I have coal and no clue.

mamaduck60 wrote:I did pick up the coal. It is shiny and does not crumble.
The home is about 3900sq ft, two stories. Right now it is heated with a boiler system, radiator in every room.
I would much rather give the stuff away (Luckily the cellar door is right next to the coal). Any home repairs/renovations that touch the outside of the house have to be authorized through city channels because of the historic landmark stuff.

what fuel heats the boiler?

how concerned are you about that fuel cost?

Don't laugh, but we don't have lighter! I have a gas stove though....Nah, bad idea!

The boiler is heated by gas. We haven't even been in the house a month yet so I am clueless about the different utility costs we will experience. I understand all fuel costs money but realistically we cannot afford a coal system right now.

ahhh i guess its natural gas and not propane gas...

prolly quite economical to stick with gas and give the coal away for free.....

me, i rather have several heating options....the be prepared in me

mamaduck60 wrote:Don't laugh, but we don't have lighter! I have a gas stove though....Nah, bad idea!

Propane gas or natural gas? If it is natural gas, and your boiler is running off of the same, you might as well just stay with that (and consider an upgrade to a high efficiency condensing NG boiler someday). Right now (in Ohio at least) natural gas is less expensive than anthracite, but it is still more expensive than bituminous.

Is the heating done via circulating hot water or is it via steam? When I think of radiators, I think of steam, but I'd imagine that there might be radiators that would handle circulating hot water instead of steam.

If your gas boiler is older, and you switch to a modern condensing gas boiler, you could drop your heat bill by as much as 40%

Natural gas and circulating hot water. The system is fairly new. Every inspector has oohed and aahed over it. And I will readily admit, the radiators are pretty and I would hate to lose them.
And a big huge THANK YOU! for helping me understand my home.

It looks like stoker sized coal I think I see pyrite in some of it, its very common for ohio coal to have pyrite.

mamaduck60 wrote:I did pick up the coal. It is shiny and does not crumble.

The only way to know for sure what type of coal it is is to burn a little bit of it. If you don't have any kind of torch, you could squirt some lighter fluid on a handful and light it. If after the lighter fluid burns away the coal is smoking and maybe has shinny tar substance beginning to melt out of the pieces of coal then it would be bituminous(soft coal). Soft coal would be easier to light than anthracite (hard coal) and burn with yellow/orange flame with smoke coming off the tips of the flames.

Also, anthracite tends to make a snap/crackle/popping noise when lighting.

My guess would be that it is regular bituminous stoker coal but that's just a guess