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RE: (erielack) Notes on the Types and sizes of Anthracite

I can vouch for coal being a real PITA! I (and my brother) started the fire
in our house for a couple of years. Think about:
1) You have to order it before it runs out. Don't have to do this with gas
or electric!
2) You have to store it somewhere. In Scranton, this meant a quarter to a
half of a typical basement taken up with a coal bin. Think dust, dirt from
coal. 
3) You have to start a fire. Think paper, kindling (gathering wood in the
cold!). Think fires not starting properly sometimes for all sorts of
reasons, then emptying out the furnace and starting all over again.
4) You have to keep the fire going. If you don't have automatic feeders and
dampers, you have shovel the coal in the furnace periodically throughout the
day. At night in our house, the fire typically burned out. Had to start it
up again each morning. You had to periodically adjust the dampers to act as
a thermostat to control the heat and to keep it going before it burned out.
You had to crank out the spent ashes periodically so you could feed more
coal in the furnace.
5) Something has to transport the heat. In our house, this was done via
steam in radiators in each room. Those radiators took up space in each room.
6) When the coal is spent, you have to shovel it out of the cinder box into
bushels and carry the bushels out to be picked up by the Ashman.

When we built our house in SC, we had the option of a gas fireplace or a
wood burning fireplace. Guess which one I opted for?

- -----Original Message-----
From: Schuyler Larrabee [mailto:schuyler.larrabee_@_verizon.net] 
Sent: Sunday, March 01, 2009 9:25 PM
To: 'EL Mail List'
Subject: RE: (erielack) Notes on the Types and sizes of Anthracite

> 
> Jim,
> 
> Your previous post makes me wonder IF anthracite could be marketable
today.
> The reason I say this is because many people use wood burners instead of ,
or
> in  conjunction with, natural gas or oil. We have friends that heat that
way.
> I  wonder if Anthracite would be a better fuel?
> 
> Rick Fleischer

In particular, in comparison with wood.  IT seems to me that managing a wood
fired heating system
must be a real PITA.

SGL


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