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If you took all of America's fuel usage for the year 2004 Alaska has 20,000 years worth of coal to support that usage. This is why you've been hearing from TV commercials that coal is coming to Alaska. Coal stoves were on the verge of extinction but fuel costs have brought them back again.
There are 4 levels of coal quality: lignite, anthracite, bituminous and sub-bituminous. The lowest grade possible is sub-bituminous coal, which is our Alaska coal. Because of this, of course, Alaska Fireplace doesn't supply anthracite coal. (Recently I sent several samples of our Alaska coal to the manufacturers of coal stoves in America. All of them are located in Pennsylvania.)
Sub-bituminous coal is not uniform in consistency and burns VERY HOT, so HOT that the manufacturers are going to VOID warranty on any Alaskan Coal that we put into it. No manufacturer in their right mind will back up their stoves because of early burnout. If the salesman selling you a stove doesn't fess up and let the customer know of long term expectations then they are selling themselves short.
I believe that even if the stoves burn out quicker than what is normally expected it will still be cost effective to do the grate replacements on a yearly or every other year to keep the body of the stove going for another season or so. Without active trials in Alaska it is hard to forecast stove replacement timeframes. Burning Alaska's super-abundant coal will probably be one local answer to the rising cost of oil and natural gas .
The Healey coal mine is the best place for now to get the coal and I have been talking to a gent' in Chickaloon that wants to mine the coal up there. So we may soon have a closer supplier than Healey.
The only coal stove that should be offered is one that can only be manually fed. A coal stove with a self feeder or hopper will not work period. We are bringing on board the "SWATARA" coal stove by Reading Stove Company.
We are bringing to Alaska the Distributorship for ALL of Alaska for these Coal stoves.
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