The short answer to the question is yes you can and many are moving back to the use of coal heating due to increase in heating oil and gas costs! However, I wouldn't recommend doing that!
I actually grew up using coal to heat, just as fuel oil was replacing coal as the most common resource in heating homes. I remember converting all those cooking, heating stoves, and coal furnaces to oil. The memory that sticks most is how black and dirty I used to get handling coal and how much easier and cleaner fuel oil was. So, to answer the question yes, you absolutely can heat your home with coal. Buy the top quality grade
People always relate places like West Virginia, Pennsylvania, and Kentucky with coal and don’t realize coal is mined all over. Montana, Wyoming, and Utah have large coal mining operations. Even Puget Sound has a coal history. There were large mines in Washington shipping coal to California. Centralia had the honor of being the last open pit mine in Washington to close, which was not very long ago, 2006. Ever hear of ‘Gas Works Park’ on Lake Union? Wonder how it came about? Check out its history, it was - coal:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gas_Works_Park
http://www.washington.historylink.org/index.cfm?DisplayPage=output.cfm&File_Id=5158
The largest resource used in the production of electricity is still coal! China is now using 50% and India 30% of its production. Before jumping on the coal for heating your home band wagon, which people are now doing due to the higher costs of the other resourses and coal being cheaper… take it from this old fart, look into that closely. Handling coal really is a filthy thing to do. Heating with coal leaves coal ash, which will need to be cleaned and disposed of on a regular basis. That coal ash also contains arsenic, mercury along with other toxic substances. There is the the exposure to coal dust, which it probably won't due to the limited exposure but could cause ‘Black Lung Disease' (BLD). FYI… If you look up BLD you will find mentioned someting called “Anthracosis.” If you look that up and you will find that is “Pulmonology A generic term for blackening of tissues, often understood to mean carbon dust deposition in the lung and lymph nodes, which does not itself cause disease,
and is usually present in urban dwellers, and in those working in certain occupations–eg, coal mining. See coal workers' pneumoconiosis.” So, most of us living in cities (those urban dwellers) are already being exposed and getting the benefits of pollution created by coal. Now... what does our good old Obama want to do about that, export more coal to China. And, do that through none other than the port of – Bellingham, Washington! Can one say train, car loads, coal, coal dust, air, pollution, and Bellingham all in one sentence?
http://www.bellinghamherald.com/2011/07/01/2085535/wants-coal-shipments-to-china.html
http://topics.nytimes.com/top/news/business/energy-environment/coal/index.html
Environmental effects of coal ?
There are a number of adverse health[SUP]
[46][/SUP] and environmental effects of coal burning[SUP]
[47][/SUP] especially in
power stations, and of
coal mining. These effects include:
· Coal-fired power plants shortened nearly 24,000 lives a year in the United States, including 2,800 from
lung cancer[SUP]
[48][/SUP]
· Generation of hundreds of millions of tons of waste products, including
fly ash,
bottom ash,
flue-gas desulfurization sludge, that contain
mercury,
uranium,
thorium,
arsenic, and other
heavy metals
·
Acid rain from high sulfur coal
· Interference with
groundwater and
water table levels
· Contamination of land and waterways and destruction of homes from fly ash spills such as
Kingston Fossil Plant coal fly ash slurry spill
- Impact of water use on flows of rivers and consequential impact on other land-uses
- Dust nuisance
- Subsidence above tunnels, sometimes damaging infrastructure
· Uncontrollable
underground fires which may burn for decades or centuries.
· Coal-fired power plants without effective fly ash capture are one of the largest sources of human-caused
background radiation exposure
· Coal-fired power plants emit mercury, selenium, and arsenic which are harmful to human health and the environment[SUP]
[49][/SUP]
· Release of carbon dioxide, a
greenhouse gas, which causes
climate change and
global warming according to the
IPCC and the
EPA. Coal is the largest contributor to the human-made increase of CO[SUB]2[/SUB] in the air[SUP]
[50][/SUP]
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Coal#Refined_coal
I have the best bed of coals tonight and thought what if it were coal.
