PEAT: A CHEAP AND RENEWABLE FUEL
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The peat bog shown here has been partially drained and is actually several feet deeper than it looks. A bed of this thickness can contain 1,000 tons of fuel per acre . . . equal to 500 tons of coal!
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If you've got a wood or coal-burning stove these days
you've got a problem. Coal just ain't what it used to be
(cheap!) and good wood sometimes can be hard to come by . .
. even though it does grow on trees. So how can you keep
the home fires burning? Go digging. For peat's sake.
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Peat is so common in the United States and Canada that most
people can't see the resource for looking at it. There are
an estimated eighty million acres of deposit; right here in
the continental U.S. Most of this vast natural supply goes
unused . . . although some people do throw a few bushels of
the muck on their gardens for fertilizer and others use the
more fibrous and mossy varieties as a dressing for
flowerbeds. What most folks don't know, however, is that
peat can be a clean-burning, efficient and low-cost fuel!
Last summer I often passed a swamp where a man was digging
muck for sale as topsoil. I wondered if the wet material
could be the "peat" I had heard was used for fuel in other
parts of the world . . . so I obtained a few hundred pounds
and dried it. The idea worked! Once lit, the chunks glowed
like charcoal and gave off gases that burned with a
flickering blue flame!
Peat is nothing more than partially decayed and compacted
vegetable matter which—over a period of
time—has accumulated where soil is wet enough to
retard oxidation. Its color and consistency can be black
and mucky or brown and fibrous or anything in between.
Individual moors, bogs, swamps and shallow ponds each
produce their own "copyrighted" variety of the material. In
fact, varying types of peat are often found in
layers—each formed as a result of a change in climate
or vegetation-within the same marsh. You might even
discover that the "turf" differs from one area of a single
bed to another . . . and the bed itself might be a few
inches to several feet deep. In its natural state, peat is
around 95% water by weight (most of which must be dried out
before burning) and frequently contains some sand.
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