How Much Coal Do You Really Use?

I use my stove to supplement my oil fired boiler that also must stay on line to make domestic hot water.

Our living space is 1463 Sq/Ft. My stove is a tiny little Russo #2 Econo model.

My stove is in the living room and covers over a rediculous fireplace sitting on the ledge out in front. Rediculous unless you are a young guy trying to impress she who does not pay the bills!

I buy 2.5- 3.0 Tons of good anthricite per year. I keep my home heated for about 150 days per season with between one 5 gallon to 1.5 5 gallon buckets of caol per day.

The living room remains at between 70 - 80 degrees and the back rooms stay quite nice, 62-65.

I do have good insullation and great windows.

I have never run out of coal and never had to run cold in the house. My oil fired boiler has to stay on line to make hot water and uses about 1 gallon per day. When the O/S temps go below the minus zero mark the furnace does kick on to supplement the basement circulator and add some heat to the floor above. I have never heard a main floor circulator kick on since I installed the coal stove.

I basically heat my home with $650 of coal and another 365 gallons of fuel oil that also gives me hot water year round.

I would love to hear some other real assessments of actuall heat/hot water costs.

Gary

How much coal do most of you buy to get you through a season?

I have very similar per day totals to yours although I am not using it 150 days since I am in a warmer climate. As a result of the shorter heating season I use roughly 2 to 2-1/2 tons per year (about $200 / ton). At most about (2) 5 gallon buckets per day when it is cold enough to keep the stove fired up. The stove is in the unfinished basement (roughly 1600 sqft) which stays between 78-84 and the upstairs (roughly 2000 sqft) is between 66-72. The propane furnace doesn't kick on unless I give the stove a break on the warmer days.

I heat about 1200 sq. ft. of living space in an old 2 story cottage with insulation to about 1970 standards. I burn anthracite in a Hitzer 30-95 I have heated in February, March, November and December 2008. I have been averaging about 25 pounds per day. So a little under 4 tons is what I anticipate. I use a kerosene fired Toyostove for the early fall and most of the spring, and will only burn about 100 gallons tops. I have electric hot water, but don't use much as I live alone.

Coal: 4 X 250 = $1000.
Keros. 100 X 3.30 = $330.
elect. $.50 per day X 365 days = $180.

Total = $1500. aprox. depending on current price of Kerosene

I live in a 1830's 1700 sq ft sieve.I do 95% of my heating with coal.7-8 tons per year keeping the house at 74-78*.

Here's a good one,
My wife called my on the job today and said it was getting cold in the house(73.7*) and asked how to load the furnace.I said don't touch the furnace and just turn up the thermostat.Did she listen nooooo.She fought with it for an hour and a half and managed to get it somewhat lit.I think the next time she will just hit the thermostat.
DON

i am heating 6,000 sq ft.......4,000 of it is uninsulated cement block and 2,000 of it is an insulated pole barn.......first winter I was here we burned a ton every 6-14 days in 4 handfed stoves depending on the outside temp..........so far the kenmore in the house has burned about a ton and a half of coal

I also live in a "sieve"....(Like that one Big beam )
I am averaging 2.5 40 lbs. pails per day with low 30's and teens n twenties at night. I like it warm 73 to 76 is fine (heater sucks in my dump truck).
When it gets really cold I will use about 3 full pails on windy days ...
No matter what... $ for $ you cant match the heat from coal over oil.
Now that I am mixing stove and chesnut you cant beat the amount of heat the Energy King will make.
I guess I am using close to 3000 to 3600 pounds of coal a month.
When I heated with oil I would use 1800 gallons in a normal cold winter.
In today dollars Five Hundred a month for coal is Peanuts

My house is 1849+1880+1900+1948+1999 . 4100 sqft, some new windows most old [40 windows] 5 outside doors, 2 caulked shut, others lousy. Many sections of the house need insulation, but the house is plaster/lath and has sections of ceilings that are inaccesable without major destruction/reconstruction.

So instead of burning 6000 gallons of propane [$12K] to keep the house at 60-62*, I use ~12 tons of Pea anthracite and an AA260 boiler. This heats the house, the 2400squ ft shop, and DHW.. all for ~$2400 per year. Can't beat it..

Greg L

My abode is a 1770's vintage 1200sq/ft (first floor) farm house (average insulated) , with a modern 600 sq/ft cape style ell addition (well insulated). A stove in each end of the L shaped footprint. used to heat everything with 1100 gal of oil, last year I used almost 900 gal, plus 1 cord of wood in severe cold.

This year I ressurected my 80's vintage VC resolute and vigilant stoves that hven't been used in 26 years.

I've burned 60 bags this year, including 20 bags (40 lb'rs) this month alone. Going to pick up another ton tomorrow, started with 3 tons in Oct. In the old days I could heat the house with 4 tons, but that was before the 600 sq/ft addition. So I'll probably use all of 4 tons and then some .

That said, I used to keep the oil thermostats on 68 in the addition and 65 in the old part of the house,( second floor never had any baseboard zones) .Now with the coal, the downstairs is always around 70deg. So it's not exactly comparing apples to apples. I'll know better at the end of the season!

Here's something interesting, from my digging around on these forums and trying to re-learn coal burning, I decided to put baros on each stove, which I didn't do way back then. I know my pipe temps at the chimney are way cooler than before, and after 8-10 hrs in this December weather, the stoves are running hotter than I remember from back then. So I feel I'm burning more efficiently now.

I've enjoyed reading everyones experiences here on this forum, and have learned a lot. My wife has said more than once while I'm engrossed on my computer, " are you still coal blogging?"

BTW, my boiler hasn't provided one BTU towards heating the house yet! And I hope to keep it that way. I take pride in keeping my heating dollars in the U S of A this year. And till I'm too old to haul in the bags, I intend to keep doing it.

Paul

Edit: I picked up another ton today (Reading) and now it comes on 50lb bags with NO handle!!!!!

I also did a bag count of the remaining 40 lb bags and found I had 90 left from the 150 I bought in sept, so I was off on my usage for the year.

Wow! Some of this is pretty scarry.

3 years ago I had old windows and doors and used just the oil fired furnace an 1200 gallons of oil to keep the house at 65.

2 years ago I installed the stove and I bought all new windows and doors and installed them myself.

The house is now pretty well insulated and no drafts from lousy windows and doors and it is pretty easy to keep warm unless we get the cold snaps where it goes well below zero for days on end. I live just over the PA & NJ Borders in the NY catskills and would say the average winter temps are between 20-30 degrees but I have seen -20 a few times but only for a few days per year on average.

When I filled my 275 gallon oil tank in september I got 200 gallons @ $4.49 per gallon. It has gone down considerably since then but the thought of buying 1200 gallons and spending $5400 that was headed to the Arabs was out of the question. I still have 3/4 of a tank of oil and have burned close to a ton of my coal so far. I am guessing that a 5 gallon bucket of coal weighs around 40 pounds and I burn the stove from mid november thru march. Some days we use a bit more and other days we need to open windows or allow excess heat to go into the garage.

I spent about $2500 on the new doors and windows and have made every penny of that back in the last 2 years by heating with coal.

Gary

rewinder wrote:...88...
Paul

rewinder, please humor me if you've said this somewhere earlier. What stove pipe temps do you run with the baro vs what they were - if you recall - before you installed them I don't run one mainly because the manual stated not to. How does it respond to the flap position as it responds to the stove's temperature; more open or less open when the flap is more open or less open I know my draft pulls hard when the flap is open, say 3/8 at the bottom but simmers nicely when nearly closed.

For the record and to keep on topic, I used 3.97 tons last year and less than 100 gal of fuel oil. So far this heating season, I've used about 1.5 tons and maybe 25 gal of fuel oil. Plan is to use the coal stove as long as possible without roasting everyone out of the house when spring weather ramps up.

VigIIPB, I can't recall the temps from 25 years ago, but I used to have a mag thermo on the tr hand corner of the stove top, and at the elbow on the pipe. I remember that I couldn't put my hand on the pipe after the elbow (right at the thimble) at anything above 300deg surface. Now I only have a mag thermo on the top.

for sure the air entering the baro is cooling the exhaust, but I can stick my hand in the baro and into the riser pipe with the stove humming at 450 surface and not feel like I'm going to cook my flesh. It not hot at all really. and even at 500deg I can rest my hand on the pipe (again after the baro) at the thimble for as long as I want.

the baro doesn't respond to the stove flap at all, either wide open or almost closed. If I push on the flap with the chain slack, when itls cold outside, the suction will hold the flap shut. If I open the doors, the baro barely closes -again whenit's cold out-- If its above 40, the baro isn't doing much, it's vert. If you look at my pic ------------------------->>> you can see the Tee with the baro to the left. It's a 6" baro mounted in a 6" circle cut into a 8: cap on the Tee. The chimny is a 8X8 tiled flue.

So the baro isn't changing in response to the stove setting, just the outside temps.

When it's 20deg or so, the manometer reads.04 to .05 constantly, and baro flaps in the gusts. ( at 5 deg I saw it as high as .06) when it's 45 to 55 degrees outside, the readings are from .02 to .03. If I close the baro with tin foil the readings jump to .08-.09 and and .04 to .05, respectivly.

In the cold weather I run it at around 450 before I go to bed and in the morning it's dropped about 75 to 100deg-- that's 8 hrs later. I know your VII can hold more fire mass and burn hotter longer.

Now on my smaller resolute, I've found recently that if I added weight to the baro to run it at .04 instead of .05, my temps at a 8hr burn are higher and less burn back from the edges. Again on the resolute I can rest my hand at the thimble at any fire level with no "pain" It's a 6" exhaust pipe in an 8X8 flue . The 6" baro in it, is way more open (than the Vigilant) at all levels and out side temps, so that flue is a real "sucker". Might open the clean out door a bit, down celler on it to cut the draft and keep the baro at the stove from drawing so much heated air.

Does this make any sense vigIIPB??????????????

It does to me but then I wrote it!!!!!!!!!!!!!

Paul

VGIIPB, I think I remember reading your past posts and from your vids, your active fire mass is probably 3 what times mine is. Tho mine is hopper fed, I know I can't sustain as high a firing rate as your batch burner. Where you burn aprox 4 tons in one stove, and you said your cold weather burns are starting out at 750deg and ending at 650 or so after 12 hrs, you are pushing the same amount of coal in a year in one as I am in 2 stoves. You can get the 50,000 BTU output for longer times than I can, I'd have to stoke every 4 or 5 hrs to maintain a 750 to 650 sustained output level. Since we "roost" in the family room with the smaller stove, and the larger one mainly pushes heat to the main house (both have doorway fans) it works well. So unless it gets in the single digits, I don't have to run them above 450-500deg.

you may benifit from a baro since you run so hot, cooling your exhaust and allowing the heat to stay in the stove longer. That's what I've gleaned from these threads, and comparing from the old days, it's true.

Also, I used to burn Lehigh pea coal bulk delivered 25 years ago, now bagged reading. I do notice I don't ever get fused clinker stuff now at all. I used to get some then, and had a hard time getting them thru the rocker grates. Don' know if it's because of the coal change of the baro addition. Ahhh the mysteries of coal burning!

On another note after losing power for 4 plus days, i'm happy with the fact that no power is needed to keep them hummin' along. I did break down and fire up a small generatorafter 3 days to run the well pump so we could bathe and wash the dishes. propane HW heater and stove made for a pretty painless episode. there are still loads of folks around here who may not get power till after the 25th. Boy the plumbers are going to be buisy when some of those housed thaw out.

BTW, why on earth would reading coal Co put up 50 lb bags now with no handles, don't they know there a lot of old duffs like me burning coal? I anin't happy about that!!!!!!!!!!

paul

I heat my raised ranch with coal and still use the oil for my hot water. I will use about 1.5 tons coal but I do burn some wood in the late fall early spring. I use around 10-15 gals oil a month. The oil burner is only on when I need hot water.

My oil burner is always on and always maintaining the internal temp to keep the hot water and furnace up to speed should I ever require heat in any of the three zones. I keep all the thermostats down at 60 so as long as the stove maintains above that the circulators never kick on.
I think it is a safe guess that the boiler cycles on to maintain temp for a few minutes every hour and then kick off until the internal temp hits the low limit.

I can't say for sure I use 1 gallon of oil per day but I did get an auto delivery on Nov. 1 and another on Dec. 2 and took 28 gallons. Any boiler that does double duty of heat + hot water must maintain a pre set internal temp at all times. I don't know if getting an oil fired hot water heater would save me much in the long run because I would still want the boiler on line just in case the stove ever went out or temp got too low O/S to keep the house at 60.

Gary

My single level ranch is about 1100sq ft and I use about 3/4 ton from Dec. to mid. Mar. in my Crane and a little wood before and after coal season. Electric hot water averages about $20/month, I use the oil burner as backup when it gets into the single digits which is rare here in RI.