Wood burner

[Mr Flapjack]

Hi,
I have inherited a wood burner through the house I bought a couple of years ago. It is mounted in the wall about 2-3 feet from the ground and has a glass door. Up to now the only thing burned in it is wood (did exactly what it siad on the tin). However, the burner goes through wood like there's no tomorrow. After speaking with a gut in the local town who sells wood, he told us that we could use smokeless coal. We told him our concerns that maybe the fireplace could handle the heat given off by coal but he said we should have no probs. We lit the fire last night and used some of the smokeless coal. After about 30 mins we got a serious smell of burning of something that shouldn't be coming off the fire - like a smell of burning plastic. anyone got something similar? Anyone know if you can or can't use the coal and reasons, if not, why?

Thanks...

 

[Hoagy]

Sounds like there's plastic touching the flue somewhere in the wall and the extra heat generated by the smokeless 'coal' is burning it.

We use a mixture of logs and magiflame or magiglow in our stove. It's very poor quality stuff, not coal at all actually but something called petcoke which is a by product of the oil industry.
It burns a lot hotter than wood, we've split the door glass in ours and burnt out the grate over the years. We've never had a smell of plastic though.
You need to be a bit careful, if the smell persists I would probably stick with logs rather than risk burning the wall.

 

[NHG]

I know that when we lit our new stove we had a burning smell (which we had been told about when buying it). It was the paints/chemicals burning off. We used to light small fires and increased them in size over a few nights untill the smell had "burned" off. Even a new oven has to be "burned off" to get rid of the smell!

Maybe you lit a big fire and because it was hotter than previously it still had some more "burning off to do".

We burn coal in ours all the time - the only job. Ours is a freestanding stove in a large stone fireplace surround - not built into the wall.

Give it a try again with a small fire and gradually build the fire up.

 

[chrisoz5]

we have a wood burner too, would have thought that burning coal would burn out the grate and damage the firebricks though? I thought smokeless coal would be even hotter?

Ours says wood only, but I have seen other multi-fuel stoves that cant burn regular coal but advertised as being able to burn brown coal, which seemingly you cant get here in Ireland very easily anyway.

We have on a few occassions burned briquettes when we have run out of logs but try to do it few and far between as afraid of damaging the stove, yes it does seem to eat firewood, but still love it.