! No coal anywhere near here! I bring 400# back with me each time I visit family. But my heart is still back in my home town of Reading, Pa. where the family has been since 1700. I burned coal there for many years and know it's not what my grandfather put up with as far as dirt, dust, and labor. These modern stokers are less work than a pellet stove! If I were back up there, I'd have this baby in my house today. AND 10 tons of coal for the next 3 years! 
Yea, I found them too. It's only an hour and half drive in the mountains but they are never there when I want to go plus the coal is $10 a bag or over twice what it is up north. Shipping just kills the cost. With cheap electric rates for the heat pumps, it's a hard sell even for pellet stoves except for the short time when the temps dip down below 40.
Ya 8-10 a bag here on Cape Cod too for nut only. You can't buy small cuts of coal at all here for stoker stoves . One supplier out of Boston will deliver rice coal bulk and seems to me add $30 a ton for the charge. Not complaining, the guy can't do it fir nothing but its just not cost effective any more.
Funny, where I checked first here on the Cape for coal they had nut, loose or bagged. No home delivery, years ago I bought from him in bulk. He sold his truck to the guy in Boston !! He is a Harman dealer now and sells NE pellets and gas inserts, wood stoves and his own coal stove they designed years ago.. Actually the daughter and Son run it now. Anyway, I thought since he was the main supplier of coal in our area and he dialed it all down on coal guess it's time to bail !! The hand writing is on the wall.
The coal here is ( or was when I was pricing it) $220 a ton plus 30 to deliver each ton down from Boston, two ton minimum. That was last year for bulk.. So $250 per ton for rice. A good stoker will run about the same as a good pellet stove, maybe a grand less than a Harman and give nearly double the heat ! However, having just the one supplier was concerning and the whole coal thing was concerning the wife. Not that she is against coal, we burned it for decades but that the government and EPA has a death wish on it. Pellets are fairly well in the good graces of all that. Just hope they don't price them out of business now that we are into them.
Wait until they find out some tree snake, ground squirrel, or red breasted chipmunk is endangered and you can't cut down any trees
The government is full of surprises plus ................
Exactly. Or some such thing similar with a pellet bi product even. IE shut down mills for some foolish violation the EPA deems important to them and them alone.Wait until they find out some tree snake, ground squirrel, or red breasted chipmunk is endangered and you can't cut down any trees
I hope he gets it! Wait until you see how easy they are to operate. At outputs similar to my pellet stoves, that thing will run for 3 days on a load of coal and you won't have to empty the ash before then either.
Oh ya, I know. It looks like just vapor on a cold winters day. But in a S SW wind I get a downdraft past my chimney into my driveway and you can smell exhaust from the stove. With coal that was a sulfer smell if you had just topped it off. With pellets its sort of a wood burning odor but not always. Although its usually better smelling than sulfer I must say. We know there are some fillers in pellets. Who knows what.
For those who live where coal is an option maybe they haven't thought of it. For those outside the coal territory and want coal stoves maybe these posts seals the deal for pellets as it did for me. I burned coal for 35 years , was hard to give up but when you realize the supply line falls a bit short then pellets were next on the list. You don't care about any of it but maybe someone else does. People are looking for ways to heat their houses in Polar Vortexes after all !
