Stockpiling Stove Coal -- Hedge Against Hard Times?

YIKES, COAL? EXORCISM, QUICKLY!

No, seriously. There's a lot of coal around here, quite shallow, and like it or lump it it's a potential resource. All within an hour's drive.

The big burn of thermal coal for power generation ended years ago. It was also rubbish coal for traditional wood/coal stoves -- didn't burn worth a damn.

Within that hour's drive in the opposite direction there are small coal mines that produce excellent stove coal. I'm not sure they survived the years of carbon tax (of dubious reputation and effectivness, perhaps more posturing than practical policy and that's all I  will say).

If they have survived, I am inclined to get a load of big lump stove coal and store it under cover. Left alone, it does no harm. In crisis times, it provides low, steady, long-lasting heat. Perhaps a useful tool in my toolbox?

You are aware it self destructs just sitting there far faster than wood?  

When coal is mined it has a bunch of organic volatiles trapped in it.  When you expose it to the air it starts "drying" out releasing those.  Lump coal fresh will be bright and shiny and fairly tough and burns fairly well.  In about 12 to 24 months it will be dull fairly fragile(it is hard to even put in the stove without accidentally breaking it down into stoker coal size pieces or worse yet powder) and be crap to burn.  It doesn't make as much heat, doesn't burn as clean.  The powder melts together and doesn't let it have good air flow to burn clean.  Because of the poor air flow you end up with 2X or 3X as much clinker left over   If you are going to store it you want to keep it cool but never freezing, dry(spontaneous combustion risk) and minimize its air exposure so it doesn't "dry" out the volatile organics.  Fresh the coal is actually mildly water proof.  But after evaporating the stuff out of it, it absorbs water like a sponge and because it is a lot powder besides can literally sit there damp and compost to spontaneous combustion.

Always hated burning the last of the stoker coal from the previous year because of this.  It was so nice when we got to the fresh coal for the year.  The ideal for stoker coal was to get it when it was being mined fresh and brought into the coal bin still fresh.  The first few truck loads for the coal supplier in the fall were poorer.  And the stuff we had on hand that endured the summer heat in our outdoor coal bin was worse yet.  Burned 6 to 10 ton of stoker coal each year heating the shop for well over 30 years.  The dream for the year was to have enough coal in the bin for the supplier to get their bins cleaned up and for the suppliers supplier to get their cleaned up so we had "fresh" coal to burn most of the season because out equipment ran way better on it.  So we wanted say 1/2 a ton to a ton on hand and avoid filling the bin till the supplies were to good coal for the year. And on other fronts burned lump coal in several wood and coal heaters over roughly 20 years growing up.  Probably less than 10 ton of experience there as we mostly burned wood.  But there again old coal is simply harder to burn and messier several ways.

Now one thing you can do to help store it in better shape is to oil the coal.  It adds lower volatility stuff and sort of seals the coal so it doesn't lose the higher volatility stuff as fast

Excellent points, thanks. It's been so long since I used coal that these details have faded from memory.