Old Furnace (Page 2): Good morning KT, This is exactly the same as the furnace in the house where I grew up! "Oldtimer"?? I am 72 years old but still function at the level I was at...

Terkat

Good morning KT,

This is exactly the same as the furnace in the house where I grew up! "Oldtimer"?? I am 72 years old but still function at the level I was at 16-18 years old. Actually, sometimes more like 10-12. But, I digress. Yup, this is the furnace. I have tried to describe it to my spouse but words simply would not do. The coalbin was just a few feet away. Coal deliveries were always an occasion with the fellas doing the work just coal black from head to toe leaving a black soot trail from truck to the coal chute window. I can even recall the name of the coal company - Hannah Coal Company. I could always pick out their eyes as the only relatively clean place you could make out. I was only 4-5 years old so it could be a somewhat scary / Halloweenish experience. Or I would pretend to make it seem like that. This wasn't on a farm or way out in the hinterlands - this was in the St. Paul MN in the early to mid 1950's. Thanks so much for the memory.

All the best tp you and yours,

Terry

ddgm Loc: Hamilton, Ontario & Fort Myers, FL

Where would one go now to even get the coal to feed one of these. We had a coal fired potbelly stove in our one room school house which was eventually replaced with a oil fired space heater. In the winter the farmer next door, who was also the school custodian would come early and get the coal stove going so there would be some heat. The rows closest to the stove were hot and those farthest away, not so much, but they were also the oldest and biggest students.

dougbev3 Loc: Pueblo, Colorado

That reminds me of my mother-in-laws furnace. It was a old coal burner converted to gas. She was paying close to 500 a month to heat her brick two story house. We decided to take it out and put a 90% new furnace in. But to get the old one out we had to take sledge hammers to the old one and bust it up. That was a job. Then attaching those furnace vents to the new furnace was another job. Our son in law was in heating and cooling back then , so he was the boss and we helped.. My dad worked at the Colorado State Hospital in the Boiler Room. It was coal. In the summer , my brothers and I would go over and help him. So we got to feed the coal and then pull the clunkers. Right before he retired they switched to gas.

Hal81 Loc: Bucks County, Pa.

When I was in fourth grade they sent us to a one room school house. The boys had to take turns going down to the dirt floor basement to put wood in the stove, And they call that the good old days... I think not..

Quixdraw Loc: x

You can still buy coal here in Montana, Wyoming, and I suspect other places as well. Some folks still use it for heat. I sure wouldn't want to do it. Much prefer Geothermal / Electric.

sippyjug104 Loc: Missouri

This picture brings back so many memories. I started my career out as an HVAC technician and many of the homes in the area that I serviced were some 50 or more years old at the time (which are now over 100). I service home heating systems that were originally coal-fired, then converted to fuel oil and then natural gas. I worked on many gravity heating systems like this one. The ducts were large because there were no blowers to assist airflow so the heat would rise naturally and the returns were located on the floor so that the cold air could fall back into the furnace naturally.

clickety

Thank you for the flood of memories; Dad carrying the bucket of glowing klinkers up the stairs, the sound of the sizzle when they were dumped in the snowbank, the imaginary faces with the glowing red eyes that resulted and sadness when my prized marbles dropped through the floor grate, gone forever.

nosretep Loc: S. W. Montana

I still use a coal furnace converted to gas. It is,somewhat, similar to this one. It is smaller with no ducts;
the heat goes straight to the floor above it.

Coonman

Interesting tech for it's day. Surely the conversion to natural gas in this home brought a smile to all...no more coal to carry & stoke and no more coal dust to contend with. If anyone can confirm this.......is that large duct on the side of the furnace the cold air return ? Wondering if the motor and pulley was a conversion from the previously mentioned "gravity furnace" design.

I am very familiar with the "Octopus" furnaces that were prevalent in the midwest during the 50's & 60's
We suffered through with a tempermental oil burner/ hot water / radiator system
Coonman

Coonman

Forgot to ask........did anyone else use the "clinkers" for traction on snow and ice during the winter. Our neighborhood was full of alleys that ran behind homes, it was easy to spread a few shovels full "clinkers" out of the ash box that were located in the alley behind most every house. It was the job of the city garbage truck crew to shovel out the contents of the ash boxes into the back of the city garbage trucks. that occurred once a month during the heating season

PhotogHobbyist Loc: Bradford, PA

Reminiscent of the "Octopus" in the basement of the house in which I started life. Dirty soot would occasionally spew from ducts that had been closed off for room alterations. I also remember the noise of the coal truck delivering coal through a chute into the basement. A very dirty and troublesome method of heating.

alberio Loc: Casa Grande AZ

Coonman wrote:

Forgot to ask........did anyone else use the "clinkers" for traction on snow and ice during the winter. Our neighborhood was full of alleys that ran behind homes, it was easy to spread a few shovels full "clinkers" out of the ash box that were located in the alley behind most every house. It was the job of the city garbage truck crew to shovel out the contents of the ash boxes into the back of the city garbage trucks. that occurred once a month during the heating season

We did in Glenwood Springs Colorado

aphelps Loc: Central Ohio

KTJohnson wrote:

Any of you "old-timers" familiar with th... (show quote)

Looks very much like the one in my childhood home. Coal converted to gas with a blower for air circulation. We converted the coal room to a hobby room. We called the furnace the octopus.

skylinefirepest Loc: Southern Pines, N.C.

Yeah, we had a coal burner that looked like that furnace...it was fed with coal from a stoker that augered the coal from a bin into the bottom of the furnace. My job was to make sure that I shoveled coal into the stoker each day and used a hook device to pull the clinkers out of the furnace and drop them into a large bucket of water. Important, as several houses burned back then started by clinkers not being out...now to modern day...we responded to a porch fire two days ago started by fireplace ashes put in a cardboard box on the wooden porch...the homeowner told us that they were "definitely cold" when he put them out there. Fortunately it was a daytime fire, we had an engine close by checking hydrants, and the homeowner smelled the smoke before major damage occurred. In my thirty one year career I have responded to several house fires started by "cold" fireplace ashes.

dennis2146 Loc: Eastern Idaho

Longshadow wrote:

He said his grandfather's house was converted to oil, not this one.

Doesn’t the OP also point out the photo is not his?

Dennis