This is how I keep coal dust down.

My wife loves the coal stove, but is not too crazy about the coal dust we used to get when I would pour the rice coal into the hopper. I have treated bulk coal but I still get some coal dust, especially if the coal is over a year old. The way I solved this. I always bring two 5 gallon pails of rice coal in each morning, after I dump the pails of coal in the hopper that I brought in the previous morning. When I bring in the pails of coal, I have a watering can, the type you would use for watering your garden or flowers. I sprinkle a bit of water on top of each pail. Enough to wet the coal all the way to the bottom. The next morning when I dump the coal in, I get no dust, and the wet coal seems to burn just fine. Each pail filled about 4/5 of the way to the top, weighs about 30 lbs. I very seldom use more then two pails full of coal in 1 day. A few years ago when I used bagged coal, I would dump the coal into the pails outside, then bring them in and follow the same procedure. Anyone else have other ways to keep the coal dust down?

I might worry about the extra moisture you are sending out thru your pipes and even in the combustion chamber. When water mixes with coal ash, sulfuric acid is produced. Sulfuric acid and metals do not get along very well..

I spray with a water bottle as I dump in the hopper. By time the damp top coal makes its way to the fire it's dry. Been doing this for a couple years with no issues.

I have a hand-fired, so all my coal dust problems occur out in the shed. I bring it in in spackle buckets and there is nothing to worry about when I put it in the stove. My problems are with coal ash dust; and it is always from taking the ash pan out and sliding the pile of ash into an empty spackle bucket. I have a plan to put a return register in the floor right under the ash door, hook an old furnace fan into some ductwork and just catch the dust cloud and send it outside. I'll never do it

When filling the hopper of the stoker with rice coal, I have a shop vac hose that hangs on a piece of wire clothes hanger keeping it just above the hopper. The wire hanger is looped over the flue pipe. I turn on the shop vac and it sucks any dust that comes up. I also use the vac to grab any ash dust that may drop on the front ledge just outside the ash door. I have a drywall dust filter bag in the vac.

I get a pick up load of rice at a time and put it into buckets that get stored in the basement. Usually it is damp when I get it, but over time in the buckets, the top layer of coal will dry. So the dust is usually just from the top of the bucket, the bottom 3/4 of the bucket is usually still damp.

I use a shop vac hose also and just stick the wand under lip of hopper, after a bucket of coal is dumped in I slowly push coal to side of hopper to leave a hole under wand for next bucket.

I have been wetting my coal to keep the dust down for years. I installed a short length of garden hose w/ a spray nozzle over my coal bin. Every morning I wet down the coal in the bin. This keeps it damp enough to reduce or eliminate the dust while filling the hopper. In the summer or fall when I fill the bin, the coal is wet...the trick is in keeping it damp. If it is left to dry completely it is hard to saturate more than the top layer. By dampening it a little every day, the coal doesn't dry out. By wetting the coal in the morn. and filling the hopper in the afternoon the coal isn't dripping wet and I've had no corrosion issues doing this for many years..... my stove is one of the early models made by Alaska.

Another plus to doing this is adding a little moisture to otherwise very dry air produced by burning coal....the constant evaporation from the wet coal as my bin is in the basement along with the stove.

i use a 5 gallon bucket with lid that has a piece of 4" duct secured to it. after filling the bucket with coal i put the lid on. When i dump the bucket i keep the end of the 4" duct right at the top surface of the coal in the hopper. This definitely minimizes the amount of dust. I have done this for years with no complaints about dust.

Qball wrote:I spray with a water bottle as I dump in the hopper. By time the damp top coal makes its way to the fire it's dry. Been doing this for a couple years with no issues.

It would be better to spray with oil then water... cheapest used or crap oil you can find is fine.

I have the shop vac hooked up and it sucks the dust right up