Bad or Poorer Quality Coal?

Hi Folks
Last year I burned Blashak Chesnut in bags. Had no problems that could be related to the coal ...just operator error
But even those diminshed.
Sunday i fired up my Energy King and loaded it with Blashak . Temps were in 30's n 40's. By 6PM Sunday I had emptied 2 full bags into the furnace and it was going A#1.
monday the same but when I came home in evening I loaded it with some Jedo Coal I purchased delivered in bags. This was also chesnut.
Its been pretty cold here today with high winds and temps now 22 with fair winds.
When i loaded it i shook it down and filled it full on top of a nice bed of red coal that had gone about 12 hours since filling. This was at 5:30 pm . I opened my main draft control (thermostat) left it open for a long while . Temps began to fall so I went down and did a
"no- no". I shook it but not much happened so I took a poker and stirred the bed over and it started to glow real good and i shook it more and I finally got a bunch of ash which never dropped earlier.
I noticed that bagged Jedo was not near as clean as the Blashak and I even found several chunks of ground up wood in the coal.
But I also noticed the Jedo had way more fine smaller sized coal and very few lager like golf ball size chunks and the Blashak has more large piescse than smaller stuff.
i think the damn Jedo is jusyt too smal for the air to get up thru after the coal has burned and the ash falls and it just plugged off the air. I have added a whole bag of Blashak and half a bag of Jedo since coming home at 5:30 . Its finally burning pretty good so its blowing some heat ......I hope I am not stuck with 3 ton of junk .
I think I may need to add some larger coal like maybe stove coal to get this other to burn ok?
I dont have forced draft maybe that would help. I have opened my main manual draft from 3/4 turn normal to 1.5 turn open to give it more air .
I even closed off the barometric draft a bit so chimney would draw more . Put it back to normal now I got it to burn better but I can see i need a better easier to calibrate control and a manometer.
I think my biggest problem the coal I have is more Pea size than Chesnut.
Stiring and the violent shakeing seems to havre done the trick so far!!
the ashses from this coal are light brown to dirty white in color and not really any unburnt coal to speak of. I burned up my camera dock and jammed paper in my printer so i have way to down load pics to my PC and even dropped my cell into the lake so I cant use that because it killed the camera
Any ideas on how to mix this coal so air will go up thru it?

I forgot to say....This coal came in sewn grain type 50 lbs. bags with no name or markrings on it. i think someone buys it bulk bags it and resells it to the guy i bought it from. I just opened another bag of it and there was a another big hunk of wood. i almost looked like it went thru a crusher to me. all mushed and squashed.
The guys who gets thsi told me he uses rice coal from this guy and has had no problems.

Tim,
I also have 3 tons of your buddys coal and have not started burning it yet. This will be my first season burning coal so what do I look for . I have the nut coal too in 50 lb bags. Harry stacked them on pallets for me and I covered them with a tarp and haven't looked at the coal yet. I assume this is the same Jeddo coal and now I am concerned, What can I look for .

Jack Magnum wrote:This will be my first season burning coal so what do I look for

Your TLC will not run well on some coals. I burned a ton of what the coal dealer identified as Reading Coal last winter & it kept jamming my shaker grates.That's It- Stick With Blaschak!
(burned fine but the ash was way to coarse for the TLC to shake down well)

I have never had a problem with Blaschak.

Tim,
Have you contacted Harry about the poor quality coal ? I assume I have the same stuff as we received it about the same time and he gets it from the same source. Supposed to be from the Amish in 50lb grain sacks. Not knowing anything about coal what do I look for as far as bad coal ? Boy the wife will have a field day with me on this one. If it burns badly how do I get thru the 3 tons ?

I dont think now it has much to do with the coal itself"s quality . After I got it shook out (took a lot longer) It seems to be burning just fine now . I shook it a lot more this AM and already its burning great ( no unburt coal in pan)and I had a beauty of a bed of coals when I opened it. Guess it just the sizing or type of the screens they use . (Lot more finer pieces)
Guess the bits of wood must just be human factor(emlpoyees maybe) lol.
Guess its not Blashak but it will work ok .

Your wood is most likely coming from bank coal. It won't separate at the breaker. If your're getting good btu's and the ash looks good don't worry about it.

The wood in the coal from Jeddo doesn't come from banks. I work there and see the coal they strip out. What your seeing is old props from the deep mines that they are stripping out, sometimes the props are full length when they hit the raw coal stock pile. As for the coal itself it does take more air than some others but it will give you good heat and is fairly low in ash.

Timbers, Yeah that makes sense. There is an awful lot of wood down there. When you look at pictures from many years ago there's very few trees on the mountains. Do they ever pull up the abandoned rail tracks?

Tracks coal cars car axels spikes tools lanterns whatever was left down there will come the shovel / dragline does not
care what's in its way Blaschak breaker has a big Magnet across the coal table to catch all of the smaller metal objects
that will be mixed in with the coal

Hi folks
Just dumped another bag into my wheelbarrow and it had a cpl more smashed pieces of wood in it . Seems to burn a lot better now that i know its a little harder to get the ash to drop out.
I also cheated a little tonight and put a hair dryer into intake air tube and in a few minutes I had never seen such a beautiful blue flames covering the whole top at once and talk about warmth!!
Guess each brand or area coal comes from has its own burning charecteristics.
Ash from this coal seems about same to me as from the Blashak