RiJoRi wrote:
........... F'r instance, I spent the first four years in a coal-heated house. Very quiet. We moved to an oil-heated house, and the first time it fired up with a rumble, I nearly jumped out of my skin!
Yes, but in the coal heated house my mother got up at 6:30 in the morning and went down to the cellar and used the handle on the side of the furnace to shake the grates and get the ashes out of the bed of coal and then threw on a shovel or two of coal to bring up the temperature in the house. With the oil, she turned up the thermostat.