ok.. thanks...
This is exactly what I experimented with, while also watching the temperatures of the flue stack and side of stove right below the heat exchanger area. Makes for much cleaner operation and a slightly hotter output! I wonder how many people are losing heat and ashing up their stoves prematurely.
I'm on Cape Cod and noticed Tractor Supply is handling rice coal this year ( who knows for how long). A first for around here. Other than that there is one supplier in Metro Boston, that was our concern and why we bought into pellets after burning coal for 35 years or more. We could get limited supplies of nut coal locally but 0 rice even from the Harman dealer who gouges prices on fuels unbelievably. Still no rice coal, though he handled nut ( and that indeed may well be past tense).
It got so expensive up here, that hardly anyone used it anymore. When I burned it that year, I think there was only two of us in that area that were buying it. There was no bulk delivery, and it was $5.75/bag back then. Shortly after that season, the farm store stopped carrying it also.
All of our local dealers went out of then bulk business. In fact the guy from the Boston area told me that he bought a truck from down here from the guy I used to get it from. So ya, it appears to be fading out of style in New England. This was concerning, so we went with pellets, now look at pellet pricing !
Decades ago when pellets were fairly new oil prices crashed and pellet prices didn't go down, early investors lost their shirts and pellets all but disappeared ( in the eastern US anyway). Just sayin. Who knows where it will all go !
