$400 per ton is on the high end of the spectrum. Look around for coal dealers and see what you can find. You are a little further from the anthracite mines of Pennsylvania so shipping costs become evident when buying coal in Maine. http://nepacrossroads.com/ is a forum for coal burning people and you will find plenty of help there, including fuel comparison calculators and tools on how to calculate the proper heating load for your house. Great forum and very helpful if you want to learn about coal heating.Assuming I could heat and get hot water out of 4 tons of coal a year (2000 sq ft house with 2 people plus a baby on the way), that's $1200-1600 a year (assuming $3-400 a pallet/ton). Huge savings.
What you are describing is a coal "stoker" which contains a mechanism inside the combustion chamber that adds fresh coal as needed, blows the necessary amount of air through the burning coal pile and removes ashes as needed. Stokers can be found in simple 1-room stoves (as opposed to a hand-fed stove that relies on you to add fresh coal as needed) or scale up to units that can heat entire houses. This is an on-demand type of furnace that fires as needed much like a gas or oil boiler. You will not need to re-do your plumbing, coal stokers connect the same way as any boiler to a heating plumbing system. Coal stokers are different than their oil and gas brethren in that even when the stoker is not firing, the coal pile within the furnace is still smoldering. When it fires according to heat demand, a fan turns on to supply the pile with air blowing through it to produce the heat necessary to heat water. The constant smoldering is the only difference between a coal and gas/oil furnaces.Do you know, offhand, if a coal boiler can be a direct replacement for the oil boiler in a forced hot water system? Or do I need to redo the plumbing, circulation pumps, electronics, etc? Also, are coal boilers "cold start" or do I need to keep it warm all summer?
A coal stoker can easily handle your DHW tasks. I've seen some setups where coal heats the water in the water heater (via an extra zone off of the stoker, an indirect setup with a heating coil in the tank) during the winter. Alot of people shut the coal stoker down in the summer and in this situation when the heating coil shuts down, the water heater takes over and heats water via electric or propane etc...I have propane at the house, so I was thinking of getting a dedicated water heater for domestic hot water.
Why not use propane or natural gas? Much cleaner, almost no maintenance and it feeds itself.
Yeah it costs more, but you are paying for convenience.
My grandparents had a wood pellet stove and got sick of getting pellets or having them delivered and loading it every day.(they are old and feeble)
They switched back to propane.
Why not use propane or natural gas? Much cleaner, almost no maintenance and it feeds itself.
Yeah it costs more, but you are paying for convenience.
My grandparents had a wood pellet stove and got sick of getting pellets or having them delivered and loading it every day.(they are old and feeble)
They switched back to propane.
Amerigas? Gawd, they piss me off...Propane companies are trash and have tons of issues.
We are on our second propane company and this new one isn't any better than the last.
Billing, delivery, leak issues... etc.
If you had a perfectly-insulated container, you could boil osmium with an LED.Ugh... I helped size an Englander stove for someone's cabin over the summer. Don't trust the sq.ft. rating from their brochures, or any, manufacturer. The amount of heat loss (insulation) in your house matters. A perfectly insulated house could be adequately heated by a match - okay, not really, but it matters.
I heat my entire 1,400sq.ft home w/pellets with an Enviro Maxx installed in the basement - plan on burning between 3 1/2 - 4 tons of pellets. I burn a variety of pellets, mostly hard/soft mix. Hopper holds 120lbs and it can go days before re-loading.
It's almost February and i've probably only spent around $325.00 to heat my home, I have it hooked up to a thermostat and wake up every morning to a cozy 70F - house stays betwen 70 - 73 degrees.
This is the first year i'm doing this w/pellets and couldn't be happier - for the last 7 years, we've been heating the house only with a wood stove in the basement - using 4 1/2 cords. The savings alone for my time (cutting, splitting, hauling, stacking, etc) has been priceless, I do a thorough cleaning once a week (about an hour job).
Wether you choose to burn wood or pellets depends on a number of factors and what is important to you - you can potentially save 40 -50% savings from what you spend on oil, propane or electricity. I use to depend on wood as well, but don't kid yourself - nothing is free. Yes, you can always scrounge around and find wood, but what is your time worth? For the most in-depth discussion on everything you want to know about heating with pellet stoves, go over and visit http://www.hearth.com and check out the pellet mill forum.
Furnace and fireplace enthusiasts....
For the most in-depth discussion on everything you want to know about heating with pellet stoves, go over and visit http://www.hearth.com and check out the pellet mill forum.