I heat my shop with wood and I also sell firewood. My parents also heat with wood so I cut for them also.
Maybe swap in a wood stove for now(what vent type/setup do you have?). Keep the coal stove incase you are not satisfied. Next question is...... What wood stove should you install! The Fisher is going to keep you busy tending. There are sooo many great options available these days. If you are considering others?
So you're likely not losing an appreciable amount of income when switching to wood vs coal for heat. Just looking for reasons to keep the existing paid for coal stove and I'm really not seeing any. Young enough that you'll be working firewood in your spare time for quite a while ?
I’ve already got a Fisher Grandpa bear that I used in my shop until I got a smoking deal on a wood furnace. I put a baffle in the grandpa and that thing works awesome. The real beauty of it is it has a water pipe looped through it that I can hook up to my water heater. My coal stove currently has that so hooking the fisher up wouldn’t be an issue. As far as my chimney goes I have a clay liner with blocks around it. I believe it is 6”x6” or maybe bigger.
As a matter of fact Anthracite & Bituminous Coal Forum - Residential & Commercial Heating | Coalpail.com Forum
Enough with the pleasantries already! SpeedShop64 what’s your tools of choice? Saws, splitter, axes, mauls?
So I heat with both wood and coal like my name says. I only use coal when the temp gets really cold because the heat output is so great and the burn times are long. Burning coal when it is 50 and the house becomes a sauna. Wood is easier to control and regulate, once coal is lit it has to burn itself out. Now for the financials. I cut and split all my own wood so the cost is mostly my time and labor minus the cost of the saw, gas, log splitter, etc. Coal is easy and where I am costs $240 a ton. A ton of coal will rival a cord of the best wood there is (anthracite that is). Now for stoves, a wood burner cannot burn coal unless you want to wake up to a lump of iron. Coal burns at close to 3000 degrees. Most coal burners have a firebox too small for wood and even if it fits the burn times as coal has shakers that let the wood coals fall through just when they are getting going. I burn a Vermont Castings Vigilant and I can burn both in it even if it is designed for coal but the burn times suffer. The big advantage with coal is the heat output and the burn times. 10-12 hours are common, just shake it down and add some more. I have kept the fire burning for a month by just adding more and shaking it down. Wood is more fun, more easily regulated and more easily adaptable to varying temperatures. It is also more widely available. Lastly, coal is dusty. Fly ash fills up the stove and clogs the vents so cleaning is a must, it also puts more dust in the house.
I don't have anything too fancy. I use a Stihl MS 290 with a 20" bar. I have a 20ton county line splitter and another homemade splitter which matches the performance of the county line and then some. 10lb splitting maul, various axes and sledgehammers and an assortment of steel wedges. I do have a large collection of homelite saws but rarely use them when I'm trying to be productive. I tend to gravitate towards the large wood scores everyone else looks past. This is one of the loads I got from a maple that was taken down not far from me. 36"-48" at the base. Sledgehammer and wedged every piece to a manageable size. Ended up with 9 truck loads.
If you want to be warmed more than once from your fuel, go with wood. If you want to live on easy street, go with the coal. I burn anthracite. I have 2 tons on hand. I burn wood. I have 3 cords on hand. I can burn either in my stove as it was designed for that. It is a big stove and holds plenty of either fuel. It can run you out of the house with either fuel if I want it to. It can idle for weeks on end with coal at 170F. Lots of chimney maintenance with wood. Near zero with anthracite and zero chance of a chimney fire with anthracite as the fly ash is not combustible. Burns super clean, hence its nickname, “clean coal”. Zero smell, unlike bituminous coal, but lacks the nostalgic smell of a wood fire. Pretty blue flames, a red glow, or a black box, just by adjusting the air and/or blower, without it going out. My friends $$$$ Harmon pellet stove in January burns 1 1/2 bags of pellets a day...60 lbs worth from 40 lb bags at a cost of $4.50-$4.75 a bag. Anthracite comes bagged as well, generally in 40 lb bags as well. I’ve never burned more than 30 lbs in 24 hours even during well below zero weather. I pay anywhere from $5 a bag to $6 a bag. I typically only burn on average a half a bag a day. That’s $2.50-$3 a day...even in the coldest of weather with no inside temperature swings like with wood. Lots more ash with coal...the only down side. However, I find it cleaner to deal with and unlike the poster above, because I am careful how I load my stove and how I remove ash, we deal with very little fly ash in the house. In fact, the wife thinks the wood is dirtier. Who am I to argue with her. LOL! Seriously though, we don’t find it dusty in the house and less dirt around the stove compared to wood. I still love burning wood. I’m getting older and eventually will have to quit cutting wood. I’ve already nearly done that because of health issues. I currently have bought our wood, most of which is on a schedule to season for three years+ before burning most of it. I plan on trying some of those bio-blocks from sawdust. Nothing like the smell of a good wood fire, and nothing like watching a wood fire...unless I just reloaded the coal stove with coal or then the blower on for a while. Then we get about 35 minutes to an hour of the prettiest dancing blue lady’s you ever seen...and boy do those girls put off the heat with those sexy blue legs. Planning on building a secondary air tube kit for it both for the coal but mainly for the wood burning so we can hav the best of both worlds from the secondaries and have a way to burn the wood much slower. Don’t buy into the BS that a combo stove won’t burn either fuel very well. That’s bologna!! It may not burn wood as well as a modern tube stove, hence wanting to make my own secondary framework for the stove, but she will burn anthracite coal just as many hours and efficiently as her hopper fed counterparts that are her twin sisters. The Hitzer 354 is the same exact stove as a Hitzer 50-93 except the 354 doesn’t have a hopper...it’s a hand fed stove just like a wood stove. Oh wait...it’s a wood stove also. LOL! It even runs itself via a bi-metallic thermostat which allows it to run perfectly even if the electric goes out. No one will ever convince me a combo stove,a wood/coal stove, won’t pull their weight. They pull more than their fair share and then some. Too bad the EPA poo poo’d on them. They can still be bought, and are still made the same exact way. Only the advertising has changed...not allowed to tell you they still burn wood. Oh...they will also burn wood blocks, pellets, even bituminous and lignite coal...at least the 254/354 stoves will. I can burn what I want, as much as I want, flip from one forum to another and talk with great people, and never worry about this tank of a stove falling apart. When asked how hot these stoves can be burned, the company owner literally told me if you need more heat to just turn it up, you won’t hurt it. Mine has never burned hotter than 345F above the doors and only about 185F-190F in the top...making it hard to cook off of because of the convection top not getting hot enough for a fry pan. That’s the only reason why I’d want the smaller version of these stoves...unless I went with radiant only models. I bought my stove used but in near new condition and the company owner has treated me and provided service just as if I’d bought a new one. Only bad thing is, I like this stove too well. So much so, I’ve got a nice used Lopi Liberty waiting for it’s turn to shine. It may have to wait a while longer. I’m still going to buy a new stove only because I have three stoves that are really too big for my house. When I buy new I am already leaning heavily towards another Hitzer. Likely a 254 or 30-95 hopper fed. The three big stoves will still have a home here for a while. Likely to be a long time before getting rid of them.
Best part of burning wood for me is gathering my own firewood, processing it, storing it, and then finally burning it. Lots of satisfaction for me in the process! I guess if I were in your shoes and was planning on harvesting my own firewood, I would do the swap. You’re automatically going to see a 750 dollar per year savings. Not familiar with coal burners, so I’m not sure how much more control you would have with the wood furnace in the milder temps. There’s always some days early and late in the season where we open the windows cause it gets too hot.
Way back when I still lived in America, just North of Lehigh Valley. I burned coal in 2 keystone stokers, anthracite. I was in coal county, easy to get and I loved burning it. If you have never seen the blue ladies dance, your missing something special. Transferred to norther Maine and installed a Meyers manufacturing, “woodchuck iirc” it was a wood/coal forced furnace. Burned maple and yellow birch in shoulder season and anthracite in the cold season. I agree that there are many good combo stoves and would not hesitate. If I could get anthracite I would burn it here in Alaska, we have bituminous. I have considered the move to coal and buying anthracite by the 18 wheeler load and call it a day. But I love cutting wood and being in the forrest, when the day comes I shall move coal. However if I was in your shoes, I would buy a stove that can burn both and that that is not reliant on electricity. Not sure where in upstate you are, I remember going Messina and Trout River area to help buddies cut their way out of ice storm damage. Sweat 64!
My plan of attack is to get the Fisher in the basement towards the end of January. I'd like to get it hooked up and try it out for a few weeks in February and see how it does and how I like it compared to the coal. If I'm not happy with it, hook the coal stove back up. I am looking forward to freeing up the space in my basement where the coal bin is. That is a 8' x 12' foot print. My plan with the wood will be only keeping 1/2 a face cord in the basement at a time. I will keep everyone posted. My one question is. I have a masonry chimney with a 8"x8" clay liner. I have looked down it before and was amazed how nice of shape it was. Should I be ok to run the wood stove with the chimney as is or should I be looking into a stainless liner?
What size stove pipe does the Fisher use? If 8", you should be OK...if 6", then a liner would be a good idea since a 8x8 flue is the better part of 3 times the size of a round 6"
