I have a Slovenian made stove similar to a Rayburn which I've been using with logs but I'm getting too old and unfit for cutting and splitting logs, so I wanted to try coal. People have told me the flues are different for coal but did not know what the difference was. The house is a bungalow and has a chimney but initially the flue goes through a brick dividing wall into the utility room, up the wall about 1.5 metres in 150mm single wall steel pipe then through the wall into the chimney. The flue elbows have inspection covers. Would this setup be suitable for coal?
Coal in Range Boiler
- Thread starter fidom
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Coal is made from wood, but not all coal is the same, it seems the longer it is out of the ground the less volatile, and Welsh coal and Polish coal are very different.
But grate size is the main thing, even hard or soft wood, needs a different grate size, this is why one hears the argument between wood burners as to which is the best, it is down to what it was designed to burn, and the old Rayburn was designed to burn reject coke, if the coke is too small, it was no good for making iron, so small coke was sold off cheap.
With lack of town gas or steel works, it means coke ovens have closed, coke did not need the chimney cleaning that often, but today we are left with the bricket, compressed coal dust glued together I assume, I know at work we have tried them, and they are very poor, needing a little and often rather than shovelling on coal before the hills ready for the hills, it does not seem to suffer with clinker, as coke and coal do, but amount of times we ran out of steam due to not being able to stoke up before the hills, lost count.
But dust is very much increased, need to dust house daily, and fire box would need altering, I would say work involved not worth the effort, I am seeing people converting their Aga to oil, as coke near enough dried up, and coal the tar is a problem, and in the main in UK can't burn it anyway due to clean air act.
But grate size is the main thing, even hard or soft wood, needs a different grate size, this is why one hears the argument between wood burners as to which is the best, it is down to what it was designed to burn, and the old Rayburn was designed to burn reject coke, if the coke is too small, it was no good for making iron, so small coke was sold off cheap.
With lack of town gas or steel works, it means coke ovens have closed, coke did not need the chimney cleaning that often, but today we are left with the bricket, compressed coal dust glued together I assume, I know at work we have tried them, and they are very poor, needing a little and often rather than shovelling on coal before the hills ready for the hills, it does not seem to suffer with clinker, as coke and coal do, but amount of times we ran out of steam due to not being able to stoke up before the hills, lost count.
But dust is very much increased, need to dust house daily, and fire box would need altering, I would say work involved not worth the effort, I am seeing people converting their Aga to oil, as coke near enough dried up, and coal the tar is a problem, and in the main in UK can't burn it anyway due to clean air act.
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