modifying a wood stove to burn pellets/corn

they dont sell soft coal here in bags, we have open pit mines for "house coal".

but its soft coal.

iin central pa you can buy anthricite off the pile like you can soft coal here.

if you pay for the trucking, you can get anthricite trucked in here too.

its cheaper to buy it by the bag than to pay the delivery fee for a truckload this far west in pa.

by the bag, it ends up @ $200 a ton.

the recent hard coal prices by the ton is between 257 and 300 a ton.

at that price today, the 5 bucks a bag price i paid last yr will probably be up this yr.

in the end, by the bag or the ton, its the same.

when you figure that its been delivered to SWPA already and bagged, its a deal.

I couldnt drive east and come back with a ton or that price when I factor in gas and food.

So bagged coal is not a bad deal.
plus its dry, its screened to size (rice/pea/nut) and clean.

I got 50 bucks worth last yr (10 bags) and I have one bag left for this winter.
it stretches the wood pile way more than thought it would.

To really stretch that wood pile use some peat.

When we bought our wood stove the feller at the store tried to sell us a pellet stove instead. I told him I couldn't go out in the back woodlot and cut pellets. Well I guess I could, but there would be a lot of waste and chainsaw work.

You should sell tickets if you ever do decide to chainsaw your own pellets....

__________________
"What would you do with a brain if you had one?" -Dorothy

"Well, then ignore what I have to say and go with what works for you." -Eliot Coleman

peat like, loose baled peat what?

what kind of peat?

sounds interesting

When we lived in Europe peat was available in compressed fuel bricks.

Here when you buy it in a bag, it is also compressed. Cut and peal away the bag, and it can be cut into bricks. Though be aware that it may crumble on you. Or it can just as easily be shoveled; pull loose a flake of peat onto a shovel and it can slide easily into a stove.

I live very near numerous peat bogs, and I am growing Sphagnum Moss on my property. None of my moss has grown to the maturity of being peat yet. The Sphagnum Moss / Peat industry finds that it takes as long as eight years to reach peat maturity, however it can often be re-harvested every five years.

Unfortunately some old-science text books still in publication insist that peat is a fossil and takes thousands of years to form. Just don't tell that to folks who make a living re-harvesting peat bogs every five to eight years.

I have harvested local peat for home heating fuel.

Some of the peat that we have been burning here since returning stateside, has been store bought and some has been locally harvested peat.

We have an old wood coal heater that we paid 35 bucks for 4 yrs ago. It heats our whole house and folks that come visit can't believe how warm it keeps the house. Our house is 2 story and is laid out so the heat is pretty much even thought out the house. The only difference in burning wood or coal is the coal burns a lot hotter and if you choke it back it smokes so much. We use a combination of wood and coal depending on the temp outside. Don't get me wrong before we learned how to use it with wood only we had windows open when it was 4 below. I don't know who made this old heater as the only markings on it is on the top front door and it says KING OF HEAT. Sam

Each stove is different and requires a bit of playing with to work out a relationship.

I am glad that you have worked out a relationship with your stove that suits you so well

I also find it interesting that you too burn multiple fuels in the same firebox, someone recently was trying to tell me that you simply could not burn but the one fuel in a stove [thinking that only 'wood' stoves could burn wood, that only 'coal' stoves could burn coal, etc], what narrow-mindedness

I do wish you the best of times with your stove.

May God bless you.

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Hey Comfortablynumb,

Here in NEPA you can get coal stoves that function just like the pellet stoves. Almost the exact same. They burn rice coal and are quite efficient.

Here is a link.
http://www.readingstove.com/products.html

Now I went over to this company about 5 years back and the owner/welder/salesman/inventor (it was a one man show). Said I'd burn like 3.5 ton a year. I figured that was pretty good. Now here I can get coal delivered for about 140.00 a ton. So it'd be less than say 500 for coal heat. But the wood is "free" so that is the way I went.

I thought it was illegal to burn coal in a home.

I am not sure where I heard that, I know my grandfather stopped for some reason...I still have a huge pile of coal that he moved back beside the old coal mine we have on our property.

I also understood that burning coal in a wood rated fireplace was very dangerous due to the heat coal produces.

I live in WV...so coal is a bit abundant here...I would love to know if its possible to use the coal I have in both my insert fireplaces.

Thats why I said to pick a stove and fuel source together.

He probably switched to Oil heat back in the 50's. In area's where coal was king they sold it as Self controlled, Just a tank (NO Shoveling), ECT... They even gave you a tank and Furnace.
But I'm sure burning coal for heat is still legal.

I have never heard of it being illegal.

We have heated our home using coal/peat when we lived in Scotland.

And we have been using it here stateside.

We have neighbors who also use coal [though burning peat is fairly unusual].

We have multiple stores locally that each market coal and stoves capable of burning coal. I would find it hard to believe that burning coal would be illegal, when it is so readily available and it is marketed here.

Coal certainly can burn hotter than wood, and I would be very hesitant placing coal in a hearth without a fire-clay or fire-brick lining capable of handing that level of heat. However I have seen cook-stoves that were designed for coal, and they had no lining [just thick walls].