Cuyo
Training a Guineapig army
You think burning wood can be a problem? You will love the soot and smell from coal.
And yes you can burn coal in a fireplace, but it must be a good concrete/brick type of fireplace you will burn down your house if you burn coal in a metal insert type of fireplace designed for wood.
And the price for coal?
Here in KY where we have plenty of coal decent house coal is around $150.00/ton.
When I grew up it took about 7 tons to heat our home during a winter.
You do the math.
No USC.. And Sunshine... You are mistaken... You cannot burn coal in a regular wood fireplace. It's strictly a controlled burn situation. Air must be introduced underneath the pile in a very metered fashion.
If you somehow could get a pile of coal to catch in a wood fireplace, it would quickly 'run away' and you'd have a forge... A blue flame firing out of the top that looks like a blowtorch... that would be so hot it might melt the mortar between your bricks. Even if it didn't your whole cache would be gone in about 45 minutes. Even if you could somehow control the air flow and keep the fire small, there'd be no way to remove ash from the bottom to keep the fire going.