Coal For Cooking/Heating. Any Of You Lot Actually Experience?

Automatic Washer - The world's coolest Washing Machines, Dryers and Dishwashers

Help Support AutomaticWasher.org:

launderess

Well-known member
Joined
Jul 22, 2004
Messages
20,794
Location
Quiet Please, There´s a Lady on Stage
All this noise about DT and "bringing back" coal had one thinking; it must have been a nightmare to cook on a coal range. That and or having to heat a home with the stuff.

All that soot, having to manage/regulate a fire, much less get one going sounds like one large pain. Then having to haul away ashes and finding a place for disposal.

Even thought of using a gas fired AGA range puts one off, cannot imagine using one heated by coal.
 
I have a coal pot belly stove from a train caboose that was very easy to run. Start with regular charcoal, shovel some coal on it as it gets going good, fill it halfway, shut the damper back and 12 hours later, shake it down and put more coal in it. Once the temperature hit 40 outside, it went out when there was no draft left in the chimney. No worrys about a chimney fire as the flue pipe was cool to the touch as all the heat radiated off the bottom. Alot of work and I am too old to mess with it anymore. I'll keep my oil boiler and backup gas. You couldnt even melt butter on the top of this stove.
 
Closest I came to coal heat was in jr. high school that was built in the 1920's if I remember correctly. It had a huge boiler down in the basement behind the cafeteria. The boiler had been coal fired but later converted to oil, in the 1950's. The boiler provided steam heat to the radiators, which was no easy task for a 3 story building. The radiators would sing and dance, as I used to say, made it difficult to learn and study with all the loud popping noise they'd make, and the hissing of steam. One of the older workers told me it was backbreaking work shoveling the coal into the furnaces, "hard work", I attended jr high in '72.
People can say what they want, but me being cold natured anyway, that was the coldest, miserable, 2 winters of my life. Attended jr high school in Missouri, after spending 3 years straight in the valley in California!!!
I digress, but does coal really have anyplace in our society now? Always thought of it as dirty, stinks, and all-in-all not healthy for one. I personally have no desire to go back to the 1950's, it wasn't always easy. I've moved on.

Barry
 
Daddy had a coal stove in his workshop when I was little.  He would buy big rocks of coal from the local grain mill of all places.  We would break them with a hammer to smaller pieces and stoke the stove.  It was very warm in that old uninsulated shop.  I wouldn't even know where to buy coal now. 

Vanderbilt just switched their powerplant's steam boiler to a new gas fired one a couple of years ago.  They even demolished the smoke stack so there's no going back!  They are one of the few places in Nashville that produces some of their own electricity.
 
I grew up in a house with a wood stove in the kitchen and a wet back for heating water.

In winter it kept the house warm, in summer it kept the kitchen like a sauna. The kitchen was from the early 70s and the cupboard next to the stove had a back door that opened to the outside to bring the wood in easily.

Ours had baffles/ regulators, you could control the amount of heat to the oven and the simmer side, plus you could control the amount of heat directed to the heating coil on the back of the stove. You could fry and boil and unlike an Aga if you needed more heat in a hurry, just put more wood on and the hot side is good to go in 10-15 mins.

The hot water tank was in the roof, cool water would fall down from the roof and then when heated would flow back to the tank via convection.

At night you’d close the flue and dampers and in the morning you’d usually have enough coals left to put more wood on and fire it up for the day. Mum dried citrus peels on the rack above to use as firefighters.

The hardest part was chopping wood and the messiest was dumping the ash pan. It was a built in kitchen otherwise, just with a huge piece of enameled steel in the middle of the room.

The ad I’ve linked is the same stove we had. You can see in the images the water heating pipes coming out the side.

https://www.gumtree.com.au/s-ad/fya...ials/everhot-deluxe-204-wood-stove/1195487008
 
wood stoves and coal stoves

I used to use a stove the same as the one in Brisnat's link. They were made in a suburb of Melbourne till the 1980s. Ours was a bit older than the one in the photo, probably 1960s vintage.

I loved cooking on it. It had controls for flue damper, oven damper, hot water temperature and air inlet. This bank of levers at the bank probably put a few buyers off the Everhot stoves as it looks complicated to drive, the rival IXL stoves were simpler. The range of adjustments made it really easy to use in practice, meaning you could still get a hot oven from a small fire if you adjusted it right. (or a blazing fire to heat more hot water, without over heating the oven, if that is what you want.) It has a lovely even heat under the pans, two hotplates, one over the fire runs hotter, one over the oven runs cooler. I also had a little wire trivet so if the hotplates were too hot, I could cook on the trivet to get a gentler heat.

there was also a pedal under the ash box door, stamping on the pedal jiggled the grate to encourage ash to fall into the pan. This was more for use when burning coal and briquettes, as they tended to clog up the grate. We only ever used wood.

The stove is still installed and we still own the house, a relative lives there and she isn't interested in using the stove, she has an electric cooker next to the Everhot.

we bought a reconditioned IXL stove to go into our current house when we were building, but when we installed the kitchen I changed my mind and we only put in a gas cooker, the IXL is still in the garage waiting for me to decide its future...
we went with IXL the second time as they are a bit smaller, and parts are plentiful around here as they were made not far from here and were very popular, and had a smaller firebox so used a bit less wood.

Coincidentally, Stephen and I have just today got back from a fabulous holiday in New Zealand. Coal is still a moderately popular fuel for home heating around the west coast and southern region of the South Island. We spent a bit of time there and I can assure you that coal burning fires STINK. You see a lot more black smoke from coal fire flues than from wood fires, and the smell is way worse. I wouldn't...[this post was last edited: 9/19/2018-07:42]
 
My aunt and uncle have a wood-burning stove used to heat their house up in Maine--along with endless cords of wood.... And which to my knowledge, had never run out...

I'm suprised to see in one post "char", next to "coal", when bags of charcoal I see warn (w/ the word "Danger") that "burning charcoal indoors can kill you", and at least starting in the era where it was finally okay, to cite that a product misused "can cause death"...

-- Dave
 
My favourite Fish and Chip shop is in a little village in Lincolnshire where the fish and chips are still cooked in beef dripping on a coal fired range. Its somewhere I've been visiting since I was small and my Aunt used to live in the next door village, since she moved I only manage to get there perhaps once each year as its quite a distance away from where I live. The shop celebrates it's 70th anniversary this year and has been featured recently in one of the UK daily newspapers.
Hope this link works
Ian

http://www.uptonchippy.co.uk/default.aspx
 
I've never lived in a house that had a coal furnace, but several of my neighbors had one. I remember black smoke pouring out of their chimneys in Winter. One of my neighbors said how happy she was when they got a gas furnace in the late 60's - there was much less housecleaning necessary. The rental hovel I'm in had a coal fired boiler until the 60's, then oil until electric baseboard heat was installed in the early 80's.

Coal furnaces were not considered modern as early as the 30's. My dad's uncle and aunt built their house in 1936, and it had oil forced air heat. They could afford the best, so coal would have been out of the question for them.
 
coal heat

We heated with coal/wood most of my growing up years. The coal furnace sat next to the fuel oil furnace and had a blower that force the heat into the heat ducts. It was in the basement and very modern for the time (bought new in early 70's). Even with it being new there would be a gray film over everything by spring. Spring cleaning was a big deal at our house. Every curtain was taken down washed, ironed and put back up after washing the windows. Every wall was washed and rugs scrubbed. You didn't notice the gray until you started cleaning (my mother did but not my dad, brother or me).We when to the coal fields and hand loaded the truck. We also cut wood from our woods. When my brother and I move out ( and with that the labor force) they install a gas furnace. I remember one time the stove pipe fell out of the chimney and filled the house with black, oily smoke before we could get it put back in. My brother and I were called off of school and my parents took off work for a few days to clean up the mess. We had to wash all the clothes in the closets, all bedding everything.
 
My grandmother in the UK still heated with coal until the late 1980s when my aunts ganged up on her and installed gas central heating in her house.  From the first visits I can remember (going back to the late 60s), grandma Cann heated the house with coal fireplaces. The one in her living room had a water back of some kind for heating water, so if you wanted a hot bath or water for dishes, you had to light a fire.  The slightest whiff of tar will send me back to her old house in the midlands.

Here in the land of the maple leaf, we almost exclusively had oil heat, except for one rural home that had a wood-fired furnace.
 
We never had coal heat, but everyone in the family had wood stoves used as supplemental heat.
I assume my home, built in 1946 had a coal furnace originally as there is a coal chute in the wall of the porch, I still use that chute, but my coal cellar is now filled with wood.

Being in a rural area outdoor furnaces are fairly popular here, they are either wood or coal fired. I know some people with them who burn coal exclusively.
 
Thanks guys!

Please keep all these great stories coming!

Have never used nor been near anything that burned coal (or wood for that matter). Outside of BBQs with charcoal briquettes know nothing about burning any such things for heat.

Didn't know coal gave off a whiff when burning. Did know from my hobby interest in steam locomotives (that burned coal) that black smoke was a sign of waste. Well at least when it came to coal fired locomotives, but suppose that translates across the board, no?
 
Wood waste is now turned into pellets for both heating and BBQ grills. Coal is still stinky, dirty and wood will creosote a chimney and start a chimney fire in no time. I am going to stay in this century with just oil and gas, much safer. I used that pot belly stove with coal in the back chimney of my last house and it would heat just fine but used a 50 lb. bag of coal every other day. I had wood here for a while and after the ice storm of 1998, when we lost power nearly 2 weeks, I had a chimney fire, even though I had cleaned the chimney less than 2 months before. Not messing with either any more. Sold the woodstove, put a nice gas unit in that heats as good as that did and works with no power.
 
My nana's old house in Hamilton had a coal "octopus" furnace down in the cellar. I remember as a kid being scared to go down there. It was a gravity furnace with no blowers etc. I'd go if Lou, her husband went down to shovel coal but that was all. She had a new gas furnace installed probably when I was around 7 so about 1963 maybe before.

My great aunt in Manchester UK, also had like Paul described a coal fireplace, but in her kitchen with a water tank behind the wall for hot water,, There were fireplaces in every room but the rest had been converted to gas.. Not sure what the reason was the kitchen was left with a coal fire. She also had the coin operated electricity meter. I read somewhere those were for people who may not be able to pay (ie poor) but she wasn't "poor" and could certainly afford to pay a monthly bill.
 
No experience personally, but Chicago used to be all heated with coal like any other city at the time. Instead of progressing to oil, they progressed straight to NG starting in the 1930s AFAIK. I honestly don’t fully understand why one would go to oil when NG was already available, like was done in most of the suburbs in the early 50s, those homes all had oil heat but there was NG supply for cooking/heating water. Those suburban dwellers all converted their heating to NG by the late 50s early 60s. In the suburbs some homes were built with gravity hot air coal furnaces as late as 1945 which I think had to have been ridiculously out of date by then.

I personally find the history and artifacts highly fascinating, but the idea of having to stoke a furnace or boiler at all hours and deal with the mess is not something I ever want to go back to as long as cleaner options are available.
 
We have bought a wood burning slow combustion stove for our house a few years ago, here everybody is changing back to wood as LP gas and electricity is very expensive. Thing is even if electricity were cheaper I would still use a wood stove, love the heat it generates at a fraction of the price and very romantic to watch the fire burning.

Regards
 
My boyhood home in Connecticut in the 50's had a big green "octopus" in the basement that burned oil. You could always tell when it first fired up in the winter from a whiff of that oil aroma. It was slightly scary, as was the huge (to a boy) black oil tank in the basement. The last winter we were there, money was very tight, and we ran out of heating oil. I remember having to huddle around a single old electric heater in the living room. In the spring we moved to California and all the heating there was natural gas fired, or electric powered heat exchanger.

Since then some of my homes have had fireplaces - the current one has two. But I don't heat with them much, even though both have inserts with fans to help distribute the heat.

The closest I've gotten to coal for heat was some charcoal I bought in the late 90's. It was made in China and looked like it had been pressed into hollow little tubules. It had an oily aroma and I figured at least part of it was made from coal. It burned OK, though I may even still have some, since I moved to real charcoal and various woods like hickory for BBQing.

I'm not surprised to read that coal fired heating appliances leave less ash and are less labor intensive than wood fired stuff, since coal is more dense and perhaps has residue that won't burn.
 
During the energy crunch of the '70s Daddy built a chimney onto the house and bought a big wood stove.  It was such a thrill every fall to put the stove up and get ready for winter.  It was so warm.  We'd take it down in the spring.  Then in the late 80's we got a cast iron Consolidated Dutchwest stove that could burn wood or coal and had a catalytic converter in it if used for wood.  We'd buy a premade log called "the all nighter" that had coal in it and it would keep the fire going overnight and then put wood in in the morning.  That stove was so heavy we just left it in place year around, plus it was pretty and went well with the decor of their house.  It was a lifesaver during the ice storm of '94 when the power went out.  We had a gas range and water heater so we could cook and take showers.  After that we installed an unvented gas heater in the hall by the bedrooms should the need ever arise again. They still have that stove but it now resides in his new shop to keep the cats warm.  They just use the gas central all the time now. 

s-l225.jpg
 
More seriously... I've never come near coal as a heat or cooking fuel. I'm pretty sure, though, that one set of grandparents still used coal (at least part of the time) when my mother was growing up in the 50s.

 

Part of me has (not terribly seriously) thought it would be interesting to experience a coal furnace. It would be a good match for the part of me that wishes it was some distant past decade! I've heard it said coal is cheap for heating, which appeals to my Inner Cheapskate. But I don't think I'd like the work involved, and I'm appalled by the environmental impact.

 

Since wood came up... I lived a few months with a place that had a wood stove, and I liked using it. It didn't, sadly, have a glass door so I could watch the pretty flames. (Yes, I'm easily entertained.) But it was comforting having it in case of power failure (which can happen in winter here--and a power failure can last and last and last). It was also nice during a really cold snap, during which the heat pump struggled to keep up.

 

I sometimes have thought I wouldn't mind heating at least part of the time with wood (and I certainly would like the option as a backup for power failures). But I can't see myself out in the woods, swinging an ax... Although I have also thought that one can buy wood, and the money would stay local, not head to the pocket of a big energy CEO lounging on a beach.

 

 
 
Growing up, we heated/experimented with almost every form of product.  We had a wood stove.  It's a lot of work to cut down trees or cut up fallen timber.  Stoking the fire was also a PITA.  We switched to coal.  Coal is dirty but heats well.  Again though, keeping the coal fire burning and cleaning out the furnace was a pain.  The house had electric baseboard, but that got expensive.  When money was tight, we had a few Kerosun heaters set about.  Again, keeping those things in kerosene was a pain.   We got a deal on a pellet stove and that wasn't bad.  It was undersized for what we were trying to do with it. We now heat with LP & I love it.  Call the propane company, get the tank filled, and that's it!    Oh, my brother & I still live in the house we grew up in.  We own it now.

 

In our pole barn, we have an early potbelly stove that came out of an old one room school house in the area.  When we stoke that baby up, we can put in over 100lbs at one time if we wanted to.

 

Here in PA, we have awesome hard anthracite coal.  It's readily available a lot of places.  There are quite a few companies that will deliver it by the ton.  We usually just buy a couple of 50lb bags at the local hardware store.  You can buy it in may sizes: Pea, rice, nut, and stove.  There a a few coal shakers left where you can drive right up and they'll  dump it out of the shaker and onto your truck.

 

I like the smell of coal burning.  It's slightly sulfury.  We have a local pretzel bakery that uses coal to cook the pretzels.  That gives the pretzels a unique taste.
 
My mother grew up on the Mesabi Iron Ore Range. The cook stove and the pot belly stove used coal. She went to school with Gino Palucci of Gino's Pizza fame. The family's father died when the children were young and Gino wrote about picking up pieces of coal by the train tracks to take home for the stoves because they were so poor.

As I have told here before, when my parents were in college, my father spent a winter weekend up there and it was 23 below outside. Inside, both of the stoves were glowing a dull red trying to keep the people inside from freezing to death. They used to put big tubs of water in the root cellar to keep the root vegetables and canned goods down there from freezing. In the summer, they used a kerosene stove on the back porch. I have seen ads for many coal or wood stoves that had a summer position for the fire grate in the firebox so that the heat was concentrated closer to the cook top and maybe did not heat the oven, but gave off less heat into the kitchen.
 
In my hometown of Lenoir NC

Coal furnaces were widely used until after WW2 and even into the 50s,,then oil pretty much took over, the elementary school I attended , Lower Creek Elementary still had coal heat in 71 when I was in first grade, and out Church across the street had coal until the mid 70s, I remember going with my uncle to fix it several times, It had a huge coal bin and a stoker that took the coal from the bin to the boiler, every once in a while a piece of steel would jam up the auger and break a shear pin, so he would have to take a wrench and back it out, the steel usually was a piece of drill bit used in the mines.I remember him fussing at the deacons to get rid of that thing which they did , installing oil, its now gas.
 
I had a 1925 Copper Clad cookstove in the kitchen. I burned coal in it and would start the fires using, newspapers crumpled up, then a layer of corn cobs and lastly, soft coal. Open the draft in the stove, push the diverter rod for the oven to open to the chimney and open the draft in the stove pipe. After the fire is going and the coal has caught fire, partially close the draft on the side of the stove, close the diverter for the oven, to oven and adjust the draft in the stove pipe. Closing and adjusting the drafts and controls keep the heat IN the stove instead of UP the chimney. The oven was not vented like the ranges are today, so you had to keep and eye on the oven and make sure the pie or whatever you had in it wasn't burning. If you wanted hot water, you could add water to the reservoir and wait for it to heat. The stove was a beautiful creme color with light green trim. The cast iron was lined with copper for an even heat. The firebox started to burn out so I traded it for a 1930's Detroit Jewel gas stove that works wonderfully.
 
When we moved back here 12 years ago and I was scouting for houses (hubby was away at the time) I looked at one very nice two story colonial which was built probably around the early mid 60's. As soon as we walked in the front door there was a "hint" of oil smell. I was really surprised to find out that it had an oil furnace in this day and age and wonder why actually since gas is available city wide, perhaps not in that location at the time but certainly since the 70's
 
Upon thinking I recall our high school and elementary school were both heated with coal.
The high school opened for the 1963/64 school year, and the elementary school opened in the mid 1980s.
In the mid 1990s when asbestos was removed from the high school the heat was switched to natural gas, but at least up until I graduated in 2004 the elementary school was still heated with coal.

My aunt owned a flower shop and her neighbor was a barber shop, that was not much larger than a 1 car garage, a little cinder block building painted butter yellow with a red brick facade. The owner of that barber shop heated solely by coal heat until her retired and closed up shop in the late 2000s, he was an elderly man(still wore double knit polyester plaid pants)
I always enjoyed that slight sulfur smell of coal burning.

I have considered getting a ton of coal to mix in with wood in my wood /coal stove
 
wood/coal heat

to add to my previous post; I HATED heating with wood/coal! When getting coal at the coal field we had to load the whole truck by hand(by hand - picking lumps slightly smaller than your head and carrying them back to the truck). They would use a loader but it cost more and to quote my father "what do I have these boys for". Once home the load had to be unshoveled onto a pile, then once a week a weeks worth was shoveled into a coal bin in the basement. To get wood, a large log was pulled out of the woods to the yard by a horse (yes Horse!)where it would be cut into 18"to20" section then each section was split open in several parts then stack in the wood pile. Once a week a weeks worth was loaded into the basement. I hated it so much that the first check from my first checking account(001)when I was about 16 was written to have a load of wood delivered and stack. I told my parents if this wasn't my share for the winter I would have more delivered but I wasn't cutting wood again. Every year until I moved out I had a load delivered and never cut wood again.
 
Back
Top