The house I am moving into has a natural gas wood look alike stove that is going to have to go!

I am debating buying either a nice wood stove with a glass front or buying a more expensive pea coal stove.

This would be in my living room where the hole in the wall is already there once I move the vent for the gas stove.

How much should I expect to spend on the pipe to get to the top of a two story house? Will the pipe going through the wall be double walled? Is the pipe in the house single walled for heat transfer?

I honestly don't know what the rules are for the pipe coming out of the stove.



The coal stove is probably better for long term survival. I plan on buying huge amounts of coal over time. I would like to have literally dozens of tons on hand. The hoppers can be removed and wood burned in most of these stoves.

Wood will always be available too. Not as much heat per volume.

I need you all to talk me into one or the other over the next few months. We should be closing on Wednesday of next week.


This stove will start out as just a supplement to my furnace. I like to keep the furnace around 65 degrees. This stove will be plenty to heat my entire downstairs and the heat will easily warm the upstairs.

I think you need triple wall through the house wall, and maybe some other fireproofing steps.  Remember if you have a chimney fire that pipe can get 1300*F+.



Outside I don't know that there are code requirements, but better pipe will draw better, as the insulation will maintain the chimney temp.  I have a masonry chimney for mine, so I dont have much experience here.



Inside I use single wall.



I think there also clearance minimums on front/back/side/top.



This is all for wood.  Coal could be less stringent?



-Slice


 

I would think that wood will be cleaner to deal with than coal,but I never dealt with coal.

Check your local codes, but I would highly recommend wood.



It will be much easier to acquire during SHTF, and you can get it yourself with a few inexpensive tools.



Unfortunately, it is also the most inefficient of the three common fire based heating methods.


 

I heat with wood and use the central air handler to push the air around. You'll want ceiling fans for sure upstairs, it will get pretty warm up there if it is insulated well.

Coal wasn't even a consideration for me since I don't have a coal mine but I do have a wood mine

For a couple thousand I can have enough coal to last for 5 winters. The hopper can come out and wood can be burned in a coal stove so I am not locked into coal long term.

I know we prep for long term, but 5 years is a long damn time. I think efficiency outweighs convenience in this situation. I have been told wood is still doable easily.

Talk me out of it!

Wood is dirty, especially if it's inside your living room.  You're going to have dust on everything, even if you dust every day.



We have ours in the basement.  Unclear if your place has a basement, but whichever heat source you put in may be better placed down there if possible?




 

I was an HVAC guy that has burned wood and coal, as well as an oil burning boiler, etc.  

The chimney will have to be a 1200* triple wall chimney, including the wall thimble.  If you burn wood, chimney fires are a very real possibility and you really want the best you can get.  Imagine a jet engine at full throttle..   Triple wall with a stainless inner pipe is the most durable.  Do NOT skimp on the chimney!

The only way I would burn wood again is if I had a free source of it, and the time/ability to cut and split it, and the dry storage to keep it in.  Wood takes one full year at least from the time it is split, and stored under cover, to dry out properly.  If you have to buy wood, forget it.  Wood is also the most mess of any type of heat to use, you have bark, debris, and bugs coming in and ashes and creosote going out.  Wood is a LOT of work.  

Coal has its own unique characteristics.  Basically two varieties of coal are available,  bituminous or "soft" coal, and anthracite or "hard" coal.  Bitum ignites fairly easily, burns with a yellow flame, and creates soot, which is a real mess if you get it in the house.  Bitum is cheaper, and the easier ignition is an advantage if you let the fire go out regularly.  Bitum is mined in western  PA and OH and should be readily available to you.  

Anthracite is most widely used for home heating and for good reason.  Anthracite is almost pure carbon, burns VERY hot, and creates no soot.    You need a consistent, fairly high draft from under the fire thru the coal bed to burn anthracite, and the fire will easily go out if you lose draft.  Too much drat will create a hot enough fire to warp or even partially melt the stove, so you need to pay attention to the fire until it is fully established.   Anthracite also produces a good bit of ash that is useless for anything other than traction improver in the winter or weed killer.  Outside of the ash, it is very clean burning and is the least mess of the three.  A good stove on anthracite may ony need tending once every 24 hours.

You will pay more for anthracite even here in PA where they mine it.  It may be worth your while to get a tandem axle trailer, and get one ton in the truck and two in the trailer, and haul if yourself.  I used a bit over a ton last year, and I had to house overheated most of the time.  You'll run into this too, running a coal stove is an art as much as a skill, and you will have days when yo can't the SOB to burn as well as days when you have windows open on a 30* day b/c you gave it a bit too much air.  

A modern coal stove isn't cheap, and antiques waste too much heat.  I'd suggest you hit Craigslist, and network.  I've seen folks get a couple of tons of coal free for the hauling and buy a decent coal stove for $100.  I've also seen new stoves go for over a grand..

Check out the stove carefully before you buy.  Lots of folks overheat the stove by leaving the ash pan door open and forget to close it until they notice the stove is overheated and warped.  It's fairly easy to tell if that's happened, look for warped loose fitting parts and cracked firebrick.  I will also point out that any hand fired coal stove will easily burn wood with some loss of efficiency.

The Arfcom of coal is www.nepacrossraods.com.   Good luck with it, once gone to coal, you'll give away your firewood..

Ops

Each specific stove is UL listed to be used with a specific type of chimney/vent. Most common for wood is Class A (double wall w/ ceramic fiber insulation between the walls). Depending on which manufacturer you go with figure about $40-75 per foot of chimney. My chimney is 18 feet and IIRC I have about $1200 in my chimney. 2 story house is going to be quite a bit more. I forget the codes now so the following may not be 100% accurate but I think the chimney must be 3 feet above the roof at the penetration point, or 2 feet above any portion of the roof within 8 feet, whichever is higher. For me, because I have a steep roof that means I have 7 feet of chimney above the penetration point because the peak of my roof is 5 feet higher than the penetration point.

I don't know much about coal other than it's a whole different ball game. A lot less info out there and it may use different chimneys.

I am looking at the Ashland EZ-50 stove. I can't find a website, but they sell them at a local amish shop for around $1050. They are not fancy to look at, but it is a very nicely built stove.

Coal is gonna be a little dirty [but so is oil and wood heat] I think but I still think it is one of the best ways to go.

My aunt and uncle I stayed with when I was abt 8 and 9 had a coal stove in the 'kitchen' of the garage they were living in until they were able to build their house. Used it for cooking and heating. This was in western PA.

My aunt spent some time showing me how to operate the stove and it did a good job. They actually had coal growing in their back yard!

I think you may be on the right track and it's well worth your time to investigae. Maybe your coal supplier could give you names of folks to talk with?

I'm over 500 miles from coal country and live in the middle of timber country where a pulp truck with 8 cord

of good hardwood is $800. I have over 20 ton of coal in a pile in my yard, no bugs let the rain fall, I have a furnace

hand stoked will most likely burn under 4 ton this year, does that answer your question? I paid $202 per ton with

the freight $165 cheaper than the santa on the bag coal.

Lasat year was my first year with a wood stove.  I heated entirely with the stove and loved it - of course our winters are a bit more mild that yours I presume. I've got about 5-6 cords of free wood out back ready to go.  For me that's about 5 years of heat, assuming I only use ~1 cord/yr like last year. The chimney actually cost as much and possibly more than the stove itself though.  Not cheap, but I wouldn't have it any other way.  While I did pay retail, I got a "free" install. The installers spent all day getting everything set up; these guys were as nit-picky and precise as I am, so we got along perfectly.  

Anyway, I've never burned coal at home - but did work for a coal fired power plant.  A tad different sure, but god, that place had coal dust all over.  I don't imagine you'll have 1800 tons of coal sitting in your backyard though.

If you're going to be burning 20 cords a year (!) or something, I'd get wood.  Find out how much wood other people in your area burn per year.  Ask some of the local retail guys how much they burn - I'm fortunate in that I don't need to burn a lot and I've got a guy that has a tree service a few doors down from me. On average, I had the house around 75-78 degrees when it's in the mid 20s.  And I could easily get it warmer. My house is 2000 sqft and on an average night I'd burn probably 5 split oak logs 20"x6"x6"

While it is possible to chop wood up small and burn it in a coal stove it is not really practical

Actually, it is.  You don't have to cut it up small unless you have an old style potbelly stove.  My Harman burns wood just fine, and it is a coal stove.

Ops

The one I am looking at will take some decent sized pieces. It's a fairly tall space with the chute removed.

I can see the attraction to pellet stoves. They are much cheaper to install. They can just vent through the wall.

My stove is in the basement and tied to the central air, it burns either wood or coal so here is my experience with both.

Both are messy, other than a small stove for atmosphere I would not want a stove in the living area, and If I did it would be wood with glass doors.

Coal is relatively cheap, burns for long periods and can be stored basically in a pile outside. The ash is really fine and will get everywhere, and the smell of the smoke is really strange. It is also a bitch to get started, you will need to keep wood on hand because it requires a good bed of wood coals before you throw the coal on.

Wood, is even cheaper, but more work, needs to be split and dried, doesn't burn very long but makes less ash. It makes the mess coming into the house, not going out.

For a chimney on an interior wall I would not consider anything except a masonry barrier with a clay flue, way to much heat to be messing with inside the house. A masonry chimney on the inside will also radiate more heat into the house. I have triple wall on my stove and it runs on the outside of the house, I hate it, it is more subject to temperature changes and has to be cleaned more often.

I am a mason but have not had time to build my own chimney yet (go figure).

So take my experiences for what they are, if you do end up getting a stove I would go with something that will burn both, all it needs really is a shaker grate.

A neighbor had a pellet stove, then we lost power for 2 weeks in the winter. He couldn't run it for long because it had an electric blower motor in it. (that obviously didn't run with the power off) I don't know if thats standard.

He went to wood.



I know about a half dozen people with wood stoves who's stacks run right out the wall. Heck, my work condo in VT had that configuration.

I was talking to a construction guy yesterday at the kid's football game.  He told me that a good masonry chimney from basement to roof (2 story house) would cost $10K+.  Is that true?





 

Maybe if you had him do it. I'm thinking the materials would cost <$500 to build it yourself. Anyone who can build an AR from individual components can build a chimney - or any other masonry project for that matter. Its definitely NOT rocket science.

Bat, I've been toying with the idea of installing a pellet stove and pressing my own bio-pellets.

Pellet press

This would be a pretty sustainable source of fuel since it can pelletize just about any biomass.

Coal is messier. Over at the cabin we use wood to start the fire then add coal,we never have to start the fire again.

We recently came into 4 free truckloads of wood cut to our preferred size after the big blow. Most of this is from oak that had been attacked by gypsy moth 2 - 3 years back. So it's ready to burn this year.

Coal can be had from a local mines here for $45/ton (last year prices) if you haul it.

We will probably burn wood throughout the day and save our coal for nights this year.

The stove in place might actually be a pellet stove. If it is I am considering putting a coal stove in the basement. The pellet stove would do just fine for making my family more comfortable and the coal would be for supplemental heat and power outtages.

I could probably run the pellet stove off my deep cycle battery or my hf genny. I'm not sure if they need a blower to run. many of them have an auger.

For a straight run I charge $150 per linear foot to install, the cost of the crown is extra depending on what material.

To go through the floor and the  roof figure about 30-40 ft of chimney, so theres 4k, maybe 1500 to 2000 in material and labor for the holes, you have to pour a footer in the basement, another $500-$1000, then the flashing for the roof.

It sounds like, depending on the area he is right on track, if you do it yourself though the materials are practically nil, it is all labor, making a chimney is intensive work.

I could install one in my personal house basement to roof (two story house) for about $2000 plus my time, but it is certainly a more valuable investment in my opinion, a properly cared for masonry chimney (that means yearly inspections and possible small repairs every 5 years) will last you the life of your home.

Edit: That is for an internal wall chimney, more preferable for heat savings. For an external wall figure just one hole and maybe a cutout in the eve, plus about 10 ft less chimney depending on your house size.

More power to ya my brother!

My neighbor isn't the prepared type, just a practical DIY'er type. (a step below us or something)

I believe it is, like with most everything else, entirely situational. And you've got the right mindset with the Plan B's, as nothing is ever really an end-all. We own a few acres of woods, and I've still got a young back, so wood heat is virtually free for me. After the storm we had up here in Oct. there are so many downed trees in the woods I gave the neighbor the all clear to harvest as he desired. It would be a decade before I could chunk, split, and drag it all up myself, and by then its all wasted anyways . .. Thats why he switched over to wood, because it only costs him time and effort now too. Otherwise, he'd probably just have gone solar.

I wish you well in your decision, and hope that it brings you convenient and affordable heat for many years to come.

This is the wood stove I'm going to get someday. It's a stove and a hot water heater.













 
 

I want!

Sweet stove, I found a simlar one for about 1000 bucks less online, it is just a scaled down version, but has grates for using coal also.

I would love to put one in my house I want o build one day, just as a backup for power outages it would be the cats ass.

Is this a vent for a natural gas stove or a pellet stove?




I have one minor or major malfunction in using the hole location of the vent above for my coal stove. This picture shows the electrical lines right above the vent. How should I snake up around these wires?




We still don't have the keys, but we stopped and took pictures and looked at the progress of them moving out.

Bump for advice

Hard to say batman.  It could be any kind of high efficiency appliance (furnace, pellet stove, water heater, ...)   Could also be a dryer vent, range hood output, or something like that too.



Sorry I can't help you w/ the other pic (or this one I suppose).



 

A thing to consider is the interior construction of the stove.  Coal burns a lot hotter than wood and grates designed for wood are not as robust.  Wood can be burned just fine fine in a coal stove, but not vice versa.  A coal stove would give you the choice of burning either.

hmmm...   aside from temperature resistance, there are differences in the grates for airflow and ash...  http://www.city-data.com/forum/self-sufficiency-preparedness/884169-wood-coal-stove-question-2.html

"The design and reinforcement of the firebox is quite different from wood to coal.

There are many stoves ... or at least, were ... where they could burn either fuel ... such as my Waterford Stanley Stove, new in 2001 and made exactly as they'd been for almost a century. As delivered, it comes with cast iron firebox internal lining castings which are beefy enough and adequate to withstand the temps of a wood fire and have airflow to support it.

However, if you burn coal in it, there's an entirely different set of firebox linings, with refractory brick linings and a different heavier lower grate that has much smaller holes in it for airflow and ashes to fall through to the bottom ash containment area. That's because small pieces of coal can still be burning at high temps. Also, there's a much smaller amount of airflow required to burn the coal, so that must be controlled more than with an "airtight" wood fire.

So it is, too, with other stoves. You can still burn wood in the coal firebox, but it won't have the airflow or the ash flow optimized as it would for the wood stove firebox. I've seen a lot of antique woodstove fireboxes and hobs (that's the flat top surface where you cook) that have been melted, burnt out, or brought up to a high enough temperature that the cast iron started to flow and bend ... because they were used with coal and the fire was hot enough to soften or even melt the cast iron.

Read more: http://www.city-data.com/forum/self-sufficiency-preparedness/884169-wood-coal-stove-question-gas-heating-2.html#ixzz26xCarKCd

but in any case, what others have said about "DO NOT scrimp on the chimney !!" is absolutely true.  Triple walled stainless is the way to go.  Three reasons,  corrosion resistance,  the outside layer stays relatively cool and minimizes the chance of starting a fire externally to the piping, and the triple walls keep the interior of the stove pipe nice and hot so creosote cannot condense.  A chimney fire is like having the fires of hell burning in the core of your house.

A buddy had an exterior wood fired boiler and he went cheap with single walled stove pipe  –– he figured it's outdoors,  so why not?   After a couple of seasons of burning slow smokey fires, he'd load it to the gills with logs and then damp it down,  he did get a flue fire.  The single walled stack exposed to cold temperature allowed creosote to condense to an inch thick layer and when that finally caught ...  he said it was like a jet engine on afterburner, white hot flames shooting 2 stories high

There's an even more insidious situation that will happen in a brick chimney with a flue fire.  The 2000 to 3000 degree temperature creates such a pulse of heat on the interior of the chimney that even when the creosote burns itself out, that temperature gradient continues to travel outward through the bricks to the exterior of the chimney and now the outside of the chimney catches structural members of the house on fire a couple hours later.  

some random chimney fires videos  http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ekiq7kk3Yec   Dang!  This first one destroyed the piping of a metal flue.  I didn't watch the others yet, but I'm guessing they get even more hairy !

Pellet stove inlet and exhaust.

What is on the other side of that wall? And where is the existing stove in relation to this vent?

I doubt thats a wood/pellet/coal stove vent etc, or that house would have burnt down a long time ago. (or at least the siding would have melted and/or been sooty)


Generally speaking, your supposed to stand the exhaust pipe off of the house and/or vent it away, like in Surfs' pic. Although I don't install this kind of stuff, I've never seen a stove used for heating with this type of vent.

Moar info needed.

The vent in the picture is either from a pellet or natural gas stove. I have been told that many pellet stoves use a vent like this one.


I do know the coal stove will have a real chimney. I am wondering if we will have to bring the pipe over toward the window and then to the roof.

After reading Ops post, there's nothing I can add.

Coal all the way, possibly look for something that is specifically designed to burn both.

I have a Riteway Solid Fuel stove in my basement and love burning coal in it. I plan on putting in a coal fired boiler within the next year or two.