45 Days on 60 40lb Bags

Love my stove. We went 45 days on 1 skid of bagged anthracite. That is 1 ton and 400 lbs. Our home is 70 degrees and a bit cooler in the far off bedrms. My home is aroud 5000 sq ft. What a deal. I will vist PA to get bulk coal for $135 per ton next year.

You must have pretty good insulation and windows, or live where it doesn't get that cold that often... I'm jealous, skid of bagged coal would barely last me 10-15 days in the midwest's cold weather over the last month.

If you would, fill in your signature with your location. My feeble memory says the mid/south Jersey near the shore??

Greg L

with this colder weather i'm burning two 40's every three days and when it's in the 30's one every two days.

this is in addition to burning about a cord a month. if a cord is 4000 lbs

i'd guess i'm burning around 130 lb's of wood a day

once it's into the mid 40's i'll let the wood stove go out. in the past the wood stove would run until it got into the 60's

sandman wrote:with this colder weather i'm burning two 40's every three days and when it's in the 30's one every two days.

this is in addition to burning about a cord a month. if a cord is 4000 lbs

i'd guess i'm burning around 130 lb's of wood a day

once it's into the mid 40's i'll let the wood stove go out. in the past the wood stove would run until it got into the 60's

sandman,

How come you don't just let the VF3000 do all the heating for you? You may have told me this but how big and how old is your house? Just curious

beatle78 wrote:

sandman wrote:with this colder weather i'm burning two 40's every three days and when it's in the 30's one every two days.

this is in addition to burning about a cord a month. if a cord is 4000 lbs

i'd guess i'm burning around 130 lb's of wood a day

once it's into the mid 40's i'll let the wood stove go out. in the past the wood stove would run until it got into the 60's

sandman,

How come you don't just let the VF3000 do all the heating for you? You may have told me this but how big and how old is your house? Just curious

it's old and big.

it's how iv'e done it with oil ever since we bought it. with oil I could use a tank a month, but while burning it's more like two tanks a season.

my wood is free other than my time and I can cut and split a cord in about an hour.
so for a couple of days here and there at my leisure I have more than enough wood for a season.

oh and for this year it's already in the cellar, so I do want to burn it all before spring.

we'll have to wait and see what next year brings us, I might cut back to 4 cords or so a year.
that's about what it would take to fill the wood bin in the cellar.

i'm not interested in spending more money on coal than I did on oil.

jim

LsFarm wrote:You must have pretty good insulation and windows, or live where it doesn't get that cold that often... I'm jealous, skid of bagged coal would barely last me 10-15 days in the midwest's cold weather over the last month.

If you would, fill in your signature with your location. My feeble memory says the mid/south Jersey near the shore??

Greg L

Hi Greg funstuff lives in MD Tracy iland if My feeble Memory is Right

ok, if the wood is free and you have time. It makes sense.

So what is the VF3000 used for? Hot water only?

beatle78 wrote:ok, if the wood is free and you have time. It makes sense.

So what is the VF3000 used for? Hot water only?

heat and hot water, it dosen't usually call for heat until it's below 20º or in the morning when the wood heat has tapered off.

although a shovel full of coal with the wood around 10pm keeps that from happining.

That makes sense then, with your location. I bought 6 tons in the fall and I'm going to buy more tomorrow, I'm down to less than a ton remaining and that makes me nervous, if March is bitter cold like it always is then 8 tons for the year should do it.

I'm relieved to hear that e.alleg , I thought I was in the 'coal-sucking ' zone or something like that... I'm burning between 2 and 3 tons a month, depending on the weather.. So for 4 or 5 month I suspect I'll burn 10 maybe 12 tons. I'll have to gauge it better over the next month or two.

I used 1500# over 5.5 days last week, but we had a 48 hour period where it never warmed above 4*, and was -9* or colder at night... I'm sure I burnt more than 300# each of those two days... and the temps never went above 20* last week on the warm days. When it warms up to 30-ish, the boiler seems to be using about half that..

Greg L

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I used at least 200 # a day when the 24 hour daily temp was 0, when it's in the 20's maybe 100# a day. I don't keep real good track, I just dump in as much as I can fit when I empty the ashes every night. Sometimes I will stir up the bin and then add another bag so it's mounded over the top. There is no reason in the world for me to do this besides the longer I stay in the basement tinkering with the boiler the more apt someone else is to cook dinner. (dad's busy ) Picked up a ton of Blaschak today, delivered it myself in my minivan. A 1997 Dodge Grand Caravan can hold one ton of bagged coal, I probably could have hauled the whole pallet but I was getting nervous about the weight. It handled it fine, I only had to go about 15 miles and spread the load all throughout the van including the front floor. The dog thought it was dog food (or thought Santa-Claus was inside) and chewed open a bag and started gobbling it. HA! he left the rest of it alone.

For comparison we are zone 4 due to a hilltop micro climate. 10x More snow and 5 degrees colder than the villages a few miles away. The good of that is the summer, it rarely gets above 80.

Sorry I have been so long getting back. Tempts around here have been in the 20's at night just diping into the teens. My home has R-40 in the attic and R-19 in the walls with good windows. My three heat pumps equal to 9 tons of AC have not run since I put the Alaska stove in. This months electric bill with running the stove for the whole period was $219 bucks. Thats a 7 bed rm, 5 baths, 2 kitchens and three liv rms around a 1000 sq ft. Man this thing is great. It will suck up a 100lb when temps are around 20 in the night.Yet I load it up at 8pm and it takes till 6am to burn 100lbs. It has a 100lb hopper and when it warms to 30 to 40 during the day we keep it on low. It goes forever in low. I bought a dealer ship for Alaska. I have spent 1K in ads in MD eastern shore. I am getting quite a few calls. I have ar4ound 20 pending stove sales. I also have a local hardware store interested in putting up a display and sellingstoves and bagged coal.
I told one guy if I could save you 3-400 per month in heating cost. Do you really care what you are burning? If I told you I was burning horse sh-T would you by it? He said. Dam straight. Any how having fun and keeping warm on the cheap.