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Wood Heat

I had a nice Vermont Castings woodstove that took forever to get it up so the catalytic thing would work and stunk out the neighbors and all outside bad. I just wanted to come home from work, build a quick fire and get lots of heat now, not at 10 pm. Swapped to gas and I get instant heat. I keep my oil thermostat at 61 so its only when I am home and awake, otherwise gas is totally off, no energy wasting pilots. Plus, too many people die from chimney fires due to creosote buildup in their chimneys. Way too common up here.
 
My oh my!
Never seen such a thing in my life!
The only hint I ever had was from the "Home Alone" film! Hahahahaha, a scary monster.
 
Sort of home you'd find those things in

House me likes, gravity behemoth in the basement me don't likes.

www.flickr.com

Lawrence House

Historic Queen Anne home erected by Wm. Lawrence in 1892. After Mrs. Lawrence died in 1940, the house was closed with everything still inside. It sat that way until it was donated to the City of Sarnia by a descendant in 1977. During early restoration efforts, in 1985, the house was set...
www.flickr.com www.flickr.com
 
frighten the children

The house I was born in, in Southern Connecticut, was built around 1950 and had an oil-fired gravity furnace. It was a typical small Cape Cod home. Two bedrooms, living room, kitchen and bath downstairs. The second floor had enough room for another two bedrooms and maybe a second bath, but for various reasons it never got finished off.

I remember a faint whiff of heating oil when the furnace started up on a cold evening. Other than that it was quiet and seemed to work, but I also recall my mother complaining about how all the heat wound up at the top of the stairs to the second floor even with the door up there closed.

I also recall watching the flame of the furnace flickering with a muted roar, and my dad opening it up to clean out the burners once in a while. Of course there was an octopus like array of ducts coming out the top, and there must have been a big return duct as well, somewhere, I just never noticed its position in the house.

One good thing about forced air... if you use good quality filtration it can help keep the house air cleaner. Such as 3M pleated electrostatic filters, that can actually reduce odors and very small particles in the air, like bacteria and smoke.
 
The most exotic, let me use the term, thing I ever seen for central heating is this "artisan" made fireplace with hot water insert in a rural house I own, see the pics attached ;)

I just recently had it fixed with a new circulation pump.
It's a closed vase system with overpressure and automatic refilling mechanism so it can safely avoid the big expansion vase on the roof.
It provides heating to all the bedrooms and bathrooms on the first floor and the living room adjacent to the kitchen with cast iron radiators, the kitchen is heated up mainly with radiated heat from the fire itself.

BTW, the house is on sale if you want a cozy home near the country and just 10 miles from the Adriatic sea ;) ahahahah

Burning fire (the heat exchanger coils are in the cast iron hood and on the fire holder below):
http://i142.photobucket.com/albums/r97/166pallara/Img_0096_zpsd195515a.jpg

Original pipeworks and circulation pump:
http://i142.photobucket.com/albums/r97/166pallara/impianto_zps59317079.jpg

New circulation pump:
http://i142.photobucket.com/albums/r97/166pallara/Img_0095_zpse1f6e633.jpg
 
That's the Lawrence House right here in downtown Sarnia.

My gran had one of those coal fired octopus furnaces in her old Hamilton house back when I was very young and yes I was scared to go down into that cellar. She eventually had it replaced with a gas furnace. Her house was not grand at all,, in fact it looked almost identical to the Bunkers house.
 
Lawrence House

Such a beautiful place! Have you been?

Apparently after Mrs. Lawrence died in 1940 the place was shut up with everything inside for decades. The treasures and or interesting things that were left, and surprised no one stole anything.

Also is seems from stories the place is infested with ghosts. Just looking at the B&W pictures alone gave one the creeps.
 
My house was built in 1935

and originally had one of those coal fired beasts in the cellar. The old coal chute is still at the side of the house, though now sealed and only for show.
Somewhere in the 50's the coal burner stopped being used and a gas floor furnace was installed. In the 70's the cellar was deepened and became a proper basement, at that time the floor furnace was removed along with the coal burner, the floor was restored in the dining room and forced air was installed.

The forced air gas heat, electric a/c still uses the original wall vents, ductwork has been replaced, however, they didn't install a cold air return, the stairways act as the return to the large air intake in the basement.

Though the coal parlor stove is gone, the original fireplace still is in place, but now has a gas insert.
 
A relative of mine in SF used to live in a the upper floor flat of a building with gas fired gravity heat. She liked the heat except for the fact that mice had decided to start nesting in the ductwork, and it proved to be very difficult to get rid of them without having them stack up like miniature cordwood in the ducting. I wonder if this was a common problem with the old octopus heating systems.
 
We used to call it the haunted house when we were kids and I always wanted to go inside but never got the chance. By the time Mr Lawrence died and left it to the city I think I had moved out west. They had tours before the reno began. It's used as some sort of community center now and a lot of the original fancy work inside is gone. STairways still there. Apparently there was an accidental fire during the reno that did some damage. The amazing thing is that those few old houses surrounding it in the pictures escaped unscathed from the big tornado of 53 where a good part of our downtown all around it was severely damaged or flattened.

www.flickr.com

Sarnia Tornado 21 May 1953

Explore this photo album by John Rochon on Flickr!
www.flickr.com www.flickr.com
 
The thing about gravity furnaces is a) no moving parts (or very few) and b) they can be made to work in power outages easily (as can steam systems). TOH used the ducts in their Brooklyn brownstone project to run new hot water heating lines a few years back.
 
I have neighbors that had a gravity furnace like Launderess shows, and it burned coal. They replaced it with gas in the early 70's, but I remember black smoke pouring out of the chimney when the old one was going. That furnace made their already scary basement even more so.

I'm surprised to hear of gravity furnaces being installed in homes built as late as the 50's. I would have thought that such would have been considered "unmodern" even in the 30's.

I frequently go past a house that has an outbuilding (a shed like structure) that has a chimney. In cold weather, smoke is always coming out, and there is a lot of firewood stacked near the shed. I'm thinking that outbuilding houses a boiler that has pipes connected to the house to heat it.
 
There were alot of gravity coal octopuses converted to oil here and we had one as a kid. Very inefficent and uncomfortable but who cared when oil was real cheap and they didnt want to bother with hassles of coal. My mother just turned the thermosat up. Eventually, we got a new forced hot air oil furnace and what a difference. Good friend from college had the exact same octopus in upstate NY but converted to natural gas, still gravity fed.
 
Fireplace

We have a wood burning fireplace. Other than the maintence required, we love it. If you don't want it, we mainly use space heaters and they are great for saving energy, instead of running a MASSIVE heater which pulls about 10,000 watts. Space heaters pull about 1,500 watts and are great if you are there by yourself and only need one room heated instead of the whole house, that's PURELY wasting power. Heat pumps are HORRIBLE in low temperatures, because they constantly run and barely work. That is my suggestion. If you don't want to use any power, you could use a blanket for on the couch, or in bed. Why heat the whole room if you need to heat just yourself? For in a bathroom, a good choice is a heat lamp. It targets objects, warming them, not the air. It only uses about 500 watts.
STAY WARM!!!
 
I have a big fireplace built around a heatalator insert but I cant feed enough wood into it to even start to warm up in the winter, even with sealed glass doors,so I sealed it totally off. Its good for the looking at in the middle of a rainy summer night, but as far as heat this time of year, up here, its worthless. It would cost 3 to 4 grand to convert it to a gas insert, but I am not spending that right now.
 

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