Why can't stoves be advertised as coal and wood burning??

[PAcountryboy]

Sorry if this has been discussed before. I'm a newbie researching everything I can. Long story short, I would like to purchase a stove that burns wood and coal, and have come across some interesting facts. It is apparantly illegal for any stove manufacturer in the U.S. to advertise it's stove as being able to burn both wood and coal. I assume this is some sort of EPA restriction?? I have confirmed this by looking at Saey woodstoves after a friend told me that his can burn both. If you look on any U.S. site advertising Saey stoves, their model 94, 92 and Hanover stoves are listed as coal stoves. No mention of being a wood stove. But if you look on Saey's European website, it confirms that it is a dual fuel stove.

My questions are 1.) What is the reasoning behind this 2.) Would these stoves burn wood as efficiently as a wood-only stove, or at least close to it, and 3.) Are there any other stoves that fall under this same category--can burn both, but only advertised as one. (I found a V.C. stove that says it is a coal stove only on their website, but a local dealer claims I can also burn wood in it.) I can't use the Saey stoves because the clearance requirements are too high and they don't seem to make heat shields to reduce the clearance.

 

[TMonter]

Why the regulations I have no idea, but you have to realize that coal and wood fires are fundamentally different in how they burn. Coal fires burn much closer to the coal "bed" than a wood fire as there is much more fixed carbon and far less volatiles. I would imagine it's more of a technical feasibility in design to properly burn wood and coal.

The books are full of idiotic laws and my guess is this is one of them.

 

[begreen]

This seems like a bad presumption. I suspect that there aren't a lot of these stoves because wood and coal have different requirements for air supply location. But they are out there and advertised as such. Maybe Harman doesn't know the rules? Hitzer also lists their stoves as wood & coal heaters, though they appear to be more designed for coal burning.

(broken link removed to http://www.harmanstoves.com/callouts.asp?id=7)

 

[PAcountryboy]

This seems like a bad presumption. I suspect that there aren't a lot of these stoves because wood and coal have different requirements for air supply location. But they are out there and advertised as such. Maybe Harman doesn't know the rules? Hitzer also lists their stoves as wood & coal heaters, though they appear to be more designed for coal burning.

(broken link removed to http://www.harmanstoves.com/callouts.asp?id=7)

Well, I guess that's proof that what I've been told is wrong. I wonder then, why Saey stoves are not listed as being able to burn both.

 

[savageactor7]

I have to agree with global warming...any stove that will burn coal can burn wood. But it must be an EPA thing. Newer stoves have to meet EPA regs and they are more efficient to burn 'wood' in. To burn coal a stove require grates and ....other air passages I don't know about...but they require them anyway.

Coal stoves don't have those smoke re-burner tubes that the newer super efficient wood stoves do. If I wasn't up to my armpits in free wood I'd be burning coal in a NY minute...that stuff is bullet proof. Get a couple of loads dumped on a concrete pad...it can rain/snow on it...bring it inside on a 5 gallon bucket and you have a days heat. And the price is right too...

...well yeah it does smoke a lot...been a long time since I've burned coal...maybe the stoves are better today...I dunno. But coal is hot, no one can deny that.

 

[karl]

My neighbor burns coal in an old pot belly stove. We have bituminous coal around here. He loves it. I wonder if it would do any harm to put a few pieces in a normal wood stove along with the wood.

Has anybody tried it?

 

[battyice]

...well yeah it does smoke a lot...been a long time since I've burned coal...maybe the stoves are better today...I dunno. But coal is hot, no one can deny that.

Bituminous coal can produce a lot of smoke, but anthracite burns extremely clean. I heat my house with anthracite, and every person that has seen my stove in action is shocked at the heat output and clean burn. It burns with no visible smoke and produces no creosote. See the attached picture to see what anthracite looks like when burned in an underfed stoker; the picture is courtesy of one of the forum members over at nepacrossroads. The second picture is nut-sized anthracite burning in my old hand-fed stove.

As for the EPA rating, when I bought my coal stove it came with a tag on the door handle that read, "Coal burning heater only". At this time, wood stoves are subject to EPA requirements, coal stoves are not. I'm sure that's the reason for the tag.

 

[savageactor7]

OK thanks for the heads up on the coal...didn't know that.

 

[Gator eye]

My neighbor burns coal in an old pot belly stove. We have bituminous coal around here. He loves it. I wonder if it would do any harm to put a few pieces in a normal wood stove along with the wood.

Has anybody tried it?

Well????

Anybody burn coal and wood together??

 

[Jags]

Battyice - I can feel the heat coming off of my monitor with that pic.

 

[Wet1]

My neighbor burns coal in an old pot belly stove. We have bituminous coal around here. He loves it. I wonder if it would do any harm to put a few pieces in a normal wood stove along with the wood.

Has anybody tried it?

Well????

Anybody burn coal and wood together??

The problem is coal likes to have its air supply fed from underneath, which is a major hurdle for most wood stoves. You can try it in your wood burning stove, but I don't think you'll have much luck getting a good burn out of it. Even it you could get it to burn okay (which you probably wont), you are still missing the mechanism for shaking the coals a couple of times per day (which is really all you have to do with coal).

On the flip side, coal stoves can burn wood. The down side is almost all of them aren't very efficient at burning wood and they tend to be smoke dragons. Based on my research, only one or two combo stoves ever built will burn wood cleanly. I could be mistaken, but I think only one coal stove was ever EPA certified for wood burning... the Harman "E" CW30. If you want an EPA stove that will cleanly and efficiently handle both (with secondary burning), the "E" is your only option and Harman discontinued it years ago. Too bad because the "E" was an ingenious design. Switching from wood to coal and back only requires switch two levers and you're burning the other fuel. Not to mention it used Harman's excellent shaker system, which also works well for wood ash extraction.

 

[N/A N/A]

My girls family heats with coal. They have a large stove in there basement (I have no idea of the make) and when her dad freshens up the fire he will put a couple shovel fulls of coal in then top it off with wood. He does this all the time as wood is cheaper than coal. He has no problems doing so. I looked at the Harman wood/coal stove the TL 2000, I think it is, and let me tell you that thing is made for coal. If anybody gets a chance to look at one you will see that the fire box is so small and tight that you would not be able to get any wood large enough in it to make it worth the time. Thats the only reason why I did not buy it and went with the TL 300 as wood would be my main fuel.

 

[Adios Pantalones]

battyice- that picture is pissa. Worth at least a thousand extra words

 

[battyice]

Battyice - I can feel the heat coming off of my monitor with that pic.

Rightfully so, the man who took the picture said the boiler is 250k btu. I added a second picture of my 1930's Heatrola burning nut coal, it is around 90k btu.