Coal heat makes minor comeback
First of two articles on unusual heating alternatives being used by some locals as they get off oil; coming Tuesday: wood gasification boilersBy MARY THILL, Special to the Enterprise
Article Photos
SARANAC LAKE - Shocked by wild fluctuations in oil prices over the past year, many North Country homeowners are finding new ways to keep their homes warm.
Tom Hyde, owner of Hyde Fuel Company, said he has seen a decrease in residential oil consumption as homeowners install more insulation, improve the efficiency of furnaces or dial down the thermostat.
A lot of people are switching their main heat source to wood-pellet stoves or boilers, or to propane heaters, local home supply stores reported. A small percentage of those making a change, however, are at the edge of two trends: one new, and one a surprising throwback with a mixed history in the Adirondacks.
Wood has always provided livelihoods and fuel for Adirondackers, but gasification, a technology newly available to residents, could also make cordwood the wave of the future. (For more on wood gasification, see part two of this story Tuesday.) At the other end of the spectrum, some households are reverting to a fossil fuel of the past.
Swift Supply Corp. and Hulbert's Tri-Lakes Supply, both on John Munn Road, reported that after decades of no demand, a few customers are again asking for boilers and stoves that can be fired by coal.
Almost every home and business in Saranac Lake was warmed by coal at one time, as evidenced by old boilers in basements, many of them retrofitted for oil, said Tom Hyde.
"Coal-fired hot-water with cast-iron radiators was the most popular source of heat in Saranac Lake," he said.
Don Roberson, an 83-year-old Saranac Lake native now living in Niagara Falls, remembers when his family's fuel and ice business, Boyce & Roberson, transitioned from selling coal to oil in the 1940s. Oil "was much more convenient," he said. "With coal you had to provide a bin in the basement and put chutes in the window. Nothing was automatic. You had to shovel coal in the furnace, and every night you banked it. It was a monster to handle." It was also dirty and filled ash pans, which homeowners had to empty frequently.
Coal was shipped from Pennsylvania by train and was stored in sheds by the railroad tracks in the area where Swift and Hulbert's are now located. By the time freight trains stopped serving Saranac Lake in the 1970s, the transition to oil was complete, minus a few holdouts.
Although coal has remained a cheap, plentiful and domestic source of energy, oil was not only more convenient but for a long time was reliable and competitively priced. That changed briefly during the OPEC and inflation crises of the 1970s, when a lot of Adirondackers resorted to wood - and some to coal - to get through the winter. A more lasting shift away from oil seems to be taking place now as price and supply are forecasted to remain unstable.
Hulbert heating specialist Larry LaValley reported that coal burners have made up 5 percent of sales this season at the six Hulbert locations in the North Country and Vermont. He estimated 15 percent of sales were wood stoves or boilers, some of which can be adapted for coal with a grate insert. Jack Decker of Swift Supply said the Saranac Lake company has sold 15 coal burners this season and will soon stock the black-rock fuel.
Northeastern demand for anthracite, the Pennsylvania-mined, hard, lustrous coal that is used for home heating, is so high that Swift's order has been placed on a waiting list. Residential coal consumption reached a nationwide low of 258,000 tons in 2006, according to the U.S. Energy Information Administration. It jumped 9 percent in 2007 and another 2 percent in the first eight months of 2008.
In the meantime, for about $7.30, consumers can buy chestnut-size chunks by the 40-pound bagful at Aubuchon Hardware and other home-supply stores. Some get coal delivered the old way: A truck pulls up and dumps a few tons into a bin, at $330 per ton. Champlain Coal, based in Whitehall, has seven such customers in the Tri-Lakes.
One of them is Emil Schneider, a resident of Harrietstown Hill. He's one of the holdouts who has been heating with coal for decades.
"I'm still burning coal because I've had it so long," said the retired teacher. He has a boiler from the 1970s that feeds and shakes itself. It's low maintenance as well as efficient, even by today's standards, so he hasn't switched. Four tons of coal supply his home for a winter. If he were purchasing a new home-heating system today, however, Schneider said he would lean toward the new pellet, corn or propane technologies, which are cost-competitive and less work.
When the price of oil shot up this summer, several people asked Schneider where they could get coal boilers or whether he could reactivate their old ones.
"I looked at one unit and just said no," he said. It was no longer up to code, he explained, and it's important to burn coal properly. And despite popular belief, tossing a few chunks of coal into a wood stove is not a good idea; coal requires a different firebox.
Coal technology has come a long way since the early 20th century. Coal is oiled to minimize dust, new units require less stoking, and Decker said anthracite "is very very clean. It burns like gas."
Anthracite is often called "smokeless" because it gives off fewer fine particles linked to lung disease than wood or soft coal. But in terms of climate change and acid rain, coal is still the dirtiest fuel. Anthracite has a higher carbon content than fuel oil (227 pounds per million Btus vs. 174 pounds, according to the Energy Information Admi-nistration). Carbon is the primary component in greenhouse gases. Sulfur - a component of acid rain, which has afflicted Adirondack forests and waters more notoriously than any other part of the country - is also high.
LaValley said customers don't ask about pollutants, and he doesn't mention them either.
"I'm sure they have done their homework before they come in here," he said. "I think consumers are much better informed because of the Internet."
The sources of the acid precipitation that falls here are upwind coal-fired power plants in the Ohio River valley. Nationally, residential coal use releases less than a tenth of a percentage point of the carbon released by coal burned in industry and power-generation, according to government figures. Still, some see household coal as a step in the wrong direction, especially in the Adirondack Park, where fish and spruce die-offs, and other ill effects of coal burning, are well documented.
"Coal is pure carbon. It's the worst there is," said Ann Heidenrich, education director for Canton-based Community Energy Services, a nonprofit group that promotes efficiency and renewable energy across northern New York. "A resort owner in Elizabethtown switched all his boilers to coal," she said. "I talked with him about greenhouse gas emissions, and I talked about biomass (wood, corn, grass pellets and other renewable fuels), but he said it would take too much of a conversion of what he already has."
Heidenrich says she understands that some people are financially strained and are making quick choices to stay warm this winter. Still, Btu for Btu, hardwood costs about the same as coal, she says, keeping the average residence warm for about $1,000 per year (as opposed to about $3,300 for fuel oil).
In the long run, Heidenrich is optimistic that wood, which is carbon neutral because trees release as much carbon dioxide when burned as absorbed while growing, will prevail in the heavily forested North Country. New pellet stoves and gasification boilers make wood less costly and polluting than ever, she said.
"Our biomass industry can compete with coal. We just have to build the industry, and it can also help our economic development, if it is sustainably harvested. It's a win-win."
---
(Editor's note: This article has been corrected; freight rail service in this area ended in the 1970s.)
