In Vt., coal paving way to lower heating costs
RUTLAND, Vt. -- With the cost of oil, gas, and firewood climbing, more Vermonters are turning to coal to heat their homes.
''This fall, I would say with the price of gasoline up and the price of home heating oil up, we're getting more calls about coal," said Greg Pelchuck, owner of Black Rock Coal Inc. in East Montpelier. ''We're taking new customers, probably about two or three every day."
Terry Moran, owner of Rutland's Hugh Duffy Coal & Oil, said his company no longer deals in bulk anthracite, but he still sells 40-pound bags of coal to people.
''We still have the bags and we're moving them faster," Moran said Friday. ''Yesterday, a guy came in and bought 20 bags."
As for warmth, Pelchuck said, anthracite cannot be beat.
''You'll get the most bang for the BTUs for home heating out of coal versus any other product on the market," he told the Rutland Herald.
Specifically, Pelchuck said, 1 ton of anthracite coal produces about the same amount of heat as two cords of dry firewood, 180 gallons of heating oil, or 234 gallons of propane. At Black Rock's price of $250 per ton, the savings can be substantial.
Pelchuck estimated an average home can be heated for the winter on about 2 to 4 tons of coal. The most recent figures from the Department of Public Service's September 2005 Vermont Fuel Price Report list home heating oil at $2.63 per gallon. At those numbers, $1,000 will purchase 4 tons of coal or about 380 gallons of oil, far too little to heat most homes for the season.
Harold Garabedian, deputy director with the Department of Environmental Conservation's Air Pollution Control Division, said the state is not aware of a ''wholesale change" in heating fuel usage and that coal users are proportionately a small group in Vermont.
Nonetheless, people are switching to coal to some degree. Raymond Plagge, owner of Montpelier Stove & Flag Works, said he has noticed a slight increase in coal-stove sales. However, just because the stoves are not flying out the door it does not mean coal usage is not growing. Plagge said he sold a lot of coal stoves in the 1970s and 1980s.
''I think what people are doing is resurrecting their old stoves, they're dusting them off," he said.
That seems to be the case for customers of Lake Champlain Coal Co., said owner Jeff Benjamin. Based in Whitehall, N.Y., Benjamin's company delivers 3,000 to 4,000 tons of anthracite a year in New York and Western Vermont.
