Does anyone burn lump coal?

[hillbilly beef man]

I heat with a wood/coal furnace and have always used wood, but I am looking for something with a few more BTU's for these below 0 nights, and coal is pretty cheap here. Can you use coal at night and switch back to wood during the day without any problems? Does it clink up like stoker coal? Any other tips for burning coal? Sorry for my ignorance but my experience with coal is limited to the stoker furnace we had growing up.

 

[Farm Fence Solutions]

Burning coal is a lost art...... Switching back and forth would go against the benefits of coal, I would think???? I use a small bed of wood fire coals to get the coal burning, and once it's lit good, that's when it needs filled up. Coal works because it is a big, hot mass, and doesn't seem to really get efficient until the second day. Probably somebody around here with more experience that could give us a lesson in the proper ways of burning coal, and proving my theory wrong.

 

[kenny thomas]

Lots of differences in coal. What we called house coal was real soft and would burn up into a small pile of ashes. Some is a harder coal that leaves a lot of clinkers. Only 2 places I know within 75 miles of me that still sells lump coal.

 

[Bright Raven]

This goes way back to the 1970s. The folks in the mountains where they mined coal in eastern Kentucky knew which seams of coal were ideal for home heating and which seams were to be avoided. Seams are numbered. The deeper seams starting with a lower number. The seams higher on the mountain had a higher number. I think they said Hazard # 4 was the cleanest burning.

The Tennessee Ernie Ford song meant more to me after I worked the coalfields:

I was born one mornin' when the sun didn't shine
I picked up my shovel and I walked to the mine
I loaded sixteen tons of number nine coal
And the straw boss said "Well, a-bless my soul".

 

[Farm Fence Solutions]

We burn #5 lump coal from the local mines, and I usually buy a ton of good hard PA coal every winter. The hard coal puts out the heat.

 

[Son of Butch]

Quit burning coal nearly 50 years ago, I remember my mother always complained about the soot coal created.

We had a coal bin/room in the basement. In the fall we'd split wood and pitch it down into to bin. Then we'd carry it
out and stack along basement walls and do it again. Then we'd buy a pick up loads of coal as needed and shovel it in to
the empty coal bin. We burned the coal during the winter and the wood in the fall and spring.

 

[kenny thomas]

We burn #5 lump coal from the local mines, and I usually buy a ton of good hard PA coal every winter. The hard coal puts out the heat.

Seems like #5 was the house coal here too. Lump coal is rare with the current mining methods

 

[hillbilly beef man]

Lots of differences in coal. What we called house coal was real soft and would burn up into a small pile of ashes. Some is a harder coal that leaves a lot of clinkers. Only 2 places I know within 75 miles of me that still sells lump coal.

I found a place in Bristol that sells lump for $100 a ton picked up, but I am unsure of what kind. Growing up there were three yards within 20 miles of here.

 

[kenny thomas]

Lots of differences in coal. What we called house coal was real soft and would burn up into a small pile of ashes. Some is a harder coal that leaves a lot of clinkers. Only 2 places I know within 75 miles of me that still sells lump coal.

I found a place in Bristol that sells lump for $100 a ton picked up, but I am unsure of what kind. Growing up there were three yards within 20 miles of here.

Good price

 

[dun]

CB should have a pretty good handle on how to do it. With all the coal he gets in his stocking at chrismas he must be an old hand at burning it.

 

[Ky hills]

I have never burned any coal, but that was what my mother's family always used. In later years, her brother would go up to the mountains and haul loads of coal. She said one time a train car turned over hauling coal, and folks went up and picked up all they could.

 

[kenny thomas]

When I was a kid I knew an older guy that would pick up coal that had came down the river after a flood. It would be light and perfectly smooth and almost round. It had traveled downriver at least 30 miles by then. He would pick it up in a burlap sack and haul it home in a home made wooden boat. Times have changed for sure.
Same man would tell stories of taking log rafts down the river from VA to a sawmill in Chattanooga, TN.

 

[Son of Butch]

Overlooked the obvious question....
Were you on Santa's Naughty List hillbilly beef man?

 

[hillbilly beef man]

You mean their is another list? As long as I can stay warm a gift of coal is fine by me.

 

[greybeard]

Only USA coal I ever saw in my life was on the side of a railroad track outside Chicago in the mid 70s.
I saw lots of it tho in South Korea near Pusan.

 

[kenny thomas]

I seen a pickup half loaded with lump coal today and wondered if it was hillbilly beef

 

[Bigfoot]

I may not be too observant, but I haven't seen anybody burn coal here since I was a kid. It was the older people doing it even back then. I can just barely remember our town having a coal yard. We even have a little mining here to.

 

[hillbilly beef man]

I seen a pickup half loaded with lump coal today and wondered if it was hillbilly beef

Probably not unless you were near Bristol. Asked for a ton, got 3,600 lbs. Apparently you just get what the loader driver happens to pick up. Seems weird to be throwing rocks on a fire.

 

[kenny thomas]

Was in Norton, odd thing was that it was a white pickup.
In the area I work I can take a pick and get enough out of the old augar holes to burn a long time.