LDS Freedom Forum

I got my electric bill this month and I was Not happy, I took a Nylon stocking and put it on the end of the dryer, Allowing the heat to remain indoors. It is helping to lower our heat bill significantly, Just a thought.

When we moved to a new city 3 years ago I was really prompted to purchase a house that had a wood burning stove. It has turned into a huge blessing. While I have burned a lot of wood this winter, I can keep my house above 70 with the furnace turning on very little and only in the morning after the stove has burned all night long. Today we got the house up to 84 degrees and had to let the stove die out a bit in order to cool off.

There actually is a really great website for anyone that is interested in wood burning or pellet burning stoves. It is http://www.hearth.com and then there is a forum on this site that I frequented a lot when I was working on getting my stove space up to fire code and that link is http://www.hearth.com/econtent/index.php/forums/

Just remember to make sure your stove and surrounding walls meets fire codes and if possible, get an EPA approved stove. There is nothing better than coming into a house that is warm when it is so cold outside and sitting in front of the roaring fire!!!

The stove I chose is a Harman coal stove. Of course you can burn wood in this stove and I do burn a little wood. But mostly I burn lump coal. I have learned how to use this stove with Utah slack coal, but as of yet haven't had the need. The stove was designed for Eastern hard coals, but it does great with Utah soft lump coal.

I put one lump of coal in the stove when I get up, and another lump when I go to bed (about ten pounds) When the outside temp gets above 50 degrees, I have to burn wood or use my heat pump because there needs to be a 40 degree temperature difference between inside and outside air for coal to burn properly, so when the temp rises I usually chose the heat pump, saving my wood.

Last year, my family cut a lot of apple wood, this Summer we'll cut a whole orchard of cherry wood. Its nice to live in a fruit farming community.

When all hell breaks loose, I have 4 tons of coal to keep me warm

This is the stove I use, my oldest son also uses the same stove.

http://www.harmanstoves.com/products/de ... =MAGCSTVSF

Bob

will wrote:I got my electric bill this month and I was Not happy, I took a Nylon stocking and put it on the end of the dryer, Allowing the heat to remain indoors. It is helping to lower our heat bill significantly, Just a thought.

I heavily suggest NOT doing this. Dryer air is very humid, and being hot it can carry a lot more water than otherwise. I once lived in an apartment that could not be vented outside so all the dryers vented inside the apartment. The extra humidity caused large mold growth in the house, which will cost much much more to fix properly than heating your house through a conventional method.

You may well be able to mitigate the humidity with a dehumidifier, but, I would still be very hesitant to do this. Mold is evil, EVIL I SAY.

Agreed!

Get the wood stove and ditch the dryer all together.

I think Coal is an awesome way to go in Utah. Can't go wrong so long as you can duck the EPA.

What a great business a small scale coal mine and coal stove company would be for the times ahead in Utah! LDS Venture Capitalists would be all over that I bet.

SwissMrs&Pitchfire wrote:Agreed!

Get the wood stove and ditch the dryer all together.

I think Coal is an awesome way to go in Utah. Can't go wrong so long as you can duck the EPA.

What a great business a small scale coal mine and coal stove company would be for the times ahead in Utah! LDS Venture Capitalists would be all over that I bet.

My youngest son is doing just that. He has a source for lump coal, is presently looking for a truck he can put a dump bed on. He's very mechanically minded, very good with his hands. He'll figure something out that won't require an SBA loan.

I love watching my kids--work

Bob

Where are people finding lump coal in Utah? All of the mines in Central Utah have been telling me for months that they are not mining lump at all right now. This is all we heat our home with, and we're a little worried about it. We easily go through 3 ton of lump each winter.

bohemianbaby wrote:Where are people finding lump coal in Utah? All of the mines in Central Utah have been telling me for months that they are not mining lump at all right now. This is all we heat our home with, and we're a little worried about it. We easily go through 3 ton of lump each winter.

I live in Central Utah, we're getting ours from the Salina mine. We have 24 ton on order, but we're also helping other old folks in the ward. You have to get on a list, and pick up all the coal you've ordered. Had that phone number here but now I can't find it. Its in the white pages, ask for Caroline!

My stove will burn slack coal, we just put wood on the grates first, leaving an opening over the grate at the stove door. and fill up the stove with slack. One load will burn for 30 hours. We use a Harmon stove meant for burning hard coal, but it works great with Utah soft lump, and In a pinch, slack!

Before we got this stove we were burning three ton a year average, now we're down to slightly over one ton a year. A good stove makes all the difference.

Bob

Do any of you have experience using a wood/coal cookstove? I'm thinking of putting in a 1920's model, pulled out of the old farmhouse. It's the kind with the warming drawers above, oven in the bottom, as well as 'burners' on top.
We currently have a pellet stove in the basement, but that's only good if we have pellets (or a lot of field corn) and electricity. Which seems pretty dumb, as backup heat. I have a floor-to-ceiling, 8-foot-wide brick hearth with a jumbo-sized opening, so that big stove should fit. (If we can drag the behemoth into the basement.) Just wondering what any of you can enlighten me with; especially some of you who've been around the block.

Thanks.

Thanks Bob...you're meaning the Sufco mine? I'll try again. I love the coal out of the old Hiawatha mine in Huntington canyon...oh well! I'm looking at a new stove that will handle slack...since that seems easy enough to get...last year between the load limits and unpredictability in availability, I felt lucky to get one good load of lump. I think the stove I'll get is a Harmon something 2000...wood and all sizes coal. Right now I have a maybe 40 or so year old Schrader...which is huge, and heats the whole house...but it's pretty drafty and gets incredibly hot on the night time fires when it's easily 10 and 20 below outside. I've caught the house on fire once, and set off the heat alarm twice...probably time to go about this differently!

I grew up in a house with an old cook stove, but Mom never used it for cooking, it was there to heat the house. But for that purpose it wasn't efficient. Dad sold the stove and used the money to buy a Stokermatic heater that used slack coal. Not made anymore, but there have been times I would have paid good money for a new Stokermatic heater. I chose the Harmons stove because it didn't need electricity to run, although it does have a fan, I don't use the fan much, and I can burn most anything in it. Besides that, it'll heat my hot water at the same time with thermo siphon.

I haven't checked the stove market lately, but there may be a Stokermatic type stove on the market again. Be careful, most stoves of that type are made specifically for Eastern hard coal, not Utah soft coal.

Bob


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