Heat your home with coal

[BobK207]

Pete-

I found airplane (US commercial passenger travel) deaths for 1982 thru 2000......... the average was 120 deaths per year. NTSB

ALL gas explosion deaths (industrial, residential; NG, propane, industrial process gases) in the about 150 to 200 per year range in the US. Residential deaths are a fraction of those......

So residential NG explosion related deaths are NOT "far above the rate of plane crashes"....they're are below if anything.

NG is a pretty safe source of energy, LP is probably less safe due to the nature of the systems...having to sometimes make & break connections.

The sensational nature of TV news exaggerates dangers.

cheers Bob

[Nate Nagel]

yabbut, if you, say, live in a condo, you may not have any ground to put one in...

nate

[Nate Nagel]

I have a combo gas/CO detector in my basement and it has never falsed. I *do* have to remember to unplug it and take the battery out whenever doing certain jobs though... was cleaning up some brake components and apparently one little squirt of brakleen is enough to set it off...

nate

Steve Barker wrote:

[Pete C.]

Condos and apartments have been built with geothermal heat pumps too. It's becoming more common now that people are paying more attention to energy efficiency.

[Ed Pawlowski]

You can do some things with an open flame that a hot element won't do. Wok cooking was invented to conserve fuel by heating over a small group of coals. You can use a gas flame, but they don't do well with electric elements. Flat bottomed and electric woks are just a bastardization, not even a distant cousin of a real hammered carbon steel wok.

If you want to singe pin feathers on poultry, open flame is the way to go. Mashed potatoes can be made with any heat source.

[HeyBub]

Most homes come equipped with multiple natural gas detection devices.

They're called noses.

[Pete C.]

Actually, you can heat a wok more efficiently with an electric source than with a gas source. A great deal of the BTUs from a gas wok burner zip right past the sides of the wok and only heat the kitchen.

A handheld torch like a Bernz-O-Matic TS4000 will singe those feathers quite nicely as well as brulee your creme brulee and many other culinary tasks. Yes, it's gas, but a 16oz cylinder isn't going to level your house.

[Steve Barker]

AMEN! good answer.

s

[Pete C.]

Bad answer. Noses detect smoke too, yet we need smoke detectors since the nose is ineffective when the person it's attached to is unconscious.

[Ed Pawlowski]

How does that happen? Take a typical electric element and it is about 6" to

8" in diameter. A wok has a rounded bottom and makes contact at one tiny point. Where is the efficiency? My one gas burner has a nice hot 3" diameter flame that heats the base of a wok very well.

Using a wok is one reason I got rid of the electric range shortly after moving here.

[Pete C.]

I didn't say that peak efficiency could be found placing a round bottom wok on a conventional cal-rod type electric element. A flat bottom wok would make better contact with a cal-rod type element. A round bottom wok would of course benefit from a more appropriately shaped cal-rod element, or better yet, and induction "burner", both of which would provide more efficient heat transfer/generation than a gas flame.

[ransley]

Electric fire happen everyday here in chgo from space heaters, overloaded circuits, its news but not headlines since it didnt blow up. Electric fires are common in winter, gas explosions rare but exciting news

[HeyBub]

Smoke detectors detect the products of combustion - which may be odorless.

As I recall my high school biology, the ear bone is connected to the nose bone. If being unconscious deactivates the nose bone, the ear bone is likewise disabled.

[Frank]

Dittos. Exact same experience as in my memories. Living in a small, row house, I remember half the basement was used for the coal bin. It is amazing that we survived all the pollution. Coal can be clean burning but you need precipitators and scrubbers which is something you are not going to have in your home.

[ds549]

i can see it maybe if your moneys tight and its cheeper,,but my lord ,i remember filling the coal hopper every day on the old stove.what a damn mess it was.. not to mention cleaning the stove out and the soot i remember when nat gas came thru in 60 ,it was a god send.lucas

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[hallerb]

a nice hot 3"

so pete what do you recommend for home heating? since you claim gas is unsafe?

[hallerb]

tight and its cheeper,,but my

really a large coal burning power plant is likely cleaner than any other way.

economies of scale for scrubbers etc

theres a proposal to take coal plants exhaust thro long tubes growing algea,, the algea removes half the CO2:) the algea is then converted to ethanol. to be burned in any E85 vehicle

the best part is this can be adapted to any existing coal plant that has land available.

we really need to be 100% ENERGY INDENPENDENT! even if it costs a bit more now.

our economy depends on stable energy costs

[Ed Pawlowski]

Flat bottom woks are imitations, part frying pan, not a true wok. I don't know if cal-rod elements are available shaped to cradle a wok, but the typical household does not have one. Give the tiny point of contact, would an induction give enough heat? I think you must be pretty close to the magnetic field. Woks were invented for open flame cooking and fuel conservation.

[G. Morgan]

Somebody better tell this guy to stop digging then.

(31.477504,-96.153502)

[HeyBub]

I guess he will when he smells feet, but your post encouraged me to do a bit of research.

"By the 1990s, Texas was the nation's sixth leading coal producing state...."

I think we grind it up and use it as conglomerate in compounding concrete... pretty sure cattle can't eat it.