Setting up an Outside Boiler to Burn Coal

I've not yet pissed off everyone around me,& believe we could find someone to help in troublesome times. Yes,coal is a wonderful fuel that we have actually tried in our owb which did not work so we stay with the fuel that the stove was designed for.I was an idiot for thinking that free wood for fuel was reason enough to go with a wood burner instead of the timeless & great fuel for past,present & future,especially when the greatest fuel was such a guarded secret for so many years & kept secrets rarely inform anyone .

windyhill4.2 wrote:I've not yet pissed off everyone around me,& believe we could find someone to help in troublesome times. Yes,coal is a wonderful fuel that we have actually tried in our owb which did not work so we stay with the fuel that the stove was designed for.I was an idiot for thinking that free wood for fuel was reason enough to go with a wood burner instead of the timeless & great fuel for past,present & future,especially when the greatest fuel was such a guarded secret for so many years & kept secrets rarely inform anyone .

HA-HA!!! Free wood??!! There is no such thing! By the time you cut it, split it, haul it, stack it, move it again, let's not forget the time, physical exersion, costs and danger of using a chain saw, you might as well burn oil. That's why most of us consider ourselves recovering wood burners. I did it for 20 years before I saw the light. And a cord a week??!! Holy crap!! You really screwed the pooch on that deal. I'd sell that beast last week and get a coal boiler.

Yes, FREE wood ,no splitting required,some cutting on the pieces over 4.5' as that length fits in our owb, FREE wood from a local truck body builder,lots of it we could just throw right in.We had to drive 1.5 miles round trip,crawl in the dumpster ,throw the wood in our truck & trailer, we also got a fair amount of useable lumber & plywood that way too which we used for various projects. Coalkirk, looking at your thoughtless rant sure makes me wonder about the low level of requirement to be a moderator on this forum .A cord per week to heat 2 houses & a repair shop is a lot of hard work,but we have not used oil or propain since 1997,and we now spend about $4000/yr on wood that is cut/split & dumped on a pile.We want to change to coal in the near future,but I will say that if your idiotic,mindless rant was the norm on this forum I would run the other way quickly.

Then run my neanderthal wood burning friend. There was nothing thoughtless or idiotic about my post which you have deemed a rant. For someone who has only been on this forum for a very short while you have a very high opinion of yourself. Frankly I found you response to Smitty to be rude and ignorant. Snow Storm Week of 2-10-14 Also none of your damn business.

You got a lot of nerve to come here and spout that kind of crap. You don't have any standing here as far as I'm concerned. If you don't like it here get the you know what out. Just because I'm a mod for Md doesn't mean I can't speak my mind. You are not even a coal burner. You really should go hang out with the other partially evolved cellulose burners.

Oh and you burn plywood? Real smart. I'll bet the neighbors love you too.

Whoa...., never mind, too much drama for me. As for our outdoor wood boiler, my son fills it twice a day on very cold, (minus degree) days, once in the morning, about 10, then checks it again about 8 pm. On warmer days we still load twice per day but use less wood. Thanks anyway.....

Sixkids wrote:Whoa...., never mind, too much drama for me. Thanks anyway.....

Tough crowd this morning..

Cabin fever along with a decent snow storm has resulted in tempers flaring. Breath in,...breath out,..move on. We're all warm, by whatever means. Let the playful banter resume

Coalkirk,you keep spouting off without reading or putting any thought into what you are saying.Where do you read anything to reference me burning plywood?? I said we got useable lumber & plywood to use for various projects,no mention of burning plywood .Read the post multiple times till it sinks in,i have to do that all the time just I have read your posts multiple times to be sure that I am actually reading your rants correctly. A "high opinion of myself" ?? where do you find that ? Have some sensible person point out where I ever touted a high opinion of myself. As many who read this forum & try to understand my simple minded posts can affirm that has never been the case. I have never bad mouthed coal ,yet you rant like wood burners are the enemy.Wood burners are not coal burners enemy,government & big utilities are.I am not even a coal burner ? again, you have not read my posts,i have burnt coal in our current owb,it just doesn't work as good as wood in a stove designed for wood.I have admitted many times on this forum that I wish I had known more & thought more about coal b4 setting up our owb ,again you have either not read or not comprehended what was posted.I will admit that highly educated people like yourself have a hard time to understand the simple minded thoughts that folks like myself post.All I am asking of you is that you be fair to other posters & read their posts with an attempt at understanding what they are trying to say,ask them a question ,like this .WH ,you mentioned that you burn 1 cord of wood/week,why so much,what are you heating ? I have no intention of spending the rest of my life heating with wood,that is why I came to this forum,so I could make a better informed decision this time than I did 7yrs ago . Warmth is the goal we all strive for,some do it smarter than others & sooner.

Carbon12 wrote:Cabin fever along with a decent snow storm has resulted in tempers flaring. Breath in,...breath out,..move on. We're all warm, by whatever means. Let the playful banter resume

I know right lol. Sometimes personalities clash, that's ok we're all friends here. Occasionally I gotta step back and regroup too...

OK, everybody inhale a little of what is in CK's profile pic!!

WH...you were definitely getting 'free-er' wood than what we usually see talked about here. All it cost you was time to go get it and unload it which (in addition to the purchase price) I also have invested in my coal burning by the way.

Usually we see it called 'free' if the person didn't pay $$ for the trees or whatever but still spent $$ time and energy on all those uncounted things CK referenced. Obviously you didn't fall into that category.

Please stick around as you have valuable boiler experience you have already been nice enough to share. Hope you get to move to a coal burner soon as just talking about that amount of wood takes me back to chiropractor visits!!

Well, alright! I see I'm coming up on 1700 posts myself. How many before I can become a Moderator???

titleist1,thank you for your kind words.For those who never went the owb route ,it would be hard to understand the sickening feeling of staying up late at nite to go out in whatever the weather is dishing out at the time to load wood in the owb so it will last till 5 a/m & do it all over again. Would I go with an owb again ? No I wouldn't,but I did not know back then what I know now,& as I have often pointed out in my posts we have not used oil or propain since 1997.We used wood all those years,now we are older & hopefully wiser & looking forward to coal heating .I have learned a lot on this forum & hope to learn lots more,as I have gotten older I try to reread/rethink what has been said b4 responding,still not perfect tho. Richard has a wonderful,informative forum here which I am very thankful for & my reference to a low level of requirement to be a moderator was not meant to be demeaning of this great forum,although in reading my post over several times I have concluded that it could be taken that way,sorry Richard. I realize that all of us have our bad/off/down days where we post edgy things ,but some members have that demeaning/belittling response most of the time & yesterday my junk mail filter clogged & I unloaded . Now if the response to a cord per week had been WOW that is a lot of wood ,what all are you heating with that ,we could all learn something . Thankfully warmer winter temps are ahead of us & we can sleep more & get 8-12hr burn times again.

I must be one of the few lucky OWB users. I load 2x a day, 6 or seven cords a year, not a big deal. I often do it in my jammies. It takes 15 minutes tops. I enjoy cutting wood, its a great hobby, its great stress releif and I don't need to spend money on a gym membership. My wood is readily available (notice I didn't say free cause nothing's free) and I feel I am being a good steward of my 15 acres and my brother's 20 acres by cleaning up deadfall and storm damage; which keeps the woods beautiful and healthy.

All that being said and seeing that I am in an excellent area for coal, I am also working to adapt my OWB to burn coal in the best possible manner. I would rather cut wood on my schedule than to be forced to cut on the boiler's schedule. I am already ahead on my wood supply due to Super Storm Sandy's contribution of 75 or more uprooted trees.

I am not a heathen nor and idiot for using wood. I am also not married to wood or coal. I just want to make sure the oil delivery man needs to ask directions each time I call him.

There are wood snobs and I guess there are coal snobs also.

Just doing whatever it takes to stay warm and save a buck!

Peace!

Art,
It's great that you can and like doing that. Enjoy it while your young.

Even if one doesn't go the cut and split it their self route, around here there are lots of woods and guys cutting wood. And, even if paying top dollar for locally cut, split, delivered, and stacked wood, it's still way cheaper than coal. I cut, split, and burned a lot of wood when I was younger, but age and worn-out joint aches have a way of making life changes. Hope you can get set up to have the best of all fuels.

Dave,

Too bad the internet in 1997 didn't have the info sources we have now. We'd all have been further along in our knowledge of how to do better heating. Except William - I'm beginning to think he was born knowing this stuff !

I feel your pain - sorta. I even gave up burning wood in the range in the "shoulder months", a couple years ago when it got to be too much pain in my shoulders cutting/splitting just a faction of what you go through. The range's firebox is just a wee bit too short to take face cord length wood, so I have to re-cut.

Last night, I was thinking about what you were saying how much wood those OWB use and it suddenly dawned on me that I own one, but forgot about it. It's called a "large fireplace".

It's opening is four feet wide and three feet high. Big enough that it has an iron cooking crane built into it like the old kitchen cook fireplaces. It and the chimney flue are so large that if I put wood in it any shorter than two foot long, full logs, it doesn't want to draft well and puffs back. So, not owning my own woods, I had to order oversized logs cut, . . . and dang, they get heavy.

We only used it on weekend afternoons when the family could sit around it, but I'd spend close to half that time bringing wood in to feed the beast. Plus, I remembered there were a few nights I stayed up late to load it with logs, and bank it with ashes, in hopes it would still be going come morning. Which it didn't !

Praying you find your coal stove soon !

Paul

Paul,thanks,it's good to hear from those who have been there & done that but have not forgotten what it was like, & do not look down on those who are a little slower in the change process. Till this winter is over there is only 1 aspect of wood that I will miss when we do switch to coal & that is the "smokehouse" aroma many of our customers refer to when they stop in.Art ,as Paul said,enjoy while you are young . Our owb just doesn't function with coal.