Blasack Coal

 
scoobydoo
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Post by scoobydoo » Wed. Aug. 27, 2014 11:11 pm

I found this interesting brochure from a company that sells fly ash http://www.greatriverenergy.com/makingelectricity ... ochure.pdf I found the mention of a product called FlexCrete quite amazing.It is a concrete that contains 70% fly ash and an 8" block has an R value of 30 and a 12" block has an R value of 36.


 
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confedsailor
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Post by confedsailor » Thu. Aug. 28, 2014 12:03 am

Oh I agree with you Pacowy, it's simply that we have "true believers" for DEEP officials in CT. If you dumped out a bucket of dirty dish water, they'd ding you for the detergents, oils, organic waste, and thermal pollution.

 
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Post by ddahlgren » Thu. Aug. 28, 2014 12:45 am

confedsailor wrote:Yea you might want to be careful, If DEEP saw you pouring coal ash out on the drive they might go bananas...Lord knows you got enough granola munchin hippies down in Mystic to turn you in. In SC we paved our drive with crushed slag from the steel mill, its much more resistant to grow thru. However, that was there, not Ct...
Now that is the understatement of the century. A couple months ago one of my neighbors carrying my target rifle to my car to go target shooting. While in a cloth transport bag it has the word Ruger on it and with all the news they knew Ruger did not make a musical instrument. It was an interesting conversation to say the least.

 
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Lightning
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Post by Lightning » Thu. Aug. 28, 2014 2:32 am

Maybe it's possible that most the sulfur goes up the chimney and clings to the fly ash in the pipe... since sulfur dioxide might be a gas.. just a thought.

 
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Post by ddahlgren » Thu. Aug. 28, 2014 3:04 am

Lightning wrote:Maybe it's possible that most the sulfur goes up the chimney and clings to the fly ash in the pipe... since sulfur dioxide might be a gas.. just a thought.
Sulfur dioxide is definitely a gas and it smells like rotten eggs. Oil coal and other fuels generally have some sulfur in them. When it mixes with water it forms sulfuric acid that eats the chimney up. I would think 'acid rain' is primarily sulfuric acid. DEEP is pretty tough arough here and while a pain at times has done a good job cleaning up Long Island Sound.
Here is a link to what is in the ash and it is used in a lot of commercial products.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fly_ash

 
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blrman07
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Post by blrman07 » Thu. Aug. 28, 2014 5:02 am

Lightning wrote:Maybe it's possible that most the sulfur goes up the chimney and clings to the fly ash in the pipe... since sulfur dioxide might be a gas.. just a thought.
Our house stone foundation is tuck pointed with cinder ash mortar. Our front steps are poured cinder ash. Our three chimneys are cinder ash block. The house was built in 1895 and although they show some surface wear they are still solid. One chimney has deteriorated because the mortar washed away and it wasn't tuck pointed like it should have been so I am taking it down and rebuilding that one.

Take a cinder ash block and a modern concrete block and the ash block will outlast the modern block any day. They rarely crack and can take side loading as well as compression loading. But........

coal ash is corrosive, ash is bad for the environment, this that and the other. Anything in large enough quantity is bad for everything. Water is bad for the environment. It cuts through the soil, cuts through rock, can't be controlled in it's natural state, it falls from the sky and kills people, etc etc etc.

Rev. Larry
New Beginning Church
Ashland Pa.

 
steamshovel
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Post by steamshovel » Thu. Aug. 28, 2014 5:28 am

ddahlgren wrote:Is it red ash or white and low ash or no?
I burned it for the first time last year. It's red ash. it has much less BTU content and more volatiles than Jeddo or Hazleton Shaft coal.

Jeddo is the best- if you can even get it anymore. It throws almost no flame but it heats like a mutha...and my little stove with 50 lbs. in it will burn for 36 hours with Jeddo.


 
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freetown fred
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Post by freetown fred » Thu. Aug. 28, 2014 6:58 am

Never seen red ash with BLASCHAK. But indeed, everyone should switch to JEDDO! :clap: toothy

 
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Sunny Boy
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Post by Sunny Boy » Thu. Aug. 28, 2014 7:56 am

Just some points about putting coal ash on a gravel driveway - based on my many years of using with and without.

For anyone who has ever had a gravel driveway, you know the gravel shifts from driving over it and in time, there can be rather deep tire tracks.

It's also rather noisy when driven on and gets stuck in tire treads.

In winter, it will prove to you that snow blowers work much better as rock throwers ! If you plow the driveway, come spring, you have to put a lot of the gravel back from where the plow pushed it to.

I have about 25 tons of both crushed rock and bank-run stone covering my 250 feet of driveway and parking areas. The bank-run being smooth, rounded, river bed stone, are especially tough to keep in place.

Adding the coal ash over the gravel fixes it in place as the coal ash gets ground up even more and sifts down into the gravel. It takes a lot more ash then you would imagine, but eventually the ash fills all the spaces between the stones and it holds it in place - even the slippery bank-run stays put very well. Any unburned bits of coal just act like the gravel and adds to the driveway.

With driving over it, the ash/gravel surface eventually gets almost as smooth as poured concrete. However, unlike concrete it flexes with the rather extreme frost heave we can get here. Because of that, it always remains smooth and level, so no more snow blower digging into and shooting rocks twice as far as snow. And now worry that after a few years the concrete, or asphalt will start to crack and break up.

And, concrete and asphalt are far more expensive than a gravel/ash driveway . !!!! :D

Another plus is, unlike concrete and asphalt, rain water moves down through it quickly. After a heavy rain, puddles don't last long like they would on concrete. And there is no mucky mess with the spring thaw that we call "mud season" around here, because the ash plugs the spaces in the gravel that frost heave mud can get pressed up through the gravel when driven on.

Cars coming down the driveway don't pick up stones in the tire treads and all you hear is the motor sound, no more loud crunching of tires on gravel. My neighbors on either side have gravel driveways too. From inside my house, I can hear every time a car comes down their driveways. Standing in my yard, I can't hear any tire-on-gravel sound - even from SUV or pickup truck tires.

As far as the ash making the driveway corrosive, probably no worse than the road salt that gets brought in and drops off cars and tires along the driveway all winter. Or, gets thrown onto the road end of the driveway by the plow trucks, then picked up and deposited by cars even farther down the driveway. And since the ash doesn't get thrown up onto the car, I'd worry more about road salt - which we know, gets thrown all over the car.

Our ground water gets tested yearly by the Village water department and the water table is quite high here in this valley (averages 50 feet down in wells). People have been dumping coal ash in their yards, and on sidewalks and roads for winter traction in this village since the railroad came through in 1875. Every year the tests show our water is easily within the state limits on all categories.

Paul

 
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warminmn
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Post by warminmn » Thu. Aug. 28, 2014 8:13 am

Your all forgetting about all those pretty shiny black pebbles that are left after the ashes run off or soak in or blow off from my mowing :D

If the ash were going to cause rust on my car, my snow blower would be rusted away by now with all the ash that gets blown by it. My lawn mower also as all I have is a buggy trail looking driveway and it gets mowed. The dust really flies when I mow. If you are all worried about rusting your cars from it you better keep them off the roads too with all that salt on the roads. stop worrying so much and spread it on or pay your garbage man, whichever makes you smile.

 
JohnB
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Post by JohnB » Thu. Aug. 28, 2014 8:47 am

Sunny Boy wrote:Our ground water gets tested yearly by the Village water department and the water table is quite high here in this valley (averages 50 feet down in wells). People have been dumping coal ash in their yards, and on sidewalks and roads for winter traction in this village since the railroad came through in 1875. Every year the tests show our water is easily within the state limits on all categories. Paul
Thanks Paul, that is the kind of information I was looking for. I didn't expect the ash to jump up & start eating my cars but run off into the soil was definitely a concern. My gravel driveway could certainly use some glue to keep those small stones from being tracked all over. Any issues with pets? I imagine that their paws would get coated with the ash on a wet day & some of that ash would be consumed when they groom themselves.

 
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freetown fred
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Post by freetown fred » Thu. Aug. 28, 2014 8:56 am

Wellllll, my yellow dog enjoys the hell out of eating left over nuggets with whatever ash is on it. She's around 100 lbs & just pushing a year. I also got floor mats right outside & inside the main door that minimizes any crap being tracked in.

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Sunny Boy
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Post by Sunny Boy » Thu. Aug. 28, 2014 9:15 am

John,

I purposely never used salt on my walkways because I had that same concern you have. With many years of having indoor/outdoor cats while dumping coal ash (anthracite), they never showed any signs of problems from walking the driveway and car parking areas on their daily patrols of the property.

And like Fred, we have mats near the doors - inside and out. They are the large, black rubber/fiber covered ones from Lowes and they rarely show any ash. However, I didn't get the mats because of the coal ash - I've used mats near the doors long before I ever got the coal stove. We get more mess on the floor mats from sanding the sidewalks in winter.

The anthracite ash packs down very well after it's first exposer to rain. Unlike the problems warminmn has with dust being blown around by a lawnmower, I don't get that here once a rain has washed the ash into the gravel and packed it down. Even when it's deep enough that it covers over the top of the gravel. And if your worried about possibly kicking up dust until the first rain comes, that process can be sped up by just hosing the ash down right after it's spread.

Paul

 
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warminmn
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Post by warminmn » Thu. Aug. 28, 2014 9:28 am

I don't have gravel. Just an old buggy track on slanted land to my house. Gravel under it keeps it solid. So in the spring the rain washes some of it into my ditch, road, yard. It doesnt all disappear before I mow, which is a few weeks after snow melts. I put it on pretty thick in the winter. Before snow cover I have a pile I started on my land.

If anything was going to rust my mower or blower would

 
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Post by Pacowy » Thu. Aug. 28, 2014 10:03 am

Sunny Boy wrote: We get more mess on the floor mats from sanding the sidewalks in winter.
We've found coal ash to be an awesome traction agent - way better than sand.

Mike


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