On Apr 25, 1:04=A0am, Jan Flora <snows...@[EMAIL PROTECTED]
> wrote:
> In article
> <f0bac459-d089-4622-a8b5-5b03d274e...@[EMAIL PROTECTED]
>,
>
> =A0jerry <GeraldCNew...@[EMAIL PROTECTED]
> wrote:
> > Coal is available in North Pole and at the Healy Mine. =A0It may be a
> > little dirty, but for the savings we have little choice. But do not
> > burn coal in a wood stove because it will melt the steel.
>
> Coal is available for free on the =A0beaches around Homer. It's a soft
> grade, but it'll burn. Sure stinks!
>
> With the price of heating oil well over $4/gallon now, loads of folks
> have gone back to burning wood & coal here. We have commercial coal
> pickers again. Hadn't seen any for about ten years. Guys take their old
> beater pickups on the beach at low tide and gather coal to sell. It's a
> subsistence living, but it can get you through the thin times.
>
> Snow in the forecast tonight.
>
> =A0 =A0Jan
I wish my Dad had homesteaded near Homer instead of here in the
interior. He almost did but the Clear AFB job was going big time in
1959 so he moved us here from Ketchikan. We have an old abandoned
coal mine about 7 miles off the Richardson Highway on the other side
of Fort Greely about 120 miles south of here. But I don't think one
can dig and haul the coal for the price of fuel to go get it. The
coal being sold here in North Pole is from the Usibelli coal mine at
Healy. It is sorted to what they call chestnut size. A top loading
TLC 2000 coal stove built by Harman (http://www.harmanstoves.com)
sells for $1800 here in Fairbanks. It does not use outside combustion
air but has an electric circulation blower. I saw a wood stove
yesterday that was used to burn coal and the sides had caved in from
the heat. Coal gets much hotter than wood from what I was told. I am
looking for a cheaper coal stove, one of those pot bellied types.
They seem hard to find. I bought a blaze queen wood stove four years
ago for $1800 but never installed it, and it is still new in the box.
The blaze queen now sells for $2200 at the same store. I went down to
our old homestead and found the old barrel stove my Dad and I built in
1959 for $17.50 in attachments and brought it home. It was laying out
in the woods all covered with vegetation. The attachments are still
good. The bottom line is with the price of fuel oil heading toward $5
a gallon by fall, we are all taking a step backwards to doing things
like the we did 50 years ago. The times are getting harder by the
day. I really feel sorry for the lower forty eighters that are now
facing the impossible task of living in the "trap" with no way out.
Here in Alaska I think we have learned to handle difficulties better
by experiencing the long cold winters. Of course, anyone that lives
in rural Alaska has learned about subsistence living and that may be
our greatest resource.
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