How expensive is coal up there? And readily available?
Right now it has gone through the roof - nearly DOUBLED in price this year alone. I had a 12-ton stockpile, thank God, from 2020. I paid $284 and change per ton after delivery fees. Now it's at $500 a ton BEFORE delivery fees, which have also gone WAY up. Oil would have to be $3.64 a gallon to compete with coal, even at $500 a ton. Oil just dropped considerably over the past month down to $4.12 a gallon, but coal is still cheaper.
What I'm burning is anthracite coal. Different animal from bituminous, which can light easily, but smoke and burn with low BTUs. (however there are some rare forms of bituminous that have a higher BTU output than anthracite). Anthracite is hard, very shiny, and difficult to ignite, but once lit burns for HOURS. My handfired stoves would go 24 hours without being touched. It's like when a wood fire is at it's peak - all red hot coals - but for 24 hours straight. VERY hot, yet stack temps never got above 350° as an extreme high end. Normally it was 250° when the stove itself was at 650° or so. Roughly 13,000 BTUs per pound. Better than the best wood pellets, and you can store them anywhere and not worry about flooding, or field mice, since it's been in the ground for a million years or so.
If you try to light a few pieces of anthracite, it won't burn. It only burns good when piled up deep, with adequate airflow from the bottom. You can poke a fire and extinguish it in seconds in the right conditions. It's a BIG learning curve from wood! That's why there's an entire forum dedicated to coal burning called Coalpail.com . I've been on there since '05, in my super heavy drinking days. I've got some interesting posts in there from then.
Anyway, anthracite burns HOT from end to end, front to back - it's ALL hot, not just in spots. Best way to heat your home on the planet. Nobody can tell you're burning it. ZERO smoke, ZERO steam out the chimney, even well below zero. Not even a hint of anything, except heat ripples. It also REMOVES creosote as an added bonus. You can burn coal in a lined masonry chimney for decades and never clean it without issue. The flyash will stick to the sides, that's about it. No sparks to worry about, and temps are low, so fire danger is zero.
It isn't coal that's acidic, but the ash, ONLY when mixed with high humidity or water. It will eat right through a 304 stainless chimney pipe in just a couple months. Black pipe, forget about it. In that same timeframe, there will be nothing left. For most people this will never be an issue, but if you have a basement like mine, you've got to clean out your until EVERY spring and CANNOT wait, or, you'll need to keep the unit warm all summer. It even ate up a pair of stainless hot water coils I left uncleaned all summer. ONE summer!
I've got pictures of my learning curve with my wet basement ...
2 months in my basement cold, uncleaned:
Same conditions except 304 stainless (covered in pinholes):
