Seems like a good deal on coal....

Sono

Ok first post in here so go easy!

Looking to stock up on some coal for a regular fire in a sitting room, based in Dublin and was wondering if anyone could point me in the right direction to which coal to go for and good value? Had a look at kosyking but there are so many types, I just want coal! Not really too sure on all the different types.

Thanks for any help

blindside88

Sono wrote: »

Ok first post in here so go easy!

Looking to stock up on some coal for a regular fire in a sitting room, based in Dublin and was wondering if anyone could point me in the right direction to which coal to go for and good value? Had a look at kosyking but there are so many types, I just want coal! Not really too sure on all the different types.

Thanks for any help

If you are looking for coal for an open fire, coal warehouse do polish coal for a very good rate. I've gone for a mixture of polish coal and ovoids but I'm
Using a stove.

Yester

Cheers for this thread. I got my tonne of coal from the Coal warehouse today. 180 euro for a tonne of Polish + 60 delivery. Delight with that. The only problem was the uncertainty of when it would be delivered. The courier assured me they would ring the day before delivery but today I got a call when they were 10 minutes away. Lucky I was around.

Sono

blindside88 wrote: »

If you are looking for coal for an open fire, coal warehouse do polish coal for a very good rate. I've gone for a mixture of polish coal and ovoids but I'm
Using a stove.

Thanks for this I'll check that site out now.

mikeecho

ultimately the best deal is one where the total pice including shipping is included.

No point in getting something for pennies, if you are paying massive shipping charges.

There is a happy medium

blindside88

Yester wrote: »

Cheers for this thread. I got my tonne of coal from the Coal warehouse today. 180 euro for a tonne of Polish + 60 delivery. Delight with that. The only problem was the uncertainty of when it would be delivered. The courier assured me they would ring the day before delivery but today I got a call when they were 10 minutes away. Lucky I was around.

I had the exact same experience

bigroad

blindside88 wrote: »

I had the exact same experience

Yes so did i and it was no problem but if someone is not home the transport has to load the coal another day .Seems an inefficient way for the transport company.
They should ring before they load it.

beertons

I got a call from the haulage company today asking me when would it suit for delivery. Told them Friday. Maybe the problem was with Liam Connolly transport not specifying that on their side.

Discodog

Do Kosy always deliver the next day ?

lenscap

No you can ask Kosyking when you would like the delivery and they will oblige. They have done it for me on two different occasions.

Discodog

lenscap wrote: »

No you can ask Kosyking when you would like the delivery and they will oblige. They have done it for me on two different occasions.

This is the key choice for me. Another supplier might be cheaper but I can't risk 10 minutes notice. A pallet of coal isn't a parcel

Kosy may be a little dearer but the service seems much better.

vicwatson

Sono wrote: »

Ok first post in here so go easy!

Looking to stock up on some coal for a regular fire in a sitting room, based in Dublin and was wondering if anyone could point me in the right direction to which coal to go for and good value? Had a look at kosyking but there are so many types, I just want coal! Not really too sure on all the different types.

Thanks for any help

I'd recommend reading back through the read, maybe about 10 pages, loads of good information and advice already posted.

mgn

Anyone burn timber with coal.Have a Erin stove with back boiler.Looking through the posts here the ovoids seem to get good reviews.Anyone burn the ovoids with timber or is there better coal to use. Don't have to use smokeless.

Tzardine

mgn wrote: »

Anyone burn timber with coal.Have a Erin stove with back boiler.Looking through the posts here the ovoids seem to get good reviews.Anyone burn the ovoids with timber or is there better coal to use. Don't have to use smokeless.

You should not burn timber and coal together, this will create sulphuric acid and will damage your stove.

Its ok to start a fire with some wood and then transfer to coal, but I would not be mixing the two on any large scale.

lenscap

I have used wood and smokeless ovoids in a Charnwood backboiler stove for years and never had a problem. The wood I burn is properly seasoned (low moisture content because I have a moisture meter to test the wood).

I start the fire with kindling and the ovoids and when they are burning/glowing then add the wood to the now hot fire.

At the end of the night I make sure all timber is burnt before turning down the stove. Never use wood for overnight burning.

I clean the stove internally every week and have never noticed any corrosion.

vectra

Tzardine wrote: »

You should not burn timber and coal together, this will create sulphuric acid and will damage your stove.

Its ok to start a fire with some wood and then transfer to coal, but I would not be mixing the two on any large scale.

:eek:

How would that damage the stove?

Discodog

I love using smokeless in my Stanley. The stove looks like new, the glass stays clear, chimney stays clear & loads of heat. I only use wood as a little kindling.

Wood won't damage the stove but it won't burn efficiently. You use a grate for coal because it needs air from underneath & the ash has to be able to fall from the coal. Woodburners don't use a grate because wood needs to burn on a bed of ash.

my3cents

Tzardine wrote: »

You should not burn timber and coal together, this will create sulphuric acid and will damage your stove.

Its ok to start a fire with some wood and then transfer to coal, but I would not be mixing the two on any large scale.

Not a problem we have ever had and we just burn "fuel". Fuel is anything that burns within reason (not plastics) and if you are cold then fuel is whatever you have available ideally its good coal or ovoids but can sometimes be pallet wood thats full of nails or driftwood off the beach.

Anyway my experience of nearly 40 years of burning "fuel" in a variety of stoves is that you do far more damage by regularly over fueling and over heating a stove than you can do by any other means.

Some people like to put some logs on top of the coal or ovoids as it gets the fire going a bit and it gives a heat boost. We have a cooker as well as a stove and we keep the cooker going with ovoids and add wood if we want to increase the heat for bit while cooking.

btw never had any problems from burning drift wood either.

my3cents

Discodog wrote: »

I love using smokeless in my Stanley. The stove looks like new, the glass stays clear, chimney stays clear & loads of heat. I only use wood as a little kindling.

Wood won't damage the stove but it won't burn efficiently. You use a grate for coal because it needs air from underneath & the ash has to be able to fall from the coal. Woodburners don't use a grate because wood needs to burn on a bed of ash.

Woodburners don't need a grate but it doesn't mean you can't burn wood in a stove with a grate and it burns more efficiently with a grate than without because you have more control over the air flow.

The grate also allows you to keep the fire going the problem with woodburners that don't have a grate is that you have to let them go out every day to clean them out.

Our stanley cooker is sold by stanley as a woodburner but it still has a grate in it.

mgn

I have a Stanley Erin multi-fuel so can burn anything.I used timber,turf and coal last year with mixed results.I'm just trying to find the best coal to burn with the timber.

my3cents

mgn wrote: »

I have a Stanley Erin multi-fuel so can burn anything.I used timber,turf and coal last year with mixed results.I'm just trying to find the best coal to burn with the timber.

The problem is they burn at different rates (coal and wood) so when you add wood you need more air so have to open the air vent up but in doing so the coal (or ovoids etc) also gets more air and burns faster.

If you put on wood to get a bit more heat going then the coal is going to burn up quicker, there is no free heat.

I'm wondering if you have had problems if its because you are expecting too much out of the stove with a back boiler? I've done the maths before for people with a lot of rads and in some cases you'd be needing to burn at least half a bag of coal to heat everything up for the evening. iirc the spec for the Erin allows for a good few rads to be hung off it.

mgn

I'm beginning to think you could be right about expecting too much from the stove.Last year was the first full year to have a stove and blamed either timber not seasoned or bad turf.Never had the heat that i was expecting in either the stove or radiators That's why i was looking at coal this year with timber,but i see what you mean now by timber needing more air than coal.

my3cents

mgn wrote: »

I'm beginning to think you could be right about expecting too much from the stove.Last year was the first full year to have a stove and blamed either timber not seasoned or bad turf.Never had the heat that i was expecting in either the stove or radiators That's why i was looking at coal this year with timber,but i see what you mean now by timber needing more air than coal.

A back of envelope calculation tells me that if you have the max number of rads on that stove (hopefully its not overloaded which will never really work) and are running at max output you need to be burning around 4kg of coal an hour. That means a 40kg bag will work 10 hours.

So tbh I'd be expecting to use about half a 40kg bag of coal an evening (5-6 hours burning).

Assumptions...
Erin Max 6kW heat output to room and max 13.2kW boiler output 75% efficient burning coal capable of a heat output of 8kw a kilo

After a couple of nights burning that much coal if your rads are still not really heating up the problem might be that you have too many of them.

In very rough terms coal should give you twice the heat for that same weight but its hard to compare as we tend not to weigh logs which have much more volume.

mgn

my3cents wrote: »

A back of envelope calculation tells me that if you have the max number of rads on that stove (hopefully its not overloaded which will never really work) and are running at max output you need to be burning around 4kg of coal an hour. That means a 40kg bag will work 10 hours.

So tbh I'd be expecting to use about half a 40kg bag of coal an evening (5-6 hours burning).

Assumptions...
Erin Max 6kW heat output to room and max 13.2kW boiler output 75% efficient burning coal capable of a heat output of 8kw a kilo

After a couple of nights burning that much coal if your rads are still not really heating up the problem might be that you have too many of them.

In very rough terms coal should give you twice the heat for that same weight but its hard to compare as we tend not to weigh logs which have much more volume.

Thanks for all that info.Only have 4 single 1400x500 rads and 1 double 800x500,living room area is 4000x3600 so not overloaded.

my3cents

mgn wrote: »

Thanks for all that info.Only have 4 single 1400x500 rads and 1 double 800x500,living room area is 4000x3600 so not overloaded.

Experience tells me that you'd heat the room the stoves in and water with just wood but not the rads.

I'd definitely say try the ovoids but a new back of envelope calculation (5kW room 3kW water 7kW rads) suggests not to expect to burn much less than a third of a bag of an evening (an hour heating up the stove then 4 hours burning). Start with a tonne, if you stretch it out with wood which in this case you can use to just keep the fire going for room heat then a tonne may do 3 months, a worst case calculation is a tonne should do a decent job heating the house and water for 2 months. Much depends on how much heat is enough how long you have it on for each day and how cold the winter is you'll just have to try it yourself to know.

You can use just ovoids but if you get to the stage where the water is hot and the rest of the house is warm enough you can let the ovoids die down and then go back to wood for keeping the stove lit and the room warm. If you really need to get some heat up then mix wood and ovoids and open up the air vents (or is it turn the thermostat up on the Erin?). If you don't have a good cheap supply of wood then its easier to stick with ovoids or whatever type of coal works for you.

Other opinions will vary

deisedav

Anyone ever use the kosyking premium emerald coal . Wondering if it's any good. I use a open fire. Thanks.

TTTT

mgn wrote: »

Anyone burn timber with coal.Have a Erin stove with back boiler.Looking through the posts here the ovoids seem to get good reviews.Anyone burn the ovoids with timber or is there better coal to use. Don't have to use smokeless.

Bituminous (smokey) coal works better than smokeless when burned with timber as they have similar burning characteristics (volatiles).

I tried a mix of lots of different coals with timber in a Stanley range last year and found that Premium (large lumps) Colombian burned the best.

The Colombian burned much cleaner than the Polish. Get the fire going with timber first then put a couple of shovels of coal in. This helps to get the volatiles (smoke) burning and reduces the amount of smoke which is wasted fuel.

Refuel little and often for best results. With smokeless it's better to load it up once and slow burn it for hours.

Gareth Keenan

my3cents, you should start burning envelopes at the rate you are going through them

my3cents

Gareth Keenan wrote: »

my3cents, you should start burning envelopes at the rate you are going through them

You are welcome to try some of your own calculations and see if you can work out how much coal mgn would need to use for his system to run efficiently.

I could be miles out but I'm happy for anyone else to add their own calculations or experience.

Everyone has their own ideas how a stove should be run and there is an awlful lot of bullsh!t and pub talk about the subject. For example a neighbor would have you convinced he can run his fire shut down to nothing running all day on three logs. He doesn't tell anyone he also buys three bags of coal a week. In fact same guy would tell you that you never need to sweep a properly installed liner yet after 2 years his was so blocked up the fire wouldn't light and he had a devil of a job cleaning the chimney out.

When you boil it all down a given weight of fuel has a known output, rads etc have a known output so you can calculate roughly how much fuel you need. The problem is that when you buy a stove no one gives you any real idea of how much fuel you need to use.It would be better in fact if the fuel consumption figures were included in the stoves specification when you by it then you would know what you were getting into. The stove specs don't even tell you how much fuel you can fill them with. Far too many people put in a stove and then as an after thought look around for what to burn. Those calculations should really be made before you buy the stove not after its been installed.

TTTT

my3cents wrote: »

You are welcome to try some of your own calculations and see if you can work out how much coal mgn would need to use for his system to run efficiently.

I could be miles out but I'm happy for anyone else to add their own calculations or experience.

Everyone has their own ideas how a stove should be run and there is an awlful lot of bullsh!t and pub talk about the subject. For example a neighbor would have you convinced he can run his fire shut down to nothing running all day on three logs. He doesn't tell anyone he also buys three bags of coal a week. In fact same guy would tell you that you never need to sweep a properly installed liner yet after 2 years his was so blocked up the fire wouldn't light and he had a devil of a job cleaning the chimney out.

When you boil it all down a given weight of fuel has a known output, rads etc have a known output so you can calculate roughly how much fuel you need. The problem is that when you buy a stove no one gives you any real idea of how much fuel you need to use.It would be better in fact if the fuel consumption figures were included in the stoves specification when you by it then you would know what you were getting into. The stove specs don't even tell you how much fuel you can fill them with. Far too many people put in a stove and then as an after thought look around for what to burn. Those calculations should really be made before you buy the stove not after its been installed.

I agree. I rented a cottage that had an Erin as sole source of heating. I left at Xmas the first year but by that time I had used over a tonne of coal and 4 m3 of firewood. I reckoned that I would have needed to use at least 3 tonnes of coal over the heating season.

Before I left I had started to insulate the attic because it was only €20 a roll for insulation and the coal was €18 a bag for good smokeless.