For a few years when I was young, we had an old house on some farm acreage where the house was heated with an even older coal stove.

I recall having to shovel the coal out in the shed and fill the coal bin in the house and that was dirty and dusty work. And not to mention, the dust was hard on the lungs. Also the fumes from that old coal stove was terrible and to this day, even a charcoal BBQ harshly reminds me of that coal stove we had.

Good burn quality coal for residential use is hard to come by in many areas here but I would never use it even if good quality was available as there are many other cleaner and safer (health wise) sources of energy to choose from.