that I would like to keep scratch-free if possible. I know, hauling coal will eventually make it more like a "real" truck, and I am fine with that. When I went to AP yesterday, they had a similar loader scoop, and the guy there just loaded it up and dumped it, some coal falling outside the tailgate, just messy overall, but I removed the excess and went about my merry way. Not complaining, just noticing something about service, and maybe Lehigh goes way above and beyond others, or maybe it was just that guy, that day.

Now, I'm curious to see how the AP burns. I will have some next Fall when I start up again. But I do eagerly await Lehigh re-opening for bulk retail.