I can relate Before my first season with coal, I read this forum for collectively amounting to DAYS maybe even weeks, from March all thru summer..Pancho wrote:I'm skeered but giddy. Best of luck to ya.
It was late October.. I was terrified my dreams of burning coal would blow up in my face. The pressure was on.. I told the family we would be burning coal and I had already sold the propane furnace.. I rounded up about half a cord of wood (pine hahaha) that I had laying around outside. For a few days I burned the pine. I was so afraid of failure that I couldn't bring myself to go get some coal.. Then it was either *censored* or get off the pot. I went downtown and bought 300 pounds of nut size coal. Thru it on the wood fire and to my amazement it started to burn.. I was wide eyed and smiling!! My joy was short lived after I couldn't manage to keep it burning.. More research on the coal forum.. FILL THE BOX!! So I did, and managed to keep a fire for 3 days straight.. I couldn't believe it! What an achievement I thought, I was so proud.. Then I did some mods to my furnace and was able to keep a fire even longer. I'll never forget how proud I was to keep a fire for a month straight.. OK now I know you guys are laughing Last year I only lit my fire twice, and that was because I purposely let it go out in January for a fly ash pipe cleaning...