Do Coal Fired Furnaces Still Around?

[jasonl]

No way I could ever visualize a Brooklyn taxi driver in a Prius going "Hey yo! Get the ____ off the road you old _____". I imagine a beat up Crown Vic that smells of a combination of cigarettes, body odor, pee, and puke. But not a clean little Prius. "You don't like my car, I'll drop your southern ass in Harlem, see how the ____ you like that"

I can imagine a Boston cabbie though. "Yeah, we gaht these new cahhs to pick up the students at Hahhvard and Fenway Pahhhk."

VW should come out with a diesel/electric Beetle to compete with the Prius. That would make it over 100mpg.

 

[jasonl]

Well, this is definitely Cajun country. T-shirts and blue jeans. I don't normally go to truck stops because of all those huge trucks there and my little Beetle. Truckers don't know that my Beetle is diesel and I have more than enough gotten harassed about it. It's like, This is a diesel car, Bubba (or Boudreaux if you're in Lousiana), and I need fuel just as bad as you do.

 

[tolivac]

I can go along with Cybrvanr in heating equipment where you can't see the flames providing the heat.As a child used to "watch" the flames in the gas furnace in a home we lived in-It had a small veiwport in its firebox where you could watch the flames.Made me feel even WARMER on those cold snowy days.also used to sit on the heat vents-felt so good-could you get the same "heat feel" with a heatpump-don't think sne of those old "Coal Burners" would have been cool.I was to small at that time to enjoy the fun parts of it.My Mom and Dad only talked about the BAD parts of it-unjamming the stoker(they said it jammed--in the middle of the coldest nights)breaking out the ash "Clinkers" and disposing of the ash and receiving coal shiopments from the fuel companies.I was a baby in one of the homes that had the coal heater.The equipment sounds interesting.Sort of like a commercial coal burner-boiler but on a much smaller scale.after all-power companies still use coal-and efficently.Some very large buildings still heat with it.-and the steam from the coal boiler runs the absorbtion chiller in the summer!

 

[tolivac]

Coal furnace

I satisfied my curiosity and looked up "coal furnace" on the internet-Yes-they are still with us-usually in the form of a "dual fuel" unit that can burn wood or coal.They are sold as an "add on" unit to use with an existing oil,gas,or electric HVAC system.there are many makers of these-type in "coal furnace" on the internet and you will see-I was very surprized-It turns out household Coal burners are not musueam peices after all.