Charcoal briquets in fireplace - safe?

Factual Questions
1

I know people sometimes kill themselves with carbon monoxide, trying to cook or heat inside their homes with charcoal briquets after a power outage. My question is: if you had a fireplace that ‘drew’ properly, with the chimney cleaned etc., and if that fireplace was safe to burn wood and paper in, would it be safe to burn charcoal in? Could you cook on charcoal in the fireplace? Or would CO be a larger health risk for some reason, than from wood?

2

No.

The intensity of a charcoal burn doesn’t create a strong enough draft to direct everything up the chimney – and carbon monoxide is heavier than air. It will flow out of the fireplace into the room.

Dangerous, no matter how clear the chimney is.

3

How did people burn coal in the “olden days”?

Does coal differ that much from commercial charcoal? Did they have different types of fire places?

Thanks!

4

A coal stove or furnace has an enclosed combustion chamber vented outdoors. They’re designed such that air is drawn in through a draft vent and virtually all of the exhaust goes outside.

5

I am not sure I buy this. I have read a number of books where the characters are throwing coal onto the fire. From the contex of these books it sure sounds like they are putting coal onto what is a traditional fireplace in the room where the characters are sitting. Is this just literary license from the authors?

6

Sorry, missed this. Coal is much different from charcoal but they both produce CO2 when burned. (Coal is carbon fossil fuel and takes millions of years to form, much like oil. Charcoal is manufactured from wood.)

gazpacho, this is what an old-fashioned coal fireplace looks like.

7

Here’s a better example of a coal fireplace.

8

You know what I mean. :smack:

9

I must disagree that all coal fireplaces are enclosed units. There are certainly coal fireplaces with open flames. I’ve seen two in real life and countless others on TV or read about in period books (books written in the period, not just set–I can’t imagine they would have succeeded fooling any contemporaries if they described the fireplaces wrong).

The two I’ve personally seen have looked more or less like a regular wood fireplace, but a bit shallower and quite a lot narrower. In place of a grate to hold the logs, there’s an iron basket that you fill with coal. I’m not sure what they were made from. The outsides of both were brick with tile accents, but the insides were a darker, brownish colored block. Maybe some kind of stone or type of brick I’m unfamiliar with. I don’t know what the flues looked like, I didn’t stick my head in them.

I’ve also seen an enclosed one like in your picture when I was looking around at houses, as well a few enclosed coal furnaces (one of which was still in use–they must eat up a lot of coal, there were bags and bags of it piled everywhere).