Great pictures. I can't imagine what it's like to mine coal, and doing it on your own land is even more unbelievable. I've never seen coal in person, and of course, never seen it burn.
Is it a rock? How hard is it? Do you just hit it with a pick, and it comes apart? How much do you need to keep a house warm for the night? Where do you keep it? I guess water doesn't affect it if it gets rained on, or does it? But do you just pile it up outside the house and get what you need for the day?
Eddie
Yea it's a rock...It's either a "sedimentary rock" or a "metamorphic rock" and to tell how hard it is depends on what type it is.
There is 4 different types of coal.
Peat----Dark brown to black, with many visible plant fragments....It is soft and breaks unevenly when dry....It's a "sedimentary rock" and is low in carbon.
Lignite----Brown, with some visible plant material....It's crumbly and it's a "sedimentary rock" and the carbon content is medium.
Bituminous----Black, dirty to handle....hard and brittle and it's a "sedimentary rock" and the carbon content is high.
Anthracite----Glassy black....uneven surfaces and it's a "metamorphic rock" and the carbon content is extremely high.
The place where my father-in-law got the coal they had to use a pick....and back in the old days in a real coal mine, they used picks & used dynamite.....I don't know how much it takes to heat a house at night, but if you could get large lumps of coal, that would burn longer.
I don't know anyone that uses coal to heat their houses now....they use wood, I moved to Kentucky in 1985 and people used coal, and they had a special place to keep the coal...It was a big box made out of wood about 20x20 with sides that went up.
Some would cover it up and others wouldn't.....and the type that was used to heat houses was not affected by rain....I have been told by some old people in this area that they would get coal out of the river back in the 60's & 70's and use that to heat their houses.
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I worked 10 years in the coal mine and the first mine that i worked in was a conventional mine.....and they used a cutter machine to cut the bottom of the coal, and then used dynamite to shoot the coal, and it all came down in big lumps.
In that type of mine, it went straight into the mountain and there was no gases in the mine.
The other type of mine i worked in was a deep mine, and we used a continuous miner to cut the coal.....and it cut the coal up into smaller lumps.
We had to ride a elevator to go down over 300ft. and it was 8 miles to the working face of the coal....In a deep mine there was high levels of methane gas, and most of the time we had to shut off all equipment if the gases got high & get fresh air to the face.
The continuous miner had a gas detector on it and would shut off if it hit gas...BUT I have seen the C.M. hit a pocket of gas and a fire ball roll across the top of the mine, and travel about 60ft.back.
After we mined out all the coal that the map showed, then we had a plan to pull pillars....and that was the coal left for support for the top as we mined in.
A mine inspector had to approve pulling pillars, and this job was dangerous...but exciting
...because we got to watch the top fall in after we cut the pillars.....and we have lost equipment because the top started falling behind us, most of the time if the top fell behind us it was because they wasn't taking out the whole pillar, and the pressure would ride back & find a weak place in the top.
The deep mine also had another section that had a piece of equipment called a "long wall" and that equipment took all coal, and the top fell all the time....I have worked on that section before and really liked it......I have video of the three types of mining that i worked in, and wished i knew how to show it on here.....You would like it
Sometimes on the roof of the mines you could see fossils, I have seen leafs, ferns that showed the whole plant and other things.
Eddie & others,
I don't know if this picture will show up...but it's a piece of rock that i got from the mines when i worked that shows some kind of weed or plant.
