anyone heating with coal?

Lycanthrope · Feb 3, 2020

im thinking about building a house in the near future and was watching a video on YouTube recently where a guy was explaining how he heats using an outdoor wood furnace... can heat several buildings for relatively cheap because he has large quantities of wood available to burn...

did a little searching and it seems there are similar units available for coal also... which can be sourced cheaply in nd.

eventually I'd like the ability to heat 3-4 buildings affordably.

anyone experienced heating with coal? are there legal obstacles/restrictions to burning coal for residential heat currently?

Migrator Man · Feb 3, 2020

Lycanthrope said:
im thinking about building a house in the near future and was watching a video on YouTube recently where a guy was explaining how he heats using an outdoor wood furnace... can heat several buildings for relatively cheap because he has large quantities of wood available to burn...

did a little searching and it seems there are similar units available for coal also... which can be sourced cheaply in nd.

eventually I'd like the ability to heat 3-4 buildings affordably.

anyone experienced heating with coal? are there legal obstacles/restrictions to burning coal for residential heat currently?

You can legally burn coal until the feds step in and make it illegal. Unfortunately it’s on their radar but these bureaucrats do not realize sitting in their big city offices why rural Americans need to burn wood. Homeowners that burn wood or coal are big emitters because there are zero pollution controls. One guy isn’t that big of a deal but if we all burned it there might be an issue.

Kurtr · Feb 3, 2020

geo thermal and in floor heat. Long term solutions that cost a little up front cheaper down the road.

Lycanthrope · Feb 3, 2020

Kurtr said:
geo thermal and in floor heat. Long term solutions that cost a little up front cheaper down the road.

This may be worth considering. Can you heat water using geo also? I did some research a while ago and thought there were some issues around here because subsoil temps are unusually low in this geographic area or something... Also I like the idea of redundancy and being able to function, even if just minimally, if there ever were an extended power outage or some similar event.

guywhofishes · Feb 3, 2020

natural gas is cheap - until the Climate Hoaxsters succeed with their scam. Then it'll cost 2-3 times what it does now.

Kurtr · Feb 3, 2020

Lycanthrope said:
This may be worth considering. Can you heat water using geo also? I did some research a while ago and thought there were some issues around here because subsoil temps are unusually low in this geographic area or something...

Yes you can. It creates excess hot water even my father in law turns his hot water heater for the house off from march to november and the system supplies it. His total cost 8 years ago was 18000 for the house he was spending 5000 a year on fuel oil so it penned out fast for him. I know of about 10 different systems down here that are geo and in floor heat.

Migrator Man · Feb 3, 2020

guywhofishes said:
natural gas is cheap - until the Climate Hoaxsters succeed with their scam. Then it'll cost 2-3 times what it does now.

The same people who are using fossil fuels and are fighting against them will whine when energy is not so cheap......

DirtyMike · Feb 3, 2020

My parents still run a stoker furnace, but they also still live in Center. Pros: cheap heat. Cons: dust, smoke, hauling it, emptying ashes. I feel like my trap muscles were well developed at a young age because of hauling ashes up the stairs.

KDM · Feb 3, 2020

I heat my 1400 sq ft rambler home with full basement for about 5 bucks a day (appx 1 bushel) using a corn burner. It takes me about 3 minutes each day to fill the hopper, empty the ash brick, and clean the air exchange tubes. I use 180 bushels of corn each winter (give'er take 10 bushels). I have propane and electric for backups when we hit those super cold spells, but my little stove keeps the house at between 62-66 degrees all on it's own. I would get better if I connected it to the duct work, but for now it just heats the basement and the heat percolates up through the floors. The two largest issues is corn storage during the winter and getting the corn from the storage to the stove. Both would depend on your house and stove location particulars. If you are interested in hearing more about corn burners, just drop me a PM and we'll talk on the phone. WAY to many specifics unique to each house/location to type about. Good Luck!!

Captain Ahab · Feb 3, 2020

Sounds like a lot of work dealing with ash and cleaning components of soot. Also, the law could shut you down in the future. They were trying to ban wood burning back in the Obama days. Nat gas should be darn cheap for a long time without worrying about tanks to fill or much of anything else. Geothermal as mentioned above would be good if it pencils in your area.

Allen · Feb 3, 2020

Enough said:

guywhofishes · Feb 3, 2020

Migrator Man said:
The same people who are using fossil fuels and are fighting against them will whine when energy is not so cheap......

they will blame the evil energy companies and scream for a government takeover

it's the natural progression

no stopping it until the wheels come off - then Venezuela type situation occurs

and ending (or fending off) socialism always requires a blood bath from what I've seen

i.e. Bernie fans are the backers of the next socialist nightmare

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Allen said:
Enough said:

what's with the "release plume"?

Lycanthrope · Feb 3, 2020

I was thinking an external coal/wood burner, maybe in a separate building, with a large hopper/feeder that could be loaded with a skidder or something similar. Eventually Id like to heat 2 houses, a shop and possibly a greenhouse... Not sure how difficult/expensive that would be with geo, but with coal at $35/ton or so, seemed worth considering. If there were a power outage, can you run geothermal from wind/solar mid winter? Need to keep a generator and fuel on hand?

1lessdog · Feb 3, 2020

Allen said:
Enough said:

You will need a lot bigger loop field than that. We looked into it, was going to cost us about $40,000 for everything. That was a 50 x 100 x 6.5 hole to put loop field in. At 6.5 feet we would be in water. Figured it would pay off in 15 yrs. And when you sell the house most people dont care what heats and cools the house. You mention it has a 40.000 heating and cooling system in it, it wont help with the sale of the home.

Allen · Feb 3, 2020

guywhofishes said:
what's with the "release plume"?

Not sure I quite understand the question, the above schematic is for a "closed system" and with such I am not aware of a "release plume" of heat or other water quality concerns. There are other, mostly older systems, that simply pumped water up from depth and used it once before discharging it into either an otherwise natural body of water (river or lake). Those systems aren't in vogue nowadays because they "waste" water from an aquifer and add it to either a nearby river, the storm water system, or maybe even the sanitary sewer system. Most groundwater permitting agencies now take a dim view of this.

In particular, there are quite a few large buildings in Minneapolis/St Paul that use the open style geothermal and their state agencies have been regretting the loss of water from the local aquifer for some time. Tough to encourage them to stop though once they have the sunken costs associated with the open ended geothermal heating and cooling.

I am not aware of any open style geothermal systems in use around ND.

- - - Updated - - -

1lessdog said:
You will need a lot bigger loop field than that. We looked into it, was going to cost us about $40,000 for everything. That was a 50 x 100 x 6.5 hole to put loop field in. At 6.5 feet we would be in water. Figured it would pay off in 15 yrs. And when you sell the house most people dont care what heats and cools the house. You mention it has a 40.000 heating and cooling system in it, it wont help with the sale of the home.

Yeah, it's a conceptual diagram, not an engineering blueprint. Lots of the cost for geothermal gets wrapped up in the dirt work, at least that's my take on it.

guywhofishes · Feb 3, 2020

I was talking about that bizzare shadow under the three trees. Doesn't make sense based on sun's angle, etc.

it's like the trees are leaking and the "release" is moving down into the ground

Kurtr · Feb 3, 2020

my FIL is a closed loop with three wells that were dug in his back yard. when it comes time it will be how i replace my propane system now. he heats and cools for pennies a day now

Allen · Feb 3, 2020

guywhofishes said:
I was talking about that bizzare shadow under the three trees. Doesn't make sense based on sun's angle, etc.

it's like the trees are leaking and the "release" is moving down into the ground

Yeah, I can't comment on this artist's conception of heat exchange other than you're right, it looks goofy.

Petras · Feb 3, 2020

Lycan I'm in the same boat as you. We will be building a house out on the 5 acres we just bought last year. I've pretty much decided to go with a geothermal system utilizing a field instead of bore holes. Where most people incur the crazy high costs in geothermal systems is in the drilling of bore holes for their field. I've decided i will dig a horizontal field 10' down. In my research I've learned that all it takes is 15 degrees difference between the glycol entering the field and the glycol returning from the field.
You can use a geothermal system to heat your hot water. A De-superheater is what would be needed to do this in the summer time.

When I priced out the system I was looking at it was around $13k. This included everything needed to heat and cool the house, provide in floor heat, and also provide a heat source for the hot water heater. It also includes all the tubing and glycol for the horizontal field as well. This doesn't include a backup heat supply just in case on the coldest of days the system can't quite keep up. For that I'd just plan on installing an electric heat element in the duct work to help out.

The perks of a geothermal system are that they are crazy energy efficient. The require only 25% of the energy used through a traditional heating system as there is no Fuel to Heat conversion being done. It's just simply a transfer of BTU's from one place to the other. The other perk, is that you get both heating in the winter and Cooling in the summer. Another plus about a Geothermal system is that Most power companies will allow a guy to install the "heat pump" on an off peak meter which means even more money savings.

I should also add that I'll be installing the whole thing myself with equipment that is readily available to me. I plan on going 10' deep with the trenches for the horizontal field. I think This should be down plenty deep enough to provide adequate BTU transfer through the winter to provide enough heat for the house.

I also looked into one of those remote wood burner shacks for heating the house, but the thought of having to either cut/split wood, or haul coal and load it a couple times a day wasn't real appealing. I may decide to use one of those units to provide heat for the shop that I plan to build, but that's a bit down the road and won't necessarily be heated full time.

Retired Educator · Feb 3, 2020

Somewhat familiar with schools that heat with coal. Large buildings (perhaps like the 3 or 4 you eventually would like to heat.) the school I used to work in had coal heat with boilers (hot water heat.) Was efficient and relatively low-cost. Was also somewhat dirty. Needed smokestacks about 100' high to allow the little ash that came out to more effectively blow away. With today's standards the ash was negligible but still a little there. Hauling out the burned coal was also necessary. Required another building where a truck sat and the ash was augered into said truck and eventually hauled to landfill. Coal came by the semi-load and was augered into a hopper bin. All this required space for trucks, etc. Kind of reminded me of my old wood-burning stove. Loved the heat, eventually tired of hauling ash and wood and the mess associated with each. Now much prefer my propane fireplace.

When I was building houses we build a few with geothermal. High initial cost but efficient. Most I worked with were fields but did have one with wells. They work but seem to me to work best if you have more land available. Also all of them had the capability of additional heat added to the circulating liquid. One of the best to me had a large brick heat storage capability. About 3'X4'X6' that the liquid circulated through and in the event you lost complete power somehow kept everything warm for up to 2 weeks. Don't remember exactly how it circulated, etc. but worked great.

If I were building in a rural setting I for sure would look into geothermal.

anyone heating with coal?

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