Quixdraw Loc: x

He was referring to my comment, and a response it drew, not to the OP.

bodiebill

Our furnace was a coal burning, hot water system with cast iron radiators in every room. The coal cellar was next to the furnace.
Dad would shake the grate at 6 in the morning and fire the furnace, which was our alarm clock, with the noise vibrating throughout the house
My job was to wheel barrow the coal to the underground coal cellar. It was dumped on the front street.
I also emptied the clinker/ash compartment and spread them in the "Victory" vegetable garden. Our soil was mostly clay and the ashes provided fertilizer and improved the clay soil
Home coal burning was later banned in Pittsburgh (post WW2) and we converted to natural gas.

Blair Shaw Jr Loc: Dunnellon,Florida

That is scarey looking....yikes

dennis2146 Loc: Eastern Idaho

Ahhh. OK.

Dennis

gsmith051 Loc: Fairfield Glade, TN

Looks like the one in my dad’s house that was converted from coal to gas. Does that bring back old memories.

usnret Loc: Woodhull Il

I sure do remember that furnace. Ours had a hopper with a worm drive gear box that fed the coal in. It was important to fill it before bedtime otherwise; thick clouds of blue smoke would fill the house. We fed the clinkers to the hogs. They loved them. Chock full of minerals. Mom had a recipe for growing crystals on pieces of coal using different colors of food coloring. In third grade I won the show and tell prize with one of her works of art. Thanks for bringing back the memories from those "good ole days" !!

John7199 Loc: Eastern Mass.

Been there - Done that! I never heard of a stoker - Sounds like it would have helped. I used to shovel from the coal bin to the furnace. After a delivery the coal was nearer to the furnace. Before a delivery you had to walk into the bin get a shovel off coal and walk to the furnace. I was not allowed to get the ashes down to the bottom. My Ma had to reach under and hold something. I would shovel the ashes into a barrel. That barrel was quite heavy, I don't recall who would pick them up.

skylinefirepest Loc: Southern Pines, N.C.

To elaborate a little...Chandler Ice and Coal, from Southern Pines, N.C., would deliver to our house out in the country and shovel the coal through a window into a wooden bin built in the basement. then it was my job to shovel it into the hopper for the furnace. I actually enjoyed doing it as it was the warmest place in the house. The best heat, clean heat that is, came from a water source heat pump that we had installed at our log house. It used well water and the exhausted water was just allowed to run into a small sump in the winter and was used to run a sprinkler in the warm months. That was the most efficient hvac that we ever owned and when it quit we weren't able to find another one...at a reasonable price. Most of the water source hvacs around here run in a closed circuit running through a trench dug to be below the frost level but I'm not sure that they are as efficient as the one we had. That thing turned out HOT air in the winter and COLD air in the summer as the system ran off the temperature of the water from our hundred foot deep well.

James Van Ells

That's an old coal stove converted to gas. That was one of my first jobs out of high school, got paid $1.25/hr.

Marianne M Banks Loc: Anacortes WA

Wow does that bring back memories :)
It looks just like the furnace I grew up with. It too was an old coal furnace converted to natural gas.
It made the basement semi heated. We hung and dried laundry and used the old coal storage area for a root cellar.
One of my favorite memories is sitting near the furnace on log ends with my mom and sister cracking nuts. We’d crack open black walnuts and butternuts on another log end with a hammer. Then we’d use them in baking, especially at the holidays.
Thank you for posting this picture. I’m enjoying the memories.

lmTrying Loc: WV Northern Panhandle

No photos, but I grew up with a couple of stoker fed coal furnaces.

Always so much fun shoveling coal into a pickup, then shoveling it into the basement. And raking it from the chute to fill the bin to the rafters. Not.

But our house was always warm!

bnsf

Take a good look at the white tape wrapped around the furnace. This tape contains 100% asbestos. Back when these furnaces were installed the duct work and furnaces were wrapped with this trap. My father was a HVAC repair man and died from Asbestos exposure.