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

[sudsmaster]

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.

 

[askolover]

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. 

 

[lordkenmore]

Lord Kenmore has never heated with coal, but maybe he should just so he can use up that huge mountain of coal that Santa has brought him over the years. LOL

 

[lordkenmore]

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.

 

 

 

[runematic]

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.

 

[tomturbomatic]

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.

 

[norgeway]

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.

 

[abcomatic]

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.

 

[petek]

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

 

[xraytech]

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

 

[jeb]

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.

 

[daveamkrayoguy]

Now my grandparents’ house had a coal chute, but it was sealed-up before I came... Just a panel next to a basement window that had my grandpa’s workshop right under it, whereas the furnace was right in the middle of the basement, replaced by an oil-burning furnace, at least according to my mom...

I only remember the Lux-Aire gas furnace, she and grandpa opened when it was running & see those flames in there... And the off-season just had very low, mostly-blue embers, that was the standing pilot light—decades later my own furnace, here, had...

As for the oil furnace, there, I think the tank for supplying the oil, would have gone against another adjacent wall distantly next to it, with some sealed piping, I remember seeing over-head, that the active gas piping right from the meter for it, and the water heater replaced, or became just in use... Next to the meter outside, was a short pipe, capped off, that the oil was delivered through...

I remember a furnace shown in my family’s old encyclopedia brittanicas which showed a screw-drive system delivering the coal into a furnace, 8n one of 5he pictures, most-likely in the Coal chapter...

I don’t know how my family got that coal into their furnace, the trough it would have been delivered in, was a distance away, in a little corner, unless the furnace for it was right next to it along that wall, there, predating my granddad’s workshop, though his tools, (lathe, drill-press grinder, with a couple single-tube fluorescent lights over them) are very much from that era...

Hard to believe they could overcome the coal gas fumes, the rigors of stoking that furnace & the not-so-clean, burning, hauling and storage, which with given the cold winters we have (& had very much, back then) were a very drop-everything necessity to heat your home...

— Dave

 

[kimball455]

During my childhood and early grade school the house was heated with an ornate coal base burner, a coal cook stove, and a kerosene stove. Later, the coal base burner and the coal cook stove were replaced by kerosene stoves. When natural gas became abundant these were replaced with gas console stoves. Cape May moved from coal to oil to natural gas. When I went out on a cold winter day during the coal era you could smell the coal fires. That gradually change to the smell of the oil burners. Now, with natural gas there is nothing but the smell of the ocean when you go outside in the winter.

Harry

 

[launderess]

"screw-drive system delivering the coal into a furnace&#

That would be a stoker.

Long used in industrial/commercial equipment(steam ships, locomotives, etc...) to feed boilers by the 1950's or so they began to make an appearance in domestic settings.

For railroads and steam ships the theory was simple; mechanically delivering coal to boiler(s) reduced the need for manpower (firemen for locomotives, and stoker for steamships and elsewhere). Also as boilers/engines grew more powerful a man or men just couldn't shovel coal fast enough to meet peak demand.

This is how you manual stoke a steam locomotive:



And here is how it's done with a stoker:


As you can see a stoker is nothing more than a worm/screw that both crushes large lumps of coal as it moves the stuff towards boiler or furnace.

Eventually some bright blubs got the idea to introduce automatic stokers for domestic and other applications. Iron Fireman was one: https://archive.org/details/Sweets1938Sec2624IronFiremanMfgCo

Automatic stoking helped deal with several issues related to using coal.

One, they dealt with the often unpleasant and labor intensive task of shoveling coal into boilers/furnaces.

Two when part of an overall system automatic feeding of coal could produce heating automatic as anything from oil or gas. That is you could regulate temperature via thermostats leaving a complicated network of chains, dampers, and other devices to control the fire. Instead of having to go down to cellars and "bank" a fire for the night, you just turned down the heat regulator. Beauty of this also was that one could also wake up to a warm home as some systems even had timers. They were rudimentary (often worked by wind up clocks) compared to today's but never the less.

 

[launderess]

Keep The Home Fires Burning

Is not just a war time ditty offering advice to the women back home; but was a large part of their lives at that time.

Be it coal, wood, peat or whatever until replaced by gas, oil, or electricity a home would have one, two, or more fires that had to be kept up. Kitchen range/stove and steam boiler/furnace in cellar were just two. Depending upon the home and household financial circumstances there could be various fireplaces as well; all this right up through WWII and after.

Since men folk were away at their office or whatever occupation it usually fell to women/housewives to keep those fires going. That is unless the family was wealthy enough to afford servants or maybe lived in an apartment building where at least the hot water/heat was tended to by someone else.

Some coal heating systems advertised all a man needed to do was tend to the fire once in the morning, set things, then it should be left alone until returned after work. Rubbish. Depending upon weather and other circumstances the boiler/furnace often did need attending during the day, and since Her Indoors was home......

The various automatic devices (stokers, magazine feed) all advertised and promoted "Don't Let Your Wife Shovel Coal". Going on about how the automatic feeding and regulation of fire saved the Little Woman from toil, heavy lifting and in general messing about with what should be man's work.

From what one understands a coal fire going out be it in a locomotive, ship, home boiler/furnace or stove was a huge deal and royal pain.

If the thing couldn't be started up again the whole "fire" would have to be dumped and a new one started.

Wood obviously is an easy fire to start; OTOH coal, especially the hard stuff can be difficult to get a good fire going. Hence "keep the home fires burning".....

 

[e2l-arry]

THE LUCY SHOW

in 1962 featured an episode where Lucy decided to put a rumpus room in the basement. But before Lucy and Viv somehow managed to glue themselves to the wall, they had to move the coal bin. And once they were stuck, the coal truck showed up for a delivery, stuck a chute through the basement coal door and buried Lucy and Viv up to their necks in coal. This was 1962 or 3 so having coal furnaces, especially in rural areas, most have still been somewhat common or the plot/gag wouldn't have worked.

My grandparents in upstate N.Y. converted from coal to oil in the early 50's. That house still heats with oil today. Again, very common in rural areas as there is no infrastructure for natural gas. My mother complained that oil heat was dirty. There was always a film on walls and shelves that had to be scrubbed off by some good ole elbow grease!

 

[ea56]

“There was always a film on walls and shelves that had to be scrubbed off by some good ole elbow grease! “

I’ve never used coal for heat,but the little three room school house built in 1887 that I went to for the 8th grade had oil heaters, and they stunk and were filthy.

I think that anything that burns with a flame to heat causes a film to develop on the walls and every other surface of a home, be it coal, wood, oil, propane or natural gas. Our last home had a gas stove and gas forced air heat. The kitchen counters were white formica and I had to scrub them down at least every two weeks because of the dirty film the gas stove left on everything.

We have a pellet insert that we used every fall and winter to heat with from 1997 until last fall. I decided that since the cost of the pellets had gone up so much we might as well try using the electric hydronic baseboard heaters and see how the cost compared. Well, it only cost slightly more, maybe an additional $40.00 per month during the coldest months than using the pellets. The house was MUCH cleaner, way more convenient and comfortable than the pellet stove heat. So, we’re done with burning anything for heat from now on. Plus, with the Bay Area Air Quality Control Board, there are now so many “No Burn Days” anyway , due to air pollution, that burning pellets or wood for heat is impractical. Fortunately, the power seldom goes out here, so relying on electric heat isn’t problem.

Eddie

 

[launderess]

Oil for heating/cooking

Comes in various grades; the lowest (bunker fuel No.6) is quite dirty and really nasty stuff. Then mayor Bloomberg as part of his nanny state NYC government and newly created environmental plan for NYC forced all buildings to convert from No. 6 fuel oil to lighter and cleaner grades.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fuel_oil

How nasty is bunker fuel? Well it basically is the residue what is left after more desirable grades of petroleum have been burned off. It would have been waste until some bright bulbs found that the cheap and plentiful stuff could be used in boilers, furnaces, etc....

However No.6 and other low grades of bunker fuel are basically sludge. They must be warmed in order to flow from storage tank to heating device and are nasty to burn. In addition to particulate matter the stuff leaves heavy residue that can clog up boilers and generally make a mess.

Before our building switched over to (ok forced) to higher quality fuel oil one could smell each time the boilers came on.

Railroads, ships, buildings, etc.. all welcomed switching out of coal for "cheap" bunker fuel oil. In NYC alone there are scores of buildings that went up early in last century still with their original coal boilers. The things were merely switched over to burn fuel oil.

 

[circlew]

While natural gas has been available in my area since 1961, a couple of my neighbors still heat with oil furnaces. It must still be fairly common in the Cincinnati area as one of the major petroleum distributors has been advertising their new oil tank insurance program.

If I were to use any fuel burning devices, I would have them outside with connections to the house, so as to avoid soot, odor, etc.

Lykins

Our goal is to provide customers with the highest quality products delivered in the most efficient manner at the best possible price.

www.lykinsenergy.com

 

[launderess]

There have been debates going back ages to when natural gas first was being piped to residential areas about safety.

Many then and still today believe natural gas will "blow up" your house/property. Thus stuck with coal and or moved onto heating oil, but wouldn't have gas for heating or cooking, period.

If you live in an area which does not already have natural gas, getting it may not be easy either. Know here in NY area the various utilities won't run a main to a block or whatever unless nearly all or a good majority of homes agree to have the stuff. People used to go around and talk to their neighbors asking if they would sign up for natural gas.

Now if you live out in the boonies, forget it; no one is going to run a natural gas line just for you; well maybe they might if you paid what likely is going to be very dear costs.

In an effort to get large buildings off heating oil, ConEdison (pushed by NYC and NYS) has been upgrading gas mains on blocks all over Manhattan and other parts of city. Idea is that with increased supply running down the block building owners would only need to pay for having a larger main run to their buildings.

This may be necessary since many buildings only supply gas for cooking which does not require large mains. Heating was coal and now oil. Some more modern buildings use duel fuel boilers (gas and oil).