New questions - 1, burning wood, 2, burning smokeless coal.....help please!

A._Badger

Esteel wrote: »

I have a multi fuel stove and use both smokeless coal and wood. Recently the coal burns away to leave concrete like lumps. Does anyone know how to avoid these or why it is happening?

It depends on which smokeless fuel you use. Manufactured briquettes, like Newflame, Taybrite, Maxibrite and so on, burn away to powder. Natural smokeless anthracite leaves a lot of clinker - something I'm struggling with at the moment, with about half a metric tonne of the stuff to work my way through. It varies somewhat from batch to batch but it is a characteristic of that type or fuel.

suki1964

A._Badger wrote: »

It depends on which smokeless fuel you use. Manufactured briquettes, like Newflame, Taybrite, Maxibrite and so on, burn away to powder. Natural smokeless anthracite leaves a lot of clinker - something I'm struggling with at the moment, with about half a metric tonne of the stuff to work my way through. It varies somewhat from batch to batch but it is a characteristic of that type or fuel.

Hey badger, my mums stove leaves a lot of clinker with the anthracite. She only has a small fire basket where as mine is twice the size, and I get very little left. She also only has a wheel control at the bottom where as I have a sliding one which I personally find easier to control. Wonder if it does have a lot to do with the stove build??

A._Badger

suki1964 wrote: »

Hey badger, my mums stove leaves a lot of clinker with the anthracite. She only has a small fire basket where as mine is twice the size, and I get very little left. She also only has a wheel control at the bottom where as I have a sliding one which I personally find easier to control. Wonder if it does have a lot to do with the stove build??

I'm really not sure, Suki. I run my stove flat-out (it's a large 11-14 kw size, with slider controls too) and it really couldn't get any hotter.. I have also found some anthracite better than others. The stuff I've bought this year is smaller than I've had before and produces more clinker. Looking at some of it, the clinker is a white, powdery material that looks a quite chalky. I can't imagine that however hard it was run that stuff would ever burn.

I use it (mixed with Newflame) because it puts out more heat than manufactured smokeless but I think if I used it exclusively the clinker might block the holes in the rocking grate and that would eventually damage them.

It would be good to hear from an expert who knew the answer!