Do Coal Fired Furnaces Still Around?

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launderess

launderess

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Saw on the local news this morning sales of wood fired stoves are increasing as people try to cope with rising prices for natural gas/oil/propane for heating. With coal inexpensive in comparison to other sources of fuel, was wondering if coal fired furnaces/boilers were still around.

Growing up there were still a few homes heated with coal, and it was interesting for we children of the area to watch the coal truck pull up and unload down chute into the "coal cellar". One would also find lumps of the stuff in back yards and around the area.

With "smokeless" coal easily found, the air pollution aspect must have been taken care of, no?

Launderess
 
I'm not sure of how many coal fired furnaces are still being sold by manufacturers, but many are still in use in older neighborhoods around here. Here in Richmond, older neighborhoods like "the Fan" and Carytown where homes were built 100-150 years ago were originally equipped with coal burners, and still are. Take a walk down any of the streets on a cold winter day, and one can smell the burning coal. Coal is very cheap around here because it's a "home grown" fuel source. It comes right from our own mountains, only about 100 miles away. I imagine that keeps many of these old relics still in use.
 
My public elementarty school had a coal-fired steam heating system until about .......1973

NYC finally allocated funds to replace it RIGHT IN THE MIDDLE of the oil (price) crisis!

When it rained the smell of sulpher (like rotten eggs) hung everywhere!
 
Before moving to Dubuque IA, I lived in a small town in Wisconsin. Both homes I lived in there had coal chutes as does the home I live in now in Dubuque. Our high school which was later converted to the elementary building built in 1908 was also heated by coal. It was a steam system. Later they built a high school across the street and built an underground tunnel to connect the old heating system to the new building. The Coal system was used until 1976. I vividly remember the open register above the boiler on the first floor. Everyone would pile their coats and mittens there to dry out after recess. Wow that brings back memories. I don't believe any one around here still heats with coal.

The newest fad here are the outdoor wood burning sheds. They run a water line to a wood fired furance at the edge of your property that is controlled by your regular furnace. Another popular item here is corned fired stoves. Very high BTU's and burns for a long time with little or no mess. Downside is there is no good way to control the heat.
 
Ca depend- It depends

Depends on the utilty or fuel cost in your area/region.

Of course waste-oil buners are way cool in that the fuel is free! Sometimes businesses will pay YOU to haul it off -Disposal fee. (what they would have had to pay others to make it all go away).

McDonalds (etc.) frying liquid
Used motor oil
Used car fluids (oils)

There is even an absorption(sp?) A/C (heat is the energy source) for you southerners.......

So check with your quicky-lube joint, and see if it makes sense for you.

 
Geo thermal with electric power from solar or windmill depending on where you live.

I've heard that farmers in midwest state like nebraska are planting, in addition to their regular crops, electric wind turbines. No pollution, you can still farm, they don't make much noise, not that expensive to build. Soo cool.

In California there are new housing developements with "built-in", obscured solar panels that actually feed back into the electrical grid during the day and people actually get paid by the electric company for creating electricity.
 


There was an article in the New York Times a couple of years ago that said that several New York City public schools were still heated with coal fired furnaces.

Last winter, I had a dinner with a couple of friends at a restaurant on Arthur Ave. in the Belmont section of the Bronx. The apartment building that was next to the restaurant got a coal delivery while we were walking from the car to the restaurant. My guess is that the building was still heated by a coal fired furnace.

My mother comes from a small town about 80 miles east of Pittsburgh. (Think coal country.) I still have family there. Some of them still have coal fired furnaces. You can actually smell coal burning when you walk down the street in the winter.

Mike
 
You mention waste oil. Anybody tried their hand at bio-diesel? It's supposed to be easy to make right out of waste cooking oil. This stuff is supposed to be burnable in diesel engines without any modifications. Since furnace fuel oil is the same thing as diesel fuel, I imagine the bio-diesel is burnable in the furnace too. Your neighborhood would smell like a cookout even during the coldest of winter days!!
 
Older homes in the Atlanta, GA area had coal heat. Friends of ours had the old coal bin still in their basement. They had an automatic stoker which made coal heat almost automatic. It was a pipe that ran from the coal bin to the furnace. Inside the pipe was a worm gear shaped thing like Archimedes' screw that moved coal from the bin to the furnace when the thermostat called for heat. The furnace had been converted to gas, but the coal bin had never been cleaned out. John has a friend who lived in an OLD row house in PA (coal country) and it still has coal fired heat. There is a hopper that you fill with coal and it is gradually added to the fire and you either wake up before it is all gone or you get cold. My father's step father used to let me go down to the coal furnace with him when he would shake the grates and shovel coal into it. Ashes were shoveled out into a METAL can. Remember all of the fire prevention tips you learned in school; no matter if from the furnace or fireplace, ashes were considered hot and only put into metal containers.
 
Coal, I can't imagine how dirty that must be. Soot throught the house. What of my white shagg carpet and shears? (cough-cough)
 
soot

I wouldn't imagine that the furnace would mix the heated air with the combusiton air that would have the soot in it. Sure it's either a heat exchanger setup or a boiler for steam/hot water heat.
 
Combustion air and exhaust are not mixed, but still there are complaints of soot getting everywhere.

I have a book from the '70s when coal was popular (again, due to fuel prices). In is there is a combinaltion coal/electric stove. it is 40 inchs wide (100cm). The left side is a coal burning area and above it two surfaces for cooking. Apparently it heats the regular electric oven from the side. This of course MUST be vented via a stove-pipe. The normal/expected four surface units and the oven are just like normal.

There are also boilers and funaces available that are dual fuel (coal and or wood, with gas or oil). Wood fires are normally used --rather than coal-- in fall and spring when heating demand is lesser.
 
I thought coal burners were abandoned for home heating a few decades ago.My mom remembers some of her earlier homes that had coal funrances-she and my dad hated them.Does anyone make 'em today-wouldn't think they would meet modern air pollution standards-and the ash could be considered hazardous as well.
 
I beleive many states now require a catalytic converter(similar to a vehcile's) on solid-fuel heaters to keep emissions tolerable.

Again, this is a result of the 70's when mutltudes of home-owners used woodl and coal, (en masse) for the first time in decades.
 
Most coal fired furnaces and boilers however are "grandfathered" in. Being that most of the ones that are in use were installed decades ago, they are not required to meed efficiency and emission standards. I don't know of too many people installing new coal heating appliances, outside of supplementatl systems, like a fireplace stove or something Because of this, coal pollution is not really curbed by the new regulations.

Heating systems are an area that have seen the products get "boring" to me with technology. Old heating systems to me are very intriguing, and I was never afraid of a big fire-breathing cast iron behemoth in a basement with pipes and ducts going everywhere. I still find these old relics very interesting. New HVAC appliances are just quiet little boxes that sit in the corner of the basement. You can't even see the combustion in them anymore, and all the ductwork is neat and orderly. Yea, they look nice, and they're clean and efficient...but no way near as fun as watching an automatic stoker feed coal into a big cast-iron firebox, then watching as the gauges start moving , pipes start shaking and hissing and all that!
 
Waste oil, biodiesel

Well, being that I drive a diesel powered VW, I'm finding it harder and harder to get diesel these days, and it's more expensive. Getting a biodiesel machine isn't out of the question. Who cares if the car smells like french fries, no dependance on petroleum and better for the enviroment.

Hello, Toyota? Diesel/Electric Prius? Make one!
 

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