I just bought a bag of coal. I'm glad I watched this video. I think I will buy more coal.

Hey I'm from Pennsylvania! Coal is king here ! I see that bag of coal is from our area !!! Am in Williamsport PA

I think coal is one of the most overlooked heating options for the home. But it sure seems like it works wonderfully.

I swear I thought he was gonna say "The weather outside is frightful"

I grew up with Granny burning coal! She would add coal first thing in the morning after she shook down the ashes from the coals of the night fire! Then about lunch time she would shake it down and add more coal if needed. Her stove was a tall round stove that opened on top and had a little for at the bottom with adjustable vents. She would go get coal by the pickup bed full and kept it on the back porch end that was closed in on three sides and every evening she would bring big chunks that would fit thru the top lid and a few smaller pieces that would catch fire easily! It smelled so good burning! Good memories!

That’s what I love about my neck of the woods. When my old relatives used coal we would just hike up the hill and pick some out of the ridge lol

I still have my dads old pot belly stove that we used to burn coal in. Haven't used it in 40 years or more. Back then we used to be able to buy coal in bulk at any hardware store. Times have changed.

Having been in the coal industry since 1972 and having burned coal in my living room stove since 1987 you can say I know a thing or two about coal. I also live about 120 miles from the anthracite coal fields of eastern PA. We have a "Russo Coal / Wood Stove", (the EPA will now not allow the manufacturer to state both wood and coal but either coal or wood, though the design is still the same). We supplement our domestic space heating with coal and wood. About the only thing that #2 oil is used for is domestic hot water for personal washing and showering; we burn wood from onset of cold weather, usually late September, until about Thanksgiving then we use coal until about St. Patrick's Day (March 17th) when we switch back to wood until the end of the heating season. Our stove takes about an initial 20 pound charge (load) and can run for 24 hours with the addition of another 20 lbs. over that period. If I "bank" the coals frugally I can get as much as a 36 hour burn on 40lbs. At any rate the difference with burning with coal is coal needs a bottom draft that comes up through the grates an into the coals this forms a bottom layer of thin ash, then the burning coal, then the addition of additional charges as the coal burns. Leaving a corner empty does not help the fire since coal burns from below, so it is best to start with a few well burnt logs, then adding coal in layers until you see the fire coming up through the new layers of black coal. The flames will start off blue as it is burning off methane and other flammable gases; it will then turn purple as the yellow flames begin to take over; then the entire load-bed will begin to glow as the flames die away. This is the hottest part of the burn. It takes me less than an hour to reach this point and it is a delight to watch. At this time it is almost pure carbon burning, hence, the lack of smoke with anthracite coal. Bituminous coal is a much younger coal and hence has more impurities therefore smokes more, thus the name bituminous, as bitumin is Latin for smoke. Coal burns with an even heat and requires less tending than wood heat. In my opinion, coal is best. I've also burned bituminous coal, which does smoke but its about the same as wood smoke; and I've also burned coke, which is a pure carbon product by which bituminous coal is baked to form what is comparable to wood charcoal but much, much hotter; this is called coke. All burn well and provide much needed heat at a much better cost than #2 heating oil or gas. We use between 1 and 2 tons of coal per year and approximately 1 cord of hardwood.

thanks my dad kelp warm with coal as a kid .back in the 40 s they were so poor they had to jump trains to throw off coal to keep warm over night.and ate peanut butter for 8 weeks to stay alive.

That final look at the glowing coals was beautiful. Very nice video.

Looking in from England - I love my multi fuel stove and burnt wood for a few years and then I discovered coal - so much better and much more heat.

those old stoves really bring me back to my childhood. My Aunt and Uncle up in Pennsylvania had one basement where Me and my cousin would play and sleep when i visited. On those cold winter nights, we were soooo toasty warm with a nice coal fire down there with us. you just brought me some nice nostalgia, sir..

Thanks for sharing! I remember my Mam maw having a pot belly stove, but too young to remember the details. This will come in handy when we finally get to Missouri next month! Thanks for great content! Blessings.

Great demo! I've just recently been learning about coal stoves. Seeing this process made things much clearer for me. Thank you. - All the best. ~ Theresa

I just wanted to thank you for this very helpful video. We heat with rice coal, with a feeder coal stove, but are considering going to a coal stove that doesn't require electricity. I really enjoy watching you two as you make your videos. Loved the greenhouse vid too! May God bless you as you help others with your videos!

I remember the old days when we had a wood and coal furnace in the basement of our house. Thanks for another great video.

I was living aboard an old 50' wooden boat and we went from Florida to Boston one year, and stayed until October. It got very cold. The little ship actually had a little fireplace, and we got the great idea to burn coal in it. I found a source of anthracite and went and bought a bag. I did pretty much as in this video, got the coal started, it burned very nicely. No idea if the fireplace was designed to burn coal! A built-in fan blew air from around the firebox into the cabins, very nice, warm all night. The next morning: soot all over the boat and boats next to us. No one was living on the boats, but the dock master and marina staff weren't very happy with us. I know it was anthracite, just like my grandpa used in Long Island. This was almost 40 years ago, but I think I remember having trouble getting the initial bed of coals going, and adding more wood. That might account for the soot, but the stuff was kind of sticky, I remember it all over the charley noble (fitting over the top of the stovepipe). The fire did last all night, even though the firebox was rather small.

I've used coal for a lot of my 68 years. In a cook stove, in open grates and wood/coal stoves. It seems easy, if you grew up doing it. But it is something you have to learn. My earliest memory and the first way I started fires and the method I still use today is this. I have a container with a lid. Fill it full of dry corn cobs; in the absence of corn cobs use a good quality natural charcoal. I pour the container about half full of coal oil; that is kerosene NOT gasoline NOT diesel NOT lighter fluid. The corn cobs soak it up. Clean out your stove. Lay 2 or 3 corn cobs down in the grate of the stove. Put a half dozen or so smaller pieces of coal around and on top. Put a couple of larger pieces on it or snugged up close. Light the corn cobs. In a few minutes you can slowly add more coal until it is as big a mound of coal as you want. At night, we put a few scoops of ashes on the fire to bank it down. All we have to do the next day is shake out most of the ashes and feed the fire.

We have a coal furnace that heats our 7000 square feet house. Best heat ever and super cheap compared to natural gas in our area. Takes a bit of daily maintenance to fill the stoker and empty the clinkers from the firebox but it’s no big deal.

This takes me back to my childhood. I can smell the coal burning in the big ole stove that stood in my Grandma and Grandpa’s house when I was a little girl. The cold air had the smell of coal smoke. Thank you for the memories. I am Not far from you in Southern Illinois.

I grew up in a house with a Rayburn coal fire, and like yours, it had a glass door but it also had a back boiler for the radiators and hot water. It was about half the size of yours and 2 cwt, (224lb)of coal lasted us a week. It never went out from early Sept to the end of April. We just took a little ash out everyday, and kept topping up the coals. One big difference is the size of our coals, most were fist sized. We lit it with firelighter blocks, and it only took 10 min to get a good fire started. It's good to see how folks do things in different parts of the world. We've come a long way from holding a sheet of newspaper in front of an open fire so that it would draw. If you left it a few seconds too long you were holding a burning sheet of newspaper in the middle of your lounge 🤣

We bought a house with an old wood/coal stove. Have really struggled with using coal, but when it gets going... Wow. Will try again with these tips.

Finally gets to the part you WANT to see at 4:59 minutes into the video. Good and informative after that. Thumbs up!

Great video! Fantastic job explaining and keeping it interesting. Greetings from Southern Missouri. Using a pellet stove this year and I’m actually impressed but really missing that wood / coal burning experience.

Thanks for this video! 3/4 of the videos I see the people are lighting charcoal, not actual mineral coal fires. Thanks for showing us the real deal!

I think that by keeping one corner free of coal you allow air to come up into the stove, above the coal to form sort of a secondary burn. My coal furnace, a Holland, has little "chimneys" cast into the fire pot to allow air to come up above the coal. You can see the gases burn when the air comes in contact with it. It creates a more efficient burn.

Liked your how to start a coal burning fire on your wood/coal stove. I learned something. I'm a new subscriber. Thanks for sharing your video.👍

Really great video. I have only heard about coal stoves and how they burned so hot... I never saw a coal fire until this video. Thank you for taking the time to post a really clear, informative and interesting video. If I get to move next year I will differently be looking for a wood and coal stove. 👍❤🙏

Thank you for your video. Right on the money started my stove as you described. Had it up and running in no time. Thank again.

We had a huge coal burning furnace in the 60's , still love the smell.

Absolute best heat, was raised on it in NYC, had a Belgium Parlor stove in my first home....great!

This was a great video thank you. I always wondered what was involved in getting a coal fire going. My next wood stove I will make sure it is designed to burn coal as well.

awesome! glad people are doing this still.

Very interesting! My grandparents and parents have burned their share of coal over the years. Our family has burned wood due to the fact that we bought land that had a surplus of timber. Unfortunately, we are moving to a new property that has few trees and wondered how we could maintain our stoves and fireplaces without electric or propane. This is a great idea! Thanks!

Heated with coal + wood growing up ,dont need any practice but thanks for the offer ,allways hot +dry you cant beat it..cant beat it.

England here. What you have there (the bucket), is called a coal scuttle here in England. Maybe it is in America too? The trick is - learning to take the bucket by the swinging handle (left hand if you're right-handed) and the rim of the base with your dominant hand and tossing a whole bucket full (scuttle-full) into the gaping jaws of the fire - when the doors are swung fully open of course. You have to do that and empty a full bucket onto the fire and not spill a single piece! If you get that right you also get a nice sloping pile of coal rising up from front to back. Almost everyone used to burn coal here in England, even up to as recently as the 1970s or even 80s. As kids we had to learn how to build coal fires and toss buckets of coal on there ... and negotiate the way to the yard with screaming-hot metal pans full of hot ashes. It was regularly a chore for small boys. Anthracite is good stuff. Burns virtually smokeless once it gets going. It does need a continuous air draft, though not an excessively strong one, to keep burning compared to non-anthracite coals (including modern 'smokeless' coal) which can self-sustain a burn with almost minimal draft. Anthracite burns hot and lasts longer than regular coals. When we lit fires we didn't really wait long at all (or not at all) before putting the coal on. We would scrunch up into tight(ish) balls, individual sheets of newspaper, about 20 in all ( a full newspaper?), then cover the newspaper with about at least a dozen sticks of kindling wood - say 1 inch square section sticks - a good couple of handfuls laid cross-weave on top of the newspaper. Then you can put a good shovelful of coal on top, even before lighting the newspaper at the bottom, peeping out through the sticks. Alternatively, light the newspaper and wait for the sticks to begin to crackle, then toss a full scuttle-full of coal on top. Don't spill a single piece - your Mum will tick you off for that. I agree that anthracite might need a bit more burn on the sticks to get some red embers forming before adding it. Good stuff anyway.

Good job on your video. If you want your stove to heat up quicker, leave the ash pan door open for more air while layering. Once the fire is established, you can shut it. 80 lbs of anthy will burn a long time. DS makes some nice stoves.

Great looking stove! The fire does look beautiful!!!

Thank you for sharing this; I learned quite a lot about using coal fires for heating homes.

Keep a bucket of ashes handy so if the coal starts burning too hot, you can shovel ashes over the coal to slow the burning.

My inlaws lived in the Lehigh Valley in PA until 2003. They used to have a dump truck full of coal delivered to their coal bin in the back yard every september. Said it was abt $800 a year.

thanks for sharing this valuable advice and information on Heating your house With Coal !! Very interesting

nice video , I used to live 5 miles from where that coal was made , actually worked for their competitor

When I was a kid, our house was heated by a big coal furnace down in the basement. Great heat, long lasting fire. We had an automatic coal feeder that used small pieces of coal that were fed into the furnace via an auger. Unfortunately, the fire box developed cracks in it....and coal smoke and soot would get into the heat jacket and then into the heat ducts....the house smelled like sulfur and coat dust. The old furnace was replaced with a large wood/coal stove in the living room. It's been many a year since I left home....pushing 4 decades I guess...and to this day, the smell of coal smoke turns my stomach. Wood smoke however....love it.

in the city i live, there are either coal burning trains or col hauling trains that still come through several times per week. they scatter large 4-8 inch chunks of coal all over near the tracks.

Wow Kevin. You should do an updated version of this. I never knew about it. Blessings.

My grandma and my in laws had coal stoves. They bought it in truck loads. By the ton I believe. I live in Pa - what used to be big coal country , but much anymore.

Thank you for this. I've been operating a wood fired cookstove for about 8 years now, and we're switching to a coal fired cook stove this weekend. It's a new Heco 420 cook stove. It's going to be alearning curve all over again, and I don't even know how to start a coal fire. I think I've got it now, and I appreciate you taking the time to go over it step by step.

I use match light charcoal to start my coal stove. It is quick and easy. Just put a nice size mound of charcoal in the center and pile coal all around it and light her up. Start sprinkling coal on top after the charcoal starts dying down. I have a D&S 1500 circulator. Best stove I ever bought! Running it at 425 and uses 5 gallon bucket a day.

Well done and helpful. Wood is king for me as I live in rural Ontario.

Awesome video mate. Thank you.

These temps in MO are frightful...we have a fire place that I am thankful for but we are burning thru the wood like crazy....we so need one of those stoves...HAD NO CLUE about the coal...makes great sense!! Thank you!!

Thank you so much for making this video. Very informative and well explained. I just bought a vintage coal laundry stove. Not sure how I'll be using it, but this video takes the mystery out of using coal. I checked prices on anthracite coal, by the bag, and it's $3.25 for a 40 lb bag. If it is delivered by truck it costs $97.91 per ton, in 2015. That's 2000 lbs of anthracite coal for $97.91. 2000 lbs divided by 40 lb bag = 50 bags. A ton of coal = 50 bags at a total cost of $97.91 ($1.96/bag X 30 days = $58.80/mo). 50 bags purchased from Lowe's = $162.50 ($3.25/bag X 30 days = $97.50/mo). So, you save $38.70/mo by having it delivered by the ton. Based on using 1 bag per 24 hours.

I'm a fireman on a steam locomotive. This is a ritual every 7 days or after a mandatory inspection. We use bitimous (hopefully I spelled that right) which is very messy even when wet and it produces alot of thick black smoke, we could use anthracite but the expense would be out the roof. Great video

Thank you so much! My new ‘old’ home in VT has two coal stoves, and this was really helpful. Thank you for all the added details you share in your video!

Great tutorial thanks...I like those herbs you have drying there.

I grew up in West Virginia and we used wood and coal. Had a cooking stove in the kitchen and stove in livingroom. We all had to learn to start a fire. Best heat ever!

When I was a kid growing up in central Illinois, we burned coal that was locally mined. We bought the coal by the truck load, actually from a miner that had trucking as a side business. I don't recall the finer points of starting and maintaining the fire but I do recall saving the bigger chunks for night time when they would put the big pieces in to last the night. You didn't mention it but do you have to regulate the fire with the fresh air dampers? It seems we had to take out the ashes once a week but it might have been more often. We had 2 stoves, the one in the kitchen was left up year round and the big parlor stove was put on the front porch during the summer. It was a simpler time.

I want to thank you for doing this video. I want a pot belly stove, but it works with coal, and I wondered if they were referring to charcoal. I've never seen any other kind. So this video is very important to me. Thanks again.

I love the idea of heating with coal, especially overnight, but what do you do with your coal ash? I heard that wood ash is actually good for soil, and can even be used as a fertilizer over a garden, tossed lightly over snow, and added to the soil slowly as the snow melts, with lots of dilution, from the water from the snow. Thoughts?

coal smells good n nice n toasty. my dad when i was little got pallet crates delivered. stay warm🍻

We use a Hitzer with the 30- pound hopper. Even though we are literally sitting on millions of tons of Wyoming coal, we burn anthracite from Tractor Supply. I start a few pounds of Match Light charcoal and when it’s cherry red, start loading coal.

Great vid! Man I really miss the smell of a coal fire, here in MT (western) there are no coal users anymore.

You all rock. I miss the midwest.

That was actually quite interesting!! Never have used coal and knew nothing about it!!

I just bought my bag of coal I honestly didn't know where to buy it but Tractor Supply carries coal. Thanks for the video be good on those cold nights and I won't have to keep getting up all night to put a log on the fire. Thanks for the video.

Brilliant video. Thank you very much. Greetings from England UK.

I grew up with a wood stove, and we may have burned som coal (In Oregon). My stepfather was from PA. Later we had a non-vented Gas stove. I'm 72 now and have COPD and wonder if that has anything to do with it. Both parents smoked non filtered Camels.

Very informative, thanks for sharing. 👍🏼

Great video and info! This certainly would be great for airbnb rental units where user error or inexperience could make a wood fire dangerous.

Outstanding info, great vid!

I have been to that coal breaker it’s pretty cool wow those bags make it far

Great information! Thank you.

Excellent stove!

AWESOME stove and video. LEARNED ALOT. THANKS

I work for Warrior Met Coal #7 mine. Our Blue Creek coal is used for making steel. Its ash content is often less than 8%. It could make that heater glow red!

Thank you. I learned a lot through your video.

Outstanding video. Thank you.

My grandfather lived in Connecticut. He bought anthracite by the ton by truck and had it dumped in his back yard.

Good info, thanks for sharing this.

I really want a stove like yours but I was afraid I would do it wrong and burn the house down. I learned a lot watching this thanks

Very nice. Thanks for sharing 😊

Save on coal by putting a thin layer of ash on top of the coal when you go to bed. Slows down the burn. Called banking the fire.

we burn about 20 tonnes of coal a year heating our 2000 sq ft house and 2000 sq ft shop here in Saskatchewan. we have an automatic stoker outside coal fired hot water heating system and circulate the 90 degree C water to the house and shop. We only light the fire once, with a big propane torch, in early November and shut it down mid April. A lot of nights in the last 3 weeks were down to -38C with daytime temps maybe -18C wind chills were near -50 at times.

Thanks for this video.

Thank you! This video was a big help. Answered a lot of questions. God bless.

On the bird stuck in stove video, I noticed you removed a ceramic plate from the upper portion of stove. That and the handle on the right of the stove makes me believe this has a catalytic converter? Also, what is on wall behind stove?

Great video 👍

Nice job and great explanation

I like this, I love the stove, the coal stove.

Very informative thank you sir,I grew up around mountains and that type of live lots of people have firewood stoves I always wondered about coal and that it burned clean and burned better than wood and lasted alot longer,so now thanks to this,my next fireplace will be like yours,burn both,my friends and I still burn firewood at our hangout every weekend, in his pot belly stove,been using same stove for well over 30 + years, we would be very unhappy without it lol,

Coal gets a bad rap these days, but in reality, it is absolutely lovely.

Wow thanks for sharing this video I always wanted to know more about home coal fires. You always see old houses with basements having sealed up coal bends and it made me interested in this process. You said its very clean burning also is there less to maintain then a pure wood burning stove flu, ash etc? Is it a lot hotter then wood? Sorry for all the questions just something I always wanted to know. Thanks again for the video.

Great video. Thank you.

Funny to see Blaschak Coal! I deliver pallets to them. You can't beat coal heat! Greetings from Central Pennsylvania!!

Very interesting. I learned a lot from this video. I had no clue to nothing about burning coal. Now I know what type of stove to have. Love this video. Kevin this is a very valuable video. Great job, and thank you so much for sharing this.

Very interesting. We live in the mountains of Mongolia which is one of the coldest inhabitable places on Earth. -45C/-50F is about the lowest it goes in Dec/Jan. We heat with semi-coke briquettes which is the only legal coal product we're legally allowed to use. It's subsidized and rationed. We can buy 175kg (385lbs) per week from mid-Sept to mid-May which costs $7 per load (or roughly $38 per ton). The way we start our furnace/boiler is very different but it seems to work. It's also a lot less work. We fill the stove with coal (it's a top loader) then put some firewood on top. We set light to the wood then when that's burned and the top layer of coal is glowing, we can reduce the airflow most of the way. One load takes about 20 minutes to light and requires no more attention. It burns for 16 hours. Then we clean it all out and repeat. It's a sunny winter with little wind. So we generally don't need heat in the sunny part of the day. It seems like everybody else lights from the bottom but we light from the top. I was worried at first but it works so it's hard to argue with success.

What he does is great.

Thanks for the interesting video 👍 We're thinking about getting a stove to burn either wood or coal for our small cinder block building/garage so this video helps demonstrate what to expect. My question is for anyone who knows: How do you heat an entire house with a stove such as this unless it has blowers and can blow warm air throughout? Convection from the stove alone will pretty much only heat things in the same room for the most part I'm thinking. IDK, someone help me to understand this better please.

What a great suggestion to consider. Tell me, comparing wood to coal, which do you think is easier for an older person to handle? Would there be a difference? I have always wanted a wood stove because I really like the feel of the heat. But my husband has started to decline and I wonder if he could handle the wood splitting once we finally move. Maybe coal would be easier for him?