Bitty in a Hand Fed Baseburner Style Stove?

I've been looking for a baseburner style stove, probably a glenwood #6 or 8 size/type although I am open to any good stove.

Lets say that I do go the glenwood route. Bit coal has a price per ton that hard to ignore and am wondering what are people's experiences burning bitty in a hand fed baseburner style stove.

When burning bit, is it advisable to keep the stove in direct draft mode, or can the exhaust follow the baseburner path? I would think that there are some differences when burning bit over anthracite, namely adding more secondary air and not opening the stove after loading until most of the flammable gas danger has passed.

If you are going to burn Bit coal, you need a Hot Blast configuration stove, not a baseburner.
Bit coal has too many volitiles to burn, and it will destroy a baseburner stove..

A Hot Blast style stove has a secondary air ring around the top of the firepot that adds fresh heated air above the coalbed.
This fresh air creates a virtual blowtorch effect from each fresh load of Bit coal.. If you don't have this secondary air,
the bit coal will create a great deal of soot which would clog up a baseburner.

There are, I'm sure some good bit coals that would be able to burn OK in a baseburner, but since there are stoves
specificly designed to burn Bit coal, why not get one for your bit coal.

Greg L

[quote="LsFarm"]If you are going to burn Bit coal, you need a Hot Blast configuration stove, not a baseburner.

Or a Warm Morning, which does the same thing as a Hot Blast, only with the hollow fire bricks in the corners.

I second the remark about the Warm Morning stove.I have a base heater that I burn anthracite coal in and it is great but I also have a 100 lb capacity Warm Morning that I use and wouldn't trade it for a farm in the south. I think that the Warm Morning is one of the most underrated stoves for coal out there. It burns anthracite and will hold for 48 hours on low settings and it burns bit coal the best. They are cheap to buy and the only drawback is the cost of the firebrick corner flues which are expensive. There are lots of them out there too, I bought mine for $30 and have used it for 2 years with great success. The flue design allows one to just dump in 70 lbs of coal on a good hot bed and it will keep on going. A great design.

The best stove for Bituminous is a Florence Hot Blast, or a Germer Radiant Home. These stoves are high capacity and designed to burn Bituminous very well. These are the best stoves ever made for Bituminous, hands down. If I was looking for a ready to go, bargain, a Warm Morning would also be on the table. The warm morning feeds hot secondary air through tubes cast into the firebrick from the bottom and then delivers it on top of the coal. Warm mornings will burn antharcite fine, but; are designed and made specifically for Bituminous coal.
Base Heaters extract too much heat out of the exhaust for soft coal. This would lead to excessive soot formation and frequent cleanings.

Thanks for all the great info guys. This new info significantly alters my buying strategy (I had no idea you could not burn bit in baseburner mode). I'm in Southern NH where anthracite is more available than bit, but I still would like to explore the possibility of getting quality bit coal trucked/delivered here hopefully at a price cheaper than anthracite. Even though bit has a great per ton price, I guess practicality and coal availability will determine which stove type I will get.

Joe, I highly second the recommendation for a warm morning if you want to burn bit coal, hand-fired. I will highly suggest that if you have close neighbors, in this era, outsided of coal country, you will be better off with a stoker for bit coal - it burns it with almost zero smoke and smell. A combustioneer or Stokermatic "stove" used as an add on furnace, tended usually every other day (in very cold weather once/ day) would be just the ticket. Pea stoker bit to NH would be from $150-180/ton for a truckload delivered, around 13,500btu/lb+ and around 7% ash by weight.

This is mostly directed at William, but I am posting it here as it applies to this thread. Hopefully he will see it and respond. William, wouldn't the secondary ring on a Glenwood 6 or 8 do about the same thing as a hot blast? I was thinking that you might be able to crack the secondary draft a little too as long is it stayed hot enough. I'm wondering why this would not work, I'm new to this, just bought a stove to rebuild (a Glenwood No. 6) and I'm reading a lot to try and learn right now, but I was considering BIT as I can't find any anthracite in my area. Thanks for you help and I'll put up some pic's of that stove soon ( as well as requests for info. about rebuilding, I'm sure).

Take a look at the rebuild threads for a Florence Hotblast, I think Grumpy posted a thread for his rebuild.

The problem with using a baseburner with bit is the amount of soot that bit creates unless the volitiles are burnt off with HOT oxygen right above the coal bed. without this added oxygen the bit coal WILL soot up a handfired stove.

Since you have one of the most efficient stoves for antracite, spend the few extra bucks for good antracite [over far-away bituminous] and enjoy the heat..
If I were in NH, I'd be burning Ant, not bit..
I'm much closer to Bit coal, but I burn Anthracite because of it's consistant , clean burning characteristics.

Greg L

To answer your question about the secondary air ring in the Glenwood. It is similar to the Florence and other hot blast designs except that it doesn't supply as much air as the hot blasts do. You can burn anything in the Glenwood but you can't use the base heating function of the stove until all of the hydrocarbons in the Bituminous is burned off. You would have to monitor the fire to see when the yellow flames are all burned off, then the coal would act much like Anthracite. Otherwise you should burn it always in direct draft.

Thanks for your help! It's not an ideal way to go, but since I can't find ant within 500 miles, and I can get BIT 150 miles from home I may have to do it that way.

Let us know how it goes. I would like to hear how the stove acts while burning Bituminous.

Loki wrote:Thanks for your help! It's not an ideal way to go, but since I can't find ant within 500 miles, and I can get BIT 150 miles from home I may have to do it that way.

Loki,

Where Is your BIT supplier?