Coal For Heating, Cooking and Laundry. Anyone?

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launderess

launderess

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Quiet Please, There´s a Lady on Stage
Since the subject was brought up in another thread and not wishing to hijack, thought this might be a good topic for a winter's night.

Most of us are probably that well spoiled for choice in this modern flip a switch/turn a knob era of gas and electic that the idea of having to manage with coal is totally alien.

Here's peek at the oft quoted (by Moi) BBC/PBS programme "1900 House" showing how modern housewife/family dealt with doing laundry via coal and no mod cons.[this post was last edited: 1/28/2012-20:53]

 
I remember that series

I am sure it was quite a bit harder in those days Laundress. I know my parents, grandparents had to deal without alot of the niceities we enjoy today. Like simply turning up the thermostat when cold and having a hissie fit when the hot water was not there. I could not fathom trying to shave with a straight edge razor. I would go back to using coal if I had to, but for right now, oil and gas heat is Soooo much easier.
 
It's probbly cleaner to burn coal in a properly outfitted power plant where most of the polution can be captured and dealt with in one place rather than having chimneys spewing coal smoke all over towns. Burning coal puts mercury, among other toxins, in the air. Coal burning produced the smoke which combined with fog to kill many in Britain and in steel towns in Pennsylvania during air inversions.
 
Personally, I'm quite fond of the use of soft coal for heating.

 

While we do have an electric forced air furnace when the temps drop into the 20's we usually fire up our slide in wood/coal stove.

I loike the slow burning property of coal and find that it lasts longer when I bank up the fire to last through the night or for when away at work all day.

Yes its a bit messy but the slow burning and long lasting heat it produces is worth it
 
Electric Heating

Up here, electricity is very expensive. Nobody has electric heating. An electric Hot water heater costs at least 60+ bucks a month more on your bill. People that live in mobile homes with a kerosene oil forced hot air furnace and electric water heater pay thru the nose. Since furnace fans are also expensive to run. Soft coal never was popular here. They used to take the hard coal and somehow burn the gas off and pipe it to homes in the cities for gas stoves and water heaters and then sell the leftover, called coke, at a discount. People would use that in their furnaces for heat. We used oil for heat when I was a kid because it was cheap then.
 
heating with coal

When I was growing up we heated exclusivly with coal (sometimes wood) in a modern 1970's coal furnace. It required a lot of work and was very messy. We had to wash the sheer white curtain 2 to 3 times a winter to keep them from turning gray with coal dust and spring cleaning was a major event after a long winter. Everthing had a layer of oily coal dust on it. JEB
 
Yes, Folks That Is Where There "Spring Cleaning" Com

After long Fall/Winter of closed up homes heated with wood or coal things indoors were well rather grimy. Once warm weather settled in for good windows where thrown open and *MAJOR* housework began.

Those with funds actually decamped to other homes or perhaps on vacation whilst servants got on with things. Those not so lucky dragooned any spare of hands they could latch on to. Children, nieces and other female relatives such as "young" spinsters would often travel about helping with this chore. This often was in addition to the servant (usually maid of all work) help as well.

From what one has read it was a mess and husbands (no surprise) often absented themselves from this effort. Though in the country one can understand as they had farm work to do.

Everything was washed, scrubbed down, cupboards, dressers, shelves, etc emptied and cleaned. Heavy drapes taken down; cleaned and perhaps put away in favour of lighter summer ones, same for curtains.
 
HI everyone

Coal for cooking. Not so bad after all. The 1900 House was a great program. English coal burning cookstoves were a lot different than American ones. Majestic, Copper Clad, Home Comfort, Kalamazoo and the list went on in America. Cast iron ranges in America in 1900 did not have open burning fires such as the English version. A fire box at one end of the range, not in the middle such as the English one provided a much better source of heat and for cooking and baking. My Copper Clad had two openings for water pipes to circulate water through the heat exchanger and back into the boiler for storage. The only really potential danger here would be to get the water too hot,boiling, and not keep an eye on the temp.gauge and have the boiler explode!
I could light a fire using coal as the heat source and could have the stove hot enough to cook on in 45 min. Gary
 
We heat our house with a 1952 Gentleman Janitor Hard coal stoker boiler. Its no more work than oil or gas with the exception that about every three days you have to empty the ashes. Its no dirter than oil or gas either.
 
Grandma's steam furnace was originally coal, converted to gas so grandpa didn't have to wake up at 4AM and man the shovel. To appreciate where we are, it helps to know where we were so shortly ago.
 
In addition to hydrogen, coal gas also had substantial amounts of carbon monoxide. So it was far more unhealthy for inhabitants than natural gas, which does not contain carbon monoxide.
 
WHERE???

Can you still BUY coal, here in the South you cant buy it anymore,,at least not here, my Parents used to buy a ton each year and we burned it in the fireplace along with wood, we had an oil furnace, but a coal fire just has a warmth that nothing else has, I remember as a kid in the 70s several houses as well as our Church and school had stokers, but not anymore....Talking about the hot water heater in a cookstove, I know a lady who said her mother had a half wood/coal half electric range , the plumber put in a new electric water heater, disconnecting the pipes leading into the firebox...he unfortunately,capped them off, when her mother built a fire to cook Sunday dinner, it blew up, she had gone to the mailbox,or she might have been killed, She said her mom had an iron skillet on the stove frying a chicken, and that it made a print in the ceiling of the pan and the pieces of chicken, it of course wrecked her stove as well as the kitchen, when they finally got the hot coals watered down , she said her brother went to the plumbers house..I bet he got an earful!!
 
Yes, coal gas has a lot of carbon monoxide in it. An iron-making blast furnace is basically a big coal gas maker; it burns hard coal or coke in an oxygen-poor environment. The exhaust is mostly carbon monoxide, which actually burns pretty well. A lot of steel plants took the exhaust from the blast furnaces and piped it to boilers where they burned it to make steam, which powered the air pumps for the blast furnaces among other uses. So it was sort of a closed-loop system.
 
Here's a good discussion of coal gas.

Apparently the less pure, lower energy form burned bright yellow, which was good for lighting (known as town gas). Then it got cleaned up and twice as much energy using the blue water gas method, but it lacked the soot-forming impurities that gave town gas its brightness. So they had to add the impurities back in with the carburetted water gas method, which injected petroleum compounds into the hot gas and then cracked them down to sizes that burned bright.

I gather that the calorific component of coal gas was at least 50% carbon monoxide, which we don't normally think of as a fuel but in fact can be burned. The rest of the calorific content was hydrogen. In standard coal gas, nitrogen made up the balance, diluting the energy value, and was reduced in volume via the aforementioned blue water gas method.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Coal_gas
 
Carbon monoxide

Carbon Monoxide is a product of incomplete combustion. Even in natural gas furnaces/boilers, CO can and will exist. In any kind of combustion process, if there is not enough air to mix with the fuel, or not enough time for the air to properly mix with the fuel, CO will form. CO emissions can be controlled by putting the right amount of secondary air into the combustion zone. The downside is, too much combustion air will result in nitrous oxides being formed, or NOx emissions.

By keeping the combustion temperature low at 850 degrees Celsius, NOx and Sulfur Dioxide (SO2) emissions can practically be eliminated. This kind of combustion can only be found in Fluidized Bed Combustion boilers, which so far only exist on the commercial/power level.

The big problem with coal combustion is the emissions. NOx and SO2 emissions are huge. Coal is very corrosive. In plants where coal is crushed and then pressurized to be blown into the boiler, the coal gas flowing through the pipes can quickly erode the pipe away if there is no ceramic lining inside the pipe. If you do not properly control the emissions from coal combustion, it can also eat away at all of the exhaust equipment.

Not to mention, the infrastructure needed to clean the exhaust gasses from coal. Bag houses, wet/dry scrubbers, electrostatic precipitators. All this extra equipment can double the land needed for a power plant. Maintenance on the equipment can be costly too, there are figures showing about a 47% offset in costs consumed by emission controls alone.

I am not saying coal is a bad fuel, its cheap to buy, but costly to burn when you factor in all the emission controls, and maintenance felt by big plants.

Here is an example of poor combustion controls. One of the hospitals here in Dartmouth purchased a new chimney top. They didn't properly modulate the SO2 emissions, and after about 9 months, the stainless steel top started to corrode away to the point where it looked like there was a halo on top of the chimney!
 
Where can you buy coal?

Got me, although about 10 years ago I bought a couple sacks of "charcoal" for my BBQ, that was made in China. It has the unmistakable aroma of coal, and was in small tubular chunks that looked like they were pressed shapes. I don't like it too much, still have most of the stuff left. Real wood charcoal is far superior.

There's an old mansion/estate in the hills near here that was built on a coal fortune. People don't normally think of California and coal together, but at the turn of the century Mr. Dunsmuir built an impressive property in a little valley, complete with a small farm, swimming pool, various ponds, etc. He made his fortune importing coal by ship into California. Unfortunately the little valley is right on top of the Hayward earthquake fault, and the swimming pool along the line, and has had to be shut down, but the house is still standing. At one time the house had coal fired boilers for the steam heating system, but has since been updated with forced air heating. Which is sad, since the heating contractor wound up cutting these big holes in the fine wood flooring to install air registers that do not match the vintage look of the rest of the house. In fact they stick out like sore thumbs. The property is now a municipal park where various seasonal events and conference take place.

Back to coal: in this area I understand one can get coal from Lazzari:

http://www.lazzari.com/industry-bituminouscoal.html
 
Quick Google Search For "Coal Sale"

Brought up numerous vendors who sell coal from bags to truck fulls.

Mind you most seem to be here in the Northeast with most near places where coal is mined such as PA.

Anthracite is the favoured coal of many around here and those whom use the stuff aren't keen on word getting out for fear of raising prices.

Ages ago when coal was used for everything from powering locomotives and ships to heating homes suppliers were more numerous. As railroads and ships shifted to diesel and or oil, then homes began to use oil and later electricity for heating demand for coal dropped and so did the infrastructure used to support it.

http://www.penncoal.com/
 
Manufactured Gas

So that is how it was actually made. I often wondered as a kid because there was a plant in the city I grew up in that you could not get near, about 15 miles from where I live now. It was near the banks of a major river that was quite close to the Atlantic Ocean. Apparently they used to pump the coal tar into the river years ago and now thay have found out how toxic is really is. The company that did own the gas works ended up being responsible for millions in cleanup costs. That plant died off after they introduced natural gas to the area. Which today is the most economical way to heat around here. But you have to be right in the city to get it. I have an old Sears Homart gas heater in my garage and the plate on the access door says that it can be used with Natural, Mixed, Manufactured or LP (Bottled) gas.
 
Natural Gas Prices Have Dropped So Low

This winter that it's almost being given away (well, not quite) and that is a huge deal for those whom heat their homes with the stuff, use gas for cooking and of course electric if local power plants are powered that way.

Who cannot benefit? Those who do not have natural gas to their homes and no way to get it either. New York Times ran a story several days ago about persons who are stuck using high priced heating oil (it hasn't come down that far even with the rather warm winter weather), wood, wood pellet or whatever to get by. One man interviewed was stocking up on wood for his stove to supplement the oil boilers in his house said he wanted to use gas, but the company turned down his request to run a line to the house.
 
I don't know anyone around here that still heats with coal, but when I was little, several houses in the neighborhood used it. I remember black smoke coming out of three or four chimneys of houses up the street. My end of the street has newer houses (post 1945), so they were heated by oil until some converted to gas when it arrived in 1961. The newest homes that used coal were built in the late 1930's; the house I'm currently renting was built in 1938, and there is a small metal door in the basement wall on the driveway side for coal to be put in the basement coal bin. The bin was torn out when the furnace was converted to oil at some point, and the tank placed there. The old boiler has been removed (along with the oil tank), and the house now has electric baseboard heat.

One of my neighbors used coal until around 1970, and I remember her having to throughly clean the house every Spring. Their furnace was forced air, and the walls would get streaked by the registers, so walls and ceilings, along with the drapes and other furnishings, were washed.

Carbon monoxide can result from any fuel being burned. In fact, most CO poisoning results from malfunctioning gas appliances. One of my neighbors almost was poisoned when her gas furnace developed a bad heat exchanger.

The old mansion Rich (Sudsmaster) mentions is the Dunsmuir House in Oakland. I toured it when I was in the SF area back in 1985. It is featured in the movie "Burnt Offerings", and visiting the estate was one of the major goals of my trip west. It's a beautiful place.
 
Oil vs gas prices

I just checked the costs of oil from my local fuel company, 3.50/gal for 400 or more gallons at once or $3.60 100-400 gallons. Kerosene is $4.04. The conversion of natural gas to oil price would bring it in at about $1.60/gal. The real black smoke from coal fires was because they were using bituminus or soft coal. Hard coal, anthrisite produces no noticeable smoke, just a tiny bit of white vapor during sub zero temps, much less noticeable than a conventional oil or gas burner would in the same cold temps out of the chimney. Although many people do use wood around here, I have found it to be very dangerous. Unless you clean your chimney throughly and often, the risk of having a chimney fire is very high. There has been numerous instances where people right here in this town have not only lost their homes but lives because of a chimney fire. With coal, there is absolutely no worry of ever having a chimney fire because no creosote is produced.
 
Yes, natural gas bulk prices have dropped but they have not been proportionately dropped for PG&E customers here. Still paying through the nose (IMHO) for it.

While any incompletely burned fuel can produce CO, such as might happen with a malfunctioning gas appliance, the point is that manufactured gas is the result of incompletely burned coal, so by design it contains large amounts of CO. While a blown out pilot light on a natural gas appliance is a safety hazard, it's not so much of a health hazard since methane by itself is not so very toxic (unless it replaces all the oxygen one breathes, or it ignites). But the CO in manufactured gas is extremely toxic, even in small amounts. It's good that it has been phased out in the USA for decades now. The old stories about people committing suicide by blowing out the pilot lights on a stove, turning on the oven, and sticking their heads inside were probably based on an era when manufactured gas was used, and the people died relatively quickly from CO poisoning. I've heard that it's not so easy to die from a natural gas fueled oven, and most people wind up blowing themselves up instead when the gas ignites from some spark in the building.

Yes, it's the Dunsmuir House. I've been there a few times. It's a popular place. I used to enjoy bicycling to it on weekday afternoons when admission is free, and it's a nice stroll around the grounds.

The coal from Lazzari in SF is bituminous, as is most such coal from Western mines. I'll look see if anthracite is available out here, although I have need to get any. I just chopped down a 30 ft tree on the property and have plenty of firewood for the few times a year I fire up the indoor fireplaces.
 
"This winter that it's almost being given away (well, not quite) and that is a huge deal for those whom heat their homes with the stuff, use gas for cooking and of course electric if local power plants are powered that way."

That assumes that the utility passes the savings to the customer. I don't follow what's going on with natural gas--it's not even an option where I live--but I have heard complaints about the company that provides natural gas for much of my area. There was recently a letter to the editor of a local news paper discussing this. It said that gas has dropped 35% in the last year, and yet the letter writer has not seen a 35% drop in gas rates. Instead, letter indicated that the utility apparently filed for a rate increase.
 
Coal Smoke

Though loved by *foamers* (a IMHO not so nice term for locomotive rail fans), a steam train using coal that is bleching tons of smoke shows that the thing isn't being run properly.

A good engineer and or fireman should be able to have the train run with little or no smoke depending upon what type of coal is being burned in the firebox. All that smoke means the locomotive is inefficient with coal and instead of buring the stuff is sending much of it right up and out of the smoke stack. Since coal cost money you can bet the *suits* at any RR office would look at how much coal was burned during a run versus what should have been and then perhaps sit someone down for a talk.
 
Gas-On-Coal

Stove was in our summer cottage, it dated to the pre-war era. It was converted at one time from 'city' gas to propane, which gave rather anemic performance. The coal side could get a whopping heat going in no time. It was the only source of heat for the cottage (when needed - spring or fall) and did a great job. Banking the fire for the night kept things nice and toasty until morning. My OM used to get a bag of either 'pea' or 'nut' coal at a garden center in PA (where the cottage was). It wasn't smoky unless the chimney was cold. He used to start a fire with newspaper or twigs just to get a draft going, then add the coal until it caught.
 
Banking!

That means to cover the hot coals with ashes at night, in the morning, you scrape the ashes off and add more fuel, in a few minutes you have a hot fire!
 

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