Hello From North Dakota!

Not sure if this is the right forum as my stove is a hand fed furnace, and the other forum is stoker furnace. Anyway got sick of paying the heating oil bill at $500+ a month in December (let's not get into jan and feb bills in ND) and I picked up a Shelter 2626 (same as fire chief) forced air thermostatically controlled draft with manual draft control so it still works in a power outage. Manual says to use anthracite or bituminous coal, well all we have readily available is lignite in North Dakota @ $35 a ton so I'm ignoring the manual and heating this century old 2000 sq ft farmhouse at 68-70 F using about two metal farm style buckets of coal a day. We've been in the -10s and -20s much of December and the furnace is keeping up! Now I want a heat gun and draft measurement tool to better tune my system.

Although, after finding this forum I now want a base burner in the living room just to play with and admire

HaHaHa - Baseburner envy is becoming wide spread... Hey but it sounds like you have a great set-up! I've never burned lignite in my stove, actually only ever burned wood or anthracite.... Welcome to the forum. Don't forget to post photos of your furnace. You certainly put that one through it's paces - negative numbers already, and I know they go down from there where you live! Tools are always fun, but the real number to know - you are warm and not spending a ton of $'s!!!

dj

Thanks for the kind words...here are some pics of the current setup:



Here's the furnace, ash bucket and coal bucket (yes I think I need larger buckets!)



Here's the feed door open and the fire just on the rebound after dipping a bit too low...look at those huge chunks of coal! Almost as big as the wood I was previously burning (see below)



Here's where the wood fuel is stacked. It was about 3 times that size 2.5 weeks ago! I'm shocked how much slower coal burns. I've got a little plastic chute custom frame to place in the basement window and drop the chunks of coal down onto the floor. Gonna wait until it's 30 F in a couple days (breaking the cold snap) before I do that job!



Here's the old oil burner, piping to both that joins up into the brick chimney stack. It's good to have the oil burner around, for when we need to be gone from the house longer than 12 hours, we will need to have it running to keep the place from freezing up.

Well that's about it...thanks for your comments, I'm always open to helpful suggestions.

Welcome to the FORUM nd & your NEW ADDICTION

nice setup, that will get the job done.

Welcome ND,I believe your furnace is a USS product and burns wood exclent,but is a little finicky with coal.There are some threads you should read about burning bit. coal
Can't Get Good Burn Time With Sub-Bit Coal
US Stove Hot Blast Furnace Problems
do a search on hotblast,clayton,firecheif they are also a USS product simular to your furnace,try reading in the bituminus section also for more info pertaining to your local coal

Welcome to the forum Ndcoal.
Seems to be the same temp. in ND as here in Province of Québec. Today is a real snowstorm day, very good
Hope you get an antique stove soon, a base burner if you can find one. You will love it.
P/S, just take the positive comments about the antique stoves, the negative ones are just from some (probably just one ) jealous member
Thanks for the photos, impressive.

There are a lot of old, nice looking stoves that will burn lignite too. Make sure to have a couple working CO detectors.

How often do you have to fill your stove to keep it burning good? I like how big the chunks are.

Greetings,ND ! Glad to have you from out West. Congrats on heating the home with what you've got available ! Stick around and enjoy,and share ! Thanx for the pic's,too !

Welcome NDCoal, thanks for helping "us" out we need new folks to help with "our" problems coal that is,black gold...lots of cool folks. I must get learned in lignite!

Hello nd wellcome to the forum.
The closeset coal I can get is sub bit pea coal from bell fourche in SD he delivers.
But the best I have has comes from Aimes Iowa kentky bit 2 x 6 great stuff.
The lignit coal just don't get the burn times I need between reloading's.
Good luck with your setup.

ND,
Is it true you folks up there have to let your fingernails grow long to keep from being blown over the edge? ( the obligatory "just so ya know Im just funnin ya" smiley)Always nice to here from the hinterlands.

Ndcoal wrote: I now want a base burner in the living room just to play with and admire

I find myself having the inside out version of your problem. I want a living room to put a baseburner in. (or CC, a modern boxy lookin highly efficient ,just so it shows blue ladies, coal burnin contraption) ........"Im sorry for that right there lord".......

Welcome,

Waldo

Welcome. ND

Wow, those are some big chunks of coal. We have to keep track of coal use by the ton, looks like you can do the same by just counting pieces !

We get winter here, but you get a whole 'nuther kind of winter. It'll be interesting to hear how you do with the switch over to coal and learn more about heating with that type of coal.

Paul

warminmn wrote:There are a lot of old, nice looking stoves that will burn lignite too. Make sure to have a couple working CO detectors.

How often do you have to fill your stove to keep it burning good? I like how big the chunks are.

If I fill it up 'close' to the height recommended by the maker (I fudge and load inches higher reasoning my coal is large creating air crevices and gaps when stacked, thus packed less dense and plus is always less potent than anthracite or bituminous mentioned in the manual), then in +5 F to -15f type days, I need to fill it up twice a day, and toss in a few extra bonus chunks before bed. However it's only been 3 days, I may get it down to precisely every 12 hrs. My house is ~2000 sq ft of heated ductwork area in the top two floors, plus it also radiates into the basement and keeps that toasty. The house is not super well insulated (the owner said they did some hole drilling of the walls and did what they could that way, blowing in some insulation).

Here's a pic of the old time 'heat always rises' grates in the basement ceiling/1st story floor and 1st story celing/2nd story floorboards:





Pardon the mess, we just took out some old carpet and are refinishing the antique hardwood floors. This grate system actually helps in freeing the radiant heat from the basement stove and allowing it to move up into the main house areas. It obviously existed in this house before the ductwork was installed.

Since you burn Brown Coal you want one of these. Florence Hot Blasts are designed specifically for the efficient, clean burning of Bituminous and Sub Bituminous Coals.
They have an arrangement that provides super heated secondary air right above the top of the fire to burn off all the hydrocarbons.
One of these will be very clean, eliminate a lot of the soot and smoke and you will have a very high rate of combustion efficiency. You'll get a lot more BTU bang for your buck. Base Burners I am sorry to say won't work with the coal you have out there. A beautiful Florence, however; is perfect for the application.
Also, I might add, these stoves are double heaters. That is they not only provide large volumes of radiant heat, there is a plenum built onto the back of the stove that produces large amounts of hot air also. You can duct this hot air upstairs or let it heat the area the stove is in along with the radiant capability. There is nothing made now that can compare to these for Soft Coal.