Colin Frake Faversham Stove Anthracite/Coal?

[CaptainBob]

Is it OK to run a Faversham on Anthracite? Or is it too hot?

On their website they state:

"The best fuels are smokeless although the stove will burn ordinary household coal. Tests have shown that it is not suitable for charcoal."

What do you run yours on?

 

[clyst]

E mail them and ask a direct question .Any failure then you will have a ".not fit for purpose "
Claim for a refund.

 

[CaptainBob]

From the horses mouth just now:

"Anthracite will be fine, you might need to break it down into smallish bits and sometimes it will coke up in the night, but it will only need a poke to break it up."

 

[clyst]

Makes you feel warm just thinking about it .

 

[Bru]

Anthracite has its advantages (very little ash, clean burning, virtually smokeless) but it's a bit of a sod at times to use in a small stove

It's about the hardest solid fuel to light (with the possible exception of Coalite processed fuel which will forever more be known in our family as Coal-no-lite after a winter of freezing our nadgers off on the narrowboat 'cos we'd got several bags of the damn stuff)

It needs a fairly deep bed of fuel to get enough heat into it to keep it burning and good luck trying to keep the stove in overnight burning the stuff. You also need to get the draft right, it needs a decent amount of bottom draft and little or no top draft

The Faversham scores well on the first consideration being quite tall and narrow with a good depth of firebox but ISTR it has very little in way of draft adjustment which might make burning anthracite a bit fiddly

Has to be said that whenever we were persuaded to try anything other than bog standard house coal doubles in the boat stove we regretted it although with the exception of Coallite the smokeless fuels were generally OK

 

[CaptainBob]

Has to be said that whenever we were persuaded to try anything other than bog standard house coal doubles in the boat stove we regretted it although with the exception of Coallite the smokeless fuels were generally OK

Thanks for info.

What did you find made the least mess outside?

 

[ffiill]

I use doubles at home on my multi fuel stove-generally small so easily fills a small stove and if of average quality burns almost to dust.
You can buy it in sealed 25 kg bags-mine from Ferguson coal bought cash and carry at coal yard is about £7 a bag.
Also usually available at garage forcourts and local convenience stores herabouts in Highlands.
BUT however much you try you will never avoid dust though mainly the burned dust which in our home seems to get everywhere despite a well sealed modern stove.

 

[Bru]

Thanks for info.

What did you find made the least mess outside?

Not, to be honest, something we greatly worried about on the narrowboat!

A decent chimney took care of the smoke, soot didn't make much difference to the state of the cabin top and clinker and ash were easy to lose in the base of the hedge to be found in most locations on the cut

 

[nortonmotors]

I originally used anthracite in my Faversham; a firelighter plus dry sticks got it going well enough.
Then I moved mooring from Suffolk to Essex and couldn't easily get anthracite, so tried Brayzier smokeless available almost everywhere. That lights the same way but needs raking and topping up every three hours or so. On board, I now wake up automatically every three hours.
It creates a 'Cadbury's Roses' big tin of ash dust in 24 hours.

 

[CaptainBob]

I originally used anthracite in my Faversham; a firelighter plus dry sticks got it going well enough.
Then I moved mooring from Suffolk to Essex and couldn't easily get anthracite, so tried Brayzier smokeless available almost everywhere. That lights the same way but needs raking and topping up every three hours or so. On board, I now wake up automatically every three hours.
It creates a 'Cadbury's Roses' big tin of ash dust in 24 hours.

Ooh, thank you. So you'd burn anthracite out of choice? Did it make any mess on deck?

 

[Bru]

It's also worth bearing in mind that there is anthracite and then there's anthracite. Oh and there's also anthracite

In other words, anthracite from one source won't be quite the same as anthracite from another source. Stuff at the softer end of the scale will be easier to light than stuff at the hard end which is one step away from being jet

If you are keen to get the clean burning and low ash benefits it is worth experimenting with different sizes and suppliers to find something that hopefully works for you in your installation

Given that you probably won't be burning vast quantities of the stuff, it really doesn't matter if you have to pay a premium price for the right stuff

 

[oldbilbo]

There's summat very homely 'bout this thread.

Along the canal bank maybe half a mile from here, there's a 'linear village' of liveaboard boats and their people. Should one wander past there at night - and I know of few reasons - or p'rhaps on a cold morning, with a dog and a need to joggle - there will be a score of little chimneys sending up their telltale plumes, speaking of a community of warm boats in a dank and dripping wood.

Coal? Coke? Ash or elm....? Does it matter?

It's part of our heritage. Families have lived aboard their boats on our rivers and canals for hundreds of years. Often - usually - marginalised by the 'nimbies' of their day, they have always suffered prejudice and disadvantage.


"....During this period, whole families lived aboard the boats. They were often marginalised from land-based society...."


It's happening again with the continued attempts of the British Waterways Trust to use the new Waterways Act to 'evict and move on' liveaboard families from their jobs, their kids' schools and their moorings, in pursuit of a little more income from recreational boating enterprises.

This is a social wrong peculiarly English.

 

[Wansworth]

There's summat very homely 'bout this thread.

Along the canal bank maybe half a mile from here, there's a 'linear village' of liveaboard boats and their people. Should one wander past there at night - and I know of few reasons - or p'rhaps on a cold morning, with a dog and a need to joggle - there will be a score of little chimneys sending up their telltale plumes, speaking of a community of warm boats in a dank and dripping wood.

Coal? Coke? Ash or elm....? Does it matter?

It's part of our heritage. Families have lived aboard their boats on our rivers and canals for hundreds of years. Often - usually - marginalised by the 'nimbies' of their day, they have always suffered prejudice and disadvantage.


"....During this period, whole families lived aboard the boats. They were often marginalised from land-based society...."


It's happening again with the continued attempts of the British Waterways Trust to use the new Waterways Act to 'evict and move on' liveaboard families from their jobs, their kids' schools and their moorings, in pursuit of a little more income from recreational boating enterprises.

This is a social wrong peculiarly English.

Back when I was in Primary school we made a collection of toys and clothes for the bargees on the canal .....1958 ish

 

[nortonmotors]

Ooh, thank you. So you'd burn anthracite out of choice? Did it make any mess on deck?

To be honest, it's at least five years since I last used anthracite and I don't remember which was better(what happened last week is a challenge too ).
Ordinary smokey house looks 'proper' from outside, stinks the boat out, and burns too quickly.
The only time I get mess on deck is when I kick the cowl and get a soot fall - which soon blows away.
The stainless cowl and protector need regular scrubbing though.

 

[Bru]

There's summat very homely 'bout this thread.

Along the canal bank maybe half a mile from here, there's a 'linear village' of liveaboard boats and their people. Should one wander past there at night - and I know of few reasons - or p'rhaps on a cold morning, with a dog and a need to joggle - there will be a score of little chimneys sending up their telltale plumes, speaking of a community of warm boats in a dank and dripping wood.

Coal? Coke? Ash or elm....? Does it matter?

Well, it does kind've matter if you burn coal in a stove that was only designed to burn wood and the bottom falls out of the stove and that sets fire to the boat and you die of burning to death in the middle of the night

It's part of our heritage. Families have lived aboard their boats on our rivers and canals for hundreds of years. Often - usually - marginalised by the 'nimbies' of their day, they have always suffered prejudice and disadvantage.

Well lets get the history straight for a start off (The Wikepedia article is frankly rubbish but then it trys to tell a story that would occupy several very large volumes of a series of books!)

In the first phase of canal transport, before the coming of the railways, it was rare for wives and children to live aboard the boats. The families usually lived ashore although owner-boatmen might take their wives with them as mate before the arrival of the children. Canal boatmen were quite well to do being better paid than many and worked relatively short hours (a horse can only work for so long each day) in relatively safe and easy conditions

The advent of railway competition forced down earnings dramatically and many boatmen were forced to move their families on to the boats, no longer able to afford to maintain a house on the bank. Inevitably, given the somewhat nomadic nature of the lifestyle, a rather isolated canal community sprang up that was detached from mainstream society.

However, lest we assume they were awfully hard done by, in fact the life wasn't too bad especially in comparison to the lives lived by families in pit villages (what would YOU rather do at the age of 10? Lead the horse (properly called backering the horse) or push tubs down the pit?). Access to medical resources was a problem but then it was a problem for everybody at the lower end of the social scale. Likewise education.

Simple fact is that the canal families did not live aboard by choice, the wives and children would move off the boats as soon as they possibly could when times got better, and the last of the canal families (and I had the privilege to get to know some of them in their final years) damn near trampled each other in the rush to move off the boats and get jobs and houses on the bank in the post-war years of the final decline in canal transport

It's happening again with the continued attempts of the British Waterways Trust to use the new Waterways Act to 'evict and move on' liveaboard families from their jobs, their kids' schools and their moorings, in pursuit of a little more income from recreational boating enterprises. This is a social wrong peculiarly English.

Ah now this is a whole different can of worms

It's not a new problem, it has been a thorn in the side of BW as was for decades. Oh yes, it's easy to point to the twee little community of tree huggers and crystal ball gazers with their quaint oddly decorated boats who are causing nobody any trouble occupying an isolated spot on the XYZ Canal and say "whats the problem?"

Well the problem is the unlicensed, uninsured, rot box death traps occupying prime visitor moorings in honey pot locations with rubbish and worse strewn all over the towpath

The problem is the nice people who think its acceptable to pay no licence fee and no mooring fee and claim they are continuous cruising when they move the boat once very month or two by a mile or two

These same nice people who merrily chop down canal side trees to feed their stoves, ride motorbikes down the towpath, park their cars obstructively on narrow country lanes on blind bridge approaches and so on

The problem is (or was, it's hopefully been nipped in the bud now) a growing trend for people with no interest whatsoever in the canals to occupy ever increasing lengths of the canal bank with complete disregard for the wildlife, environment and amenity of other canal users

It is seriously annoying to be handing over the best part of two grand a year in cold hard cash for a BW Licence and mooring only to have a boat called Lettice Knollys* all but permanently moored the other side of the adjacent bridge paying sweet fanny adams for years on end with BW all but powerless to do anything about it

For every harmless seemingly innocent friendly static (or near enough static) residential boat on the canals, there are several unmitigated bloody nuisances who get no sympathy whatsoever from boaters who are paying their dues

And it is a fact that there has never, ever, been a tradition of static residential boats on the canals

* Yeah, I'll name and shame 'em. Bloody freeloaders

Edit: I might add that in our nigh on quarter of a century on the cut, we met and knew many a quietly residential boater, some of whom became very close friends. Nobody would complain about the people who got on with it quietly without being overtly obvious about it

 

[clyst]

To be honest, it's at least five years since I last used anthracite and I don't remember which was better(what happened last week is a challenge too ).
Ordinary smokey house looks 'proper' from outside, stinks the boat out, and burns too quickly.
The only time I get mess on deck is when I kick the cowl and get a soot fall - which soon blows away.
The stainless cowl and protector need regular scrubbing though.

what is the staining on the cowl ? Tar ?

 

[nortonmotors]

what is the staining on the cowl ? Tar ?

Seems to be various things; a bit of rust (well, it is a narrowboat cowl), a bit of tar (perhaps from the old pallet sticks and B&Q firelighters) and some grey dust residue from the smokeless.
I guess there must be something acidic in the flue gases as some pinholes have appeared from the inside of the cowl where it meets the deck fitting.
Note that the actual flue pipe is only 3" diameter and the gap between it and the 4.5" deck fitting is insulated with glassfibre rope.