Coal as fuel for heating?

ryandj

Just to throw something else in for consideration - coal is a fossil fuel so adds to your carbon foot print. Wood is, I think, carbon neutral i.e. the CO2 you produce from burning the wood is equivalent to how much the trees take out of the air when growing.

Of course then you have to think about how the trees are grown and so on. Wood can vary a lot in price as well. You can sometimes get a van full of it for the same amount as a bag or two elsewhere. It is worth buying in bulk if you can store it, and the same for coal.

Also, you mentioned dust - if you are burning in a stove this should not be as much of a problem as an open fire. It will be more or less the same for coal and wood.

I seem to remember that if you burn wood, it can leave residues in the chimney which require sweeping a lot more than with coal.

All this is just from memory so might not be totally accurate by the way!

moo2moo

The amount of coal we get through varies considerably according to the temperature.

October to November and Feb to March when we only light the fire on an evening a 25kg bag of large compressed coal nuggets (£13 a bag delivered) lasts just under a week in a multifuel stove. The longer you have the fire lit the more coal you'll go through and also the hotter you have the fire the more you'll burn. In the worst weather we go through 2 bags a week.

The quality of the coal also affects its burn time. The cheapest coal available here is locally known as slag and is pretty much coal dust, after that the pieces get bigger and bigger in size up to chunks the size of a brick. After that theres compressed nuggets which burn longer than coal and theres also smokeless coals. You'll also find some types easier to light than others.

In comparison we gets lots of logs free of charge. Hardwood logs burn for longer than softwood and on an average evening we'll go through anything from 8 to 14 logs depending on the size. If I was buying them that would be 1-2 nets per evening at £2 per net so assuming an average £3 per evening that would be £90 per month compared to £52 in coal.

Whilst that sounds expensive its less than 1/3rd of the cost of heating the house with LPG.

vanilla

2 ton a year would usually see me through and thats the fire lit from first thing in the morning, last time we got coal it cost £160 for 40 bags i think but with the prices all getting higher i'm not sure what it will be this winter. I do burn sticks with that as well to try and keep the cost down.

As for storage i'm very lucky to be on a farm so put it in an unused pig house. As for ashes and mess our's needs cleaned out every other day.

moneyowen

Hi
I have a Stanley solid fuel range it does the central heating hot water and cooking as well. I burn stovesse smokeless coal on mine I buy it from the local coal merchant at £80 per half tonne in the cold weather it lasts around 6 weeks but in the warmer weather where I keep a low fire just for the hot water mainly it lasts more than twice that. As for the dust well I let it go out once a week for a good clean out but the rest of the time theres very little mess with it at all, it is in the kitchen though with a tiled floor. I just wipe it down with a damp cloth everyday no problem at all. By the way it will also burn peat and logs but last time I used logs there seemed to be quite a bit of smoke so I keep mainly to the smokeless fuel.

jessbrown100

Hi, we have a Rayburn and use both coal and wood on it. If we want to just heat up the Rayburn to cook and heat a tank of water and warm downstairs then we use wood. If we want the heating on longterm (e.g, through the evening and overnight and still be warm in the morning) then we use coal as it burns longer and slower. We get half a load of wood (probably do 3-4 weeks for 25 quid from a bloke we know. It's recycled ship packing wood so is cheaper then usual and a bit more environmentally friendly). If we use coal then we'd normally get 5 bags for 4-5 weks that cost us £9.00 per bag (we just use mid range coke mix not premium). What we tend to do is get half a load of wood and a couple of bags of coal and this does us a month in winter, which isn't bad to say that we do all the cooking and heat the water as well as CH with it. I'm going to be at home all day this winter though so the usage may go up a bit. Good Luck with it.
Oh, just thought, the one thing that I don't like about burning coal is that sometimes it gives out an 'eggy' natural gas type smell when you first light it that can stick in your throat all day, worth it for the warmth though

Milly1974

We have an open fire in our lounge, which is really the main form of heating in our house. (Also have economy 7 electric heaters which only just stop the pipes from freezing up!) Only using the fire evenings and weekends in the winter, we get through about 150 kilos a month, which is the nice, big chunks of coal and costs about £30 a month.

We store our coal in a shed with no door, and it seems to be fine. The major reason we use coal rather than wood is that it is easier to get hold of, and requires less 'fiddling!' A wood fire needs feeding regularly, while we can chuck a couple of lumps of coal on our fire and go out for a few hours without worrying.

Enjoy having lots of cosy fires, whichever you choose.