Home Forums Hunting & Shooting Hunter's Campfire Burning Coal Instead of Wood

The list didn't list Anthracite.. 25,000,000 BTU/ton

Yep, I remember those signs.

I suspect that our coal is easy to deal with because we burn so little. We can only burn it when the temps are below freezing round the clock. If the temps get up into the 40s in the day, a coal fire will cook us out of the place - even with it banked down well.

When we do burn it, we only use about two 3 gallon buckets full a day. The house is built of SIPs and is super efficient. We haven't burned any coal at all yet this winter because it has been so mild and have yet to go through the first cord of wood.

I do remember old coal furnaces in houses here. It seemed like all you did was feed coal to them. Houses had little or no insulation and most of that heat went right out the roof and around the windows. We don't use, even in the coldest of winters, anywhere near the volume of coal that those places did.

It also didn't list good hardwood. I burn about 7 cords a season and have never burnt anything on that list except maybe some birch. I burn oak, maple, hickory, locust, beech, cherry and ash. Maybe they don't have these trees in Alaska. I usually have it all stacked under cover by May. I tried burning coal once but just couldn't get the hang of stacking those little chunks like cord wood. They kept falling over on only the second course!

My neighbor burns coal...some days I would like to plug his chimney

When my dad moved to MT, he had to adapt to the quantity of wood he needed to lay in for the winter. All he can get there is pine, aspen and occasionally some birch. Hardwoods just aren't readily available.

Exactly right.

I burned the crappy Healy coal (sub-bituminous) in Fairbanks for 14 years as my sole source of heat. I used a Riteway wood/coal stove - this exact model (not my pic)


This one is thermostatically-controlled, welded steel, with a fire brick liner, shaker grate, and removeable ash pan. It was a terrific stove. I could heat 1500 sq ft on 2 floors at -50*. had to feed it 2X/day, but it sure worked.

The insulated chimneys that work for wood stoves (metalbestos-type) work for wood and coal. You start a small wood fire and then gradually add coal until you have the load needed.




It's a fire, not rocket surgery.

I grew up in the coal mining region of East Tennessee. We used coal in a pot bellied stove. It was messy, smelly,and sooty, but the heat was great. When I got married, the coal mines had about all closed. We used a coal/wood heater with wood. The difference is in the grates. Both have firebrick. The wood grate simply has holes for air to flow through and ashes to drop through. A coal stove has to have a shaker grate and an opening for the coal cinders to shaken through.