What type of coal to use and why - For a Kodiak

Hi Everyone,
If I haven't said it before, I'll say it again, "GREAT FORUM".

I have a quick question. I've been using my Kodiak stove all season, works great in my opinion. Then I realized something...

On the Alaska Stove website, it says that "Anthracite Nut or Pea" should be used in the Kodiak.

Now I'm burning stove grade anthracite which is just larger in size than nut or pea. My brain starting thinking, and what I'm wondering is.

1. Wouldn't nut, or especially pea, fall through the grates? Wasting lots of coal?
2. The larger, fist size, stove coal works but I'm wondering if using nut or pea would work better.

In the next week or so I plan on buying a few bags of nut just to see.

If anyone has any ideas or opinions on this, please post.

Thanks!

The nut may work out better for you, stove is some very big chunks. I would save the stove for the real cold spells, it tends to burn hotter and/or faster than the smaller size. I run nut in my boiler normally, stove when its below zero.

I don't think it would fall through the grate if the manufacturer recommends it.

As mentioned it shouldn't fall through the grates, you might have some fall thriugh on initial load but that's about it. Most of my customers used either Nut or Pea with nut being the most popular. The best advice I can give you is if you're buying in bulk is get a about five bags of each and try both separately. Also try them mixed, this is called range and if you're getting in bulk your delivery guy should be able to do this for you. That or have him bring you split load.

The smaller the size the more control you get, on the other hand with the larger sizes you can get a lot more heat but it burns up a lot faster too.

So what to get your really depends on your situation, at the very least I'd switch to nut because the stove comes at premium price most places..