Home Forums Hunting & Shooting Hunter's Campfire Burning coal

Most older homes around where I live burned coal for heat back in the day. Many still have the cast iron coal chute doors outside on a basement foundation wall. Those homes that didn't have coal burning furnaces had at least one coal burning fireplace grate and a centrally located Warm Morning type coal stove.

My grandmother's house had a coal fireplace grate in the living room and a fairly good size coal burning heating stove located in the middle of her big kitchen as well as her old cast iron wood burning cook stove. My uncles used to make temporary 'make-do' patches to plug small rust holes in the stove pipes with a mixture of red clay, water and salt. To my recollection they never cleaned any of their chimneys and never had a one to catch on fire.

A few pieces of kindling wood (usually rejected hardwood brush handles that an old local brush factory sold by the pickup truck load) and little wadded up newspaper was what they used to start coal fires. Great childhood memories watching that coal fireplace burning and popping and the wind-up mantel clock ticking away in the background while my uncles talked about hunting, fishing and dogs. No better insomnia remedy ever.

The wood burning cook stove was replaced by a LP gas cook stove not long after my grandmother died in the early 80's but the coal fireplace grate and coal heating stove were still in regular use on up until the mid 90's by my lifelong batchlor uncle. After he died the property was sold and the old house and outbuildings were razed.

How did the coal burning fireplace smell?

The picture in my avatar is the coal fire burning in the E.F.M. stoker (i.e. furnace) used to centrally heat my home and domestic hot water.

The anthracite coal is delivered from the mine located about three miles from my house by the ton, and the ash gets picked up by the township every week (twice per week during winter).

I don't think there is a better value for the combination of my money and time.

This is pretty much what I have in the attached link. They are still made and will probably last the lifetime of a house:

EFM Stoker

As much as I can recall it wasn't a bad smell at all to me but coal does have it's own unique smell.

Most of you folks seem to have at least lived through your coal experiences and seem to be OK.

Presently the enviro crowd is fighting tooth and nail to prevent coal export/transportation down the Columbia river corridor via barge or train. Listening to their song, one would think the dust from a single coal train would end life as we know it.

Doesn't help that the big O near swore an oath to do away with coal. Look at the burners in a modern coal plant today with their bright blue flames, and one with think they were burning gas.

High school we had to close the windows when the coal was delivered, I am sure it has been changed in the last 50 years.

Wife's uncle was the preacher in Chugwater, he had a coal furnace when we visited there. After he retired to another house, they had propane.

Closest I came to the things were all the converted gravity furnaces with a big gas fire and lots of asbestos piping. My home had one fance gas stove for the whole house, 2 rows of burners, no thermostat. When I was around 15 dad put in a boiler and hot water heat. Neighbors were Mexican/gringo and had a big coal range in he kitchen when I was a kid. Also a 36 Ford Woody that would haul the whole bunch of us to the matinee, school, and swimming in the summer.

The coal plants here are having to shut down so we can use more expensive to build gas plants, and wind/solar. The coal trains seem to have a coating now as they do not make dust. I have thought of going down when one is stopped and see if I can find any Christmas presents.

Here's a some what related story. The house my parents and I lived in was at the foot of a steep hill. (At least it seemed steep to me when I was little.) In those days it was more or less a neighbourhood street. Today it is an arterial street meaning it carries a high volume of traffic every day.

In the winter we used to sleigh ride down the icy road. A friend of mine lived about four houses from the top of the hill. Due to the number of cars that used to get stuck trying to get up the hill in the winter my friends father started putting his coal ashes out on the road in front of his house. All us kids hated him because he screwed up our sleigh riding fun.

As another side issue, here in Ontario our Liberal government (kind of equivalent to US Democrats) closed two coal fired electric generating plants without having any alternative sources of supply. To my knowledge they never investigated the possibility of installing modern scrubbers, etc. to allow them to continue in operation. They tell us in a few years and after spending a few billion dollars they will have replacement generating facilities constructed. All in the interest of a green future for our children. Too bad if they go broke paying for the alternative.

Jim

I had the twin to that stove for a while. Still regret trading it off even though I no longer had use for it. Great stoves even if you just burn wood in them. They do not have a built in blower but a heat exchanger in the stove pipe works wonders even in a house that has almost no insulation value.

It was a terrific stove! That's not my actual stove, but an identical one from the web.

It kept 1600 sq ft from freezing in all kind of below zero temps. It would get a tad bit cool if I was gone for long. Almost always had to run home after work to 'feed the stove' before heading to evening activities.

With a Magic heat exchanger on mine and good seasoned elm, I was able to turn the thermostat down enough that I could stoke the stove full and it would burn for 24 hours. I would just shake the grates and restock the fire box and go to work. The exchanger really did jump up the efficiency of the stove.

My fuels were spruce and lignite/sub-bituminous coal. Probably that made the difference.

Some very interesting stories here.

Pardon my ignorance, and please correct me if I'm wrong. I assume you can burn wood in a coal stove, but you cannot burn coal in a wood stove? If you burn coal in a wood stove, is a grate the only retrofit required? Thanks.

My Grandma used coal as supplementary heat when I was a boy (she had an oil furnace as her primary heating plant). We lived across the street, so it was my job to take the coal bucket out to the coal pile and fill it up; loved laying there watching a coal fire burn in her living room fireplace - it put out some heat!

Being the oldest boy, my job was to keep the fire burning day and night. Just a plain old coal furnace, nothing fancy. I had to hump lump coal twice a day and haul klinkers once a day. When I left for the army I didn't miss the work. When I was discharged, the folks had already put in a natural gas furnace. Everybody was happy. Times were much simpler then.

I just remembered that we had a coal yard in town, located on the NS Rwy and adjacent to the lumber yard - they made deliveries or you could drive your pickup there and have it loaded. Can't remember when it closed, but it has been decades.

Quality coal does not smell bad, but it has to combust right, no matter what coal you use.

15 years ago people were tearing out perfectly good stokers like this and replacing them with oil burners. You couldn't get scrap price for one. Now good used ones bring a couple grand.