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Return To Coal For Heating Your Home? It Ain't Real Clean, But It's Cheap & Worthy Of Consideration
Return To Coal For Heating
Your Home?
It Ain’t Real Clean,
But It’s Cheap & Worthy Of
Consideration
http://www.newsday.com/business/ny-bzcoal244599340jan24,0,4424095.story
Business
For some Long Islanders,
burning coal to heat their
homes translates into
...A heap of savings
BY SASCHA BRODSKY
SPECIAL TO NEWSDAY
January 24, 2006
In a winter of discontent with high home heating prices, some consumers are looking to the past for a solution. And while many have turned to cord wood or wood pellets as a source of warmth, a small segment has settled on coal.
The number of homes relying on coal for heat isn't large: Local coal dealers estimate that there are a few thousand on Long Island, compared with tens of thousands of homeowners using the alternative fuels.
Nevertheless, local dealers said they have sold out of coal stoves this season. Jonathan Rella, owner of Rella Coal in Medford, said he's sold about 50 coal stoves, double the number last year. "When oil prices go high, we always get people coming and asking for them," he said.
Sleepy Hollow Stove & Fireplace in Deer Park sold about 20 coal stoves this year, double the number last year, and the store has been sold out since October, owner Gena Colucci said.
Coal stove manufacturers agree that sales are rising. Dale Harman, owner of Halifax, Pa.-based Harman Stove Co., said sales are up 50 percent this year. He declined to give an exact figure, but said his company has been selling thousands of stoves a year.
Not-so-clean warmth?
After centuries of reliance on coal as a source of heat, the stoves fell out of favor in the 1950s when cleaner-burning fuels caught on. Today, even as coal is finding a new market, critics point out that it remains a dirty source of energy.
Harman said the stoves that his company makes burn cleaner than old-fashioned models. The more expensive models include a stoker that collects ashes and adds fuel to the blaze.
Jessica Glass of Port Jefferson Station, L I, NY fills a coal stove to warm her house. She expects to pay about $700 in home heating costs this winter, compared with about $1,800 in oil costs a year ago. She spent about $3,500 for the coal stove.
Jessica Glass said that the glowing Harman stove in her Port Jefferson Station basement is "almost soot free." She got the stove in the fall and said she expects to pay about $700 to heat the three-bedroom ranch-style house, compared with about $1,800 last year with oil. "It's the least expensive way to heat unless you own wood," Harman said. Coal costs about $300 a ton; most homeowners use less than a ton per month.
Glass said the coal stove is a supplement to her oil heat. "But the coal works so well that the oil heat hardly ever kicks on," she said.
Of course, Glass spent about $3,500 for the stove itself. The stoves start at about $800 and range up to the price of her model.
Though the lower cost of heating may be the main benefit, nostalgia is also part of the allure. Glass said she remembers, "growing up with a coal stove, and I wanted to recreate that happy feeling".
Needless to say, "it's messier" than heating with wood, Colucci said. The process of loading a stove can send up clouds of black dust. And when a coal stove fire is ignited, the sulfur it produces smells like rotten eggs, she said.
Ground up coal is placed into the stove.
Heating with manpower
Coal stoves require more maintenance than wood stoves. The chimney has to be cleaned every year because burning coal can produce sulfuric acid that can cause corrosion; cleaning costs around $150.
And the chore of filling up the stove every day has limited appeal: Glass, for one, relies on her 12-year-old son, Nicholas, who totes a 40-pound load of coal to the stove each day.
"He doesn't mind at all," she said, "and it builds his sense of responsibility."
Yet in some ways, coal beats wood for convenience. Wood stoves require constant hauling of fuel to the stove; coal stoves by contrast can run for 12 hours on a 75-pound load. And, like wood pellet stoves, some high-end coal stoves include feeders that rely on a thermostat to automatically load the proper amount into the stove.
Alex Bryant of Miller Place said he loads up the hopper of his coal stove every morning "and it burns all day." Bryant, who has been burning coal for 18 years, said, "it's saved me thousands in heating bills." He also downplayed the mess and odor.
A major source of power
Though coal is a minor player in heating individual homes, it is used to generate about half of the electricity used in the United States, according to Luke Popovich, a spokesman for the industry trade group the National Mining Association. Coal production in this country is expected to reach a record 1.17 billion tons this year, he said, but "98 percent of that coal goes into electricity generation, and only a tiny percentage for heating homes." Both Long Island Power Authority and Con Edison obtain electricity from coal-fired plants.
Industrial power plants that burn coal to produce electricity have scrubbers that remove much of the pollutants. Environmentalists said there is no comparable technology on the market for the small coal stoves used in homes.
Burning coal produces fine particles that have been linked to asthma and heart attacks. It also produces mercury, which can cause birth defects. Last year, the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency issued a rule that it says will reduce mercury emissions from coal-fired power plants by about 70 percent.
And the carbon dioxide produced by burning coal contributes to global warming, said Dale Bryk, a senior attorney with the New York City-based Natural Resources Defense Council. The small number of homes burning coal for heat is unlikely to have much of an effect on the environment, she said. Still, she said, the council doesn't recommend it.
Coal has been used for centuries for heating and for industrial purposes, and complaints about smog it produces date to at least 1272, when King Edward I banned the burning of sea-coal, which did not burn efficiently. Under his edict, anyone caught burning or selling the stuff was to be tortured - or executed.
Copyright 2006 Newsday Inc.
Tabacco: I wonder if a smart contractor
couldn’t figure out a way to install the
stove and either:
1 Filter and redirect smoke and fumes
outside the home
2 Locate the coal stove in either the
basement or attached garage, which
would limit smoke and fumes within
the living quarters
3 Come up with an idea that even
Tabacco couldn’t conceive of
If any Reader has solutions, please
Comment below. I’m
sure other Readers
will appreciate the
input.
Republished by
T.A.B.A.C.C.O. (Truth About Business And Congressional Crimes Organization)
Sorry, Chuck!
I just want to clarify that this write up is poor at best. There's no
explaination of the differences between anthracite and bituminous coal.
The stove shown in the above picture is a stoker style that runs on
anthracite coal. The stove will need tended to about once per day to empty
ashes and refill the hopper. It is completely automatic. Additionally,
there will be absolutely no soot and no smoke at all. There will be
minimal dust when removing the ash pan, but can easily be cured with a
light spray of water before handling and the coal going into the hopper is
typically damp from the bags and creates no dust. There should be a
bi-monthly clean up effort to at least remove the fly ash from the flue
pipe and a full clean up at the end of the season including the entire
stove interior because the fly ash will corrode the metal. The smell of
sulfur should only be present when opening the door to tend to the ashes.
If the smell is noticed inside the house, it is unsafe because the exhaust
is either not exiting or is being recycled back in and with a presence of
carbon monoxide, this is very unsafe. It is also very important to use a
carbon monoxide detector when using a coal stove as the gas is completely
unscented.
Readers: