Anthicite or Bituminus

We just bought a house that has a Baker Coal Stove. I have burnt wood in the past growing up but never coal. How do I tell which kind is in the coal bin? or if I'm burning the proper coal?

WELCOME!

I assume this is the company that made your stove?... http://www.bakerstoves.com I understand they make some very good stoves and
Anthracite would be the coal you would want to burn and I can tell you that you will LOVE it! Can't beat the heat it produces.

Please post a pic of your stove and tell us what part of the US you live in. If you need some help with the stove a forum member here might be able to give you a hand in person if needed.

Ciao!
mark

Bituminous coal will make your hands dirty if you handle in at all. It also catches fire with ease and burns with a bright yellow flame.

With that handle, I'm guessing Central PA. Welcome to the forums! Read on, there is *SO MUCH* you can learn here.

Post a picture of some representative chunks of coal, too, with something alongside to show the size, like a ruler, a coin, a dollar bill.

Can you ask the previous owner of the house what type of coal he burned? Maybe channel your question through the realtor if there was one involved....

Nittany Valley Son wrote:We just bought a house that has a Baker Coal Stove. I have burnt wood in the past growing up but never coal. How do I tell which kind is in the coal bin? or if I'm burning the proper coal?

The sure way for you to find out is to light a wood fire in the stove and when the wood has burned down to a hot bed of coals, throw a handful of coal on the bed of coals to see how it burns.

Anthracite would make a snap-crackle-popping noise with no smoke and will be slow to light. Bituminous coal will quickly start smoking and burns with a yellow flame and usually doesn't snap-crackle-pop as much as anthracite does.

Here's a video showing a bed of anthracite coal with one chunk of bituminous coal burning on top. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sdTUqISi_W0

As others have mentioned, Welcome to this forum. You will find everything you need to know about coal here

This is the closest image I can find of it from the Baker website. Mine however vents out the back not the top. After reading posts on here yesterday I looked closer at it last night. It does have a manual damper on the pipe coming out the back and there is a thermometer on the that pipe between the stove and the damper. I opened that and checked the ash pan. I started a small wood fire in it just to see how the draft was. It seems to get good draft. I got some good coals from the wood and then added a little coal. Some smoke did roll out into the room from the wood fire. One good thing is that the smoke alarm works (ha). We were only going to be at the house for a few hours and I was not comfortable letting it burn while not there over night. When we left I checked it and the temp on the pipe had dropped but I had closed the draft way down before that. It has a blower on it and I had that on about medium speed and it really warmed the room. I will get some pics of the coal and show all later. Thanks for greetings and the info. Oh, and I'm in Central Pennsylvania.

Nittany Valley Son wrote:I got some good coals from the wood and then added a little coal. Some smoke did roll out into the room from the wood fire.

IF it is anthracite coal, then when you start the coal burning you will need to close the air inlets on the loading door. Most of the air for anthracite should come from under the grates -- in other words, open the air inlets on the ash pit door, close the inlets on the upper door almost all the way. Pretty much the opposite of burning wood. But if it's bituminous coal, I don't know about the air inlets. Great video that rockwood posted, showing the difference between the two types burning, that should help you identify your coal.