Is this what I think it is? People still have coal furnaces?
It should be said that I do live in Coal Country (Indiana County Pennsylvania). I can see a coal plant from my house and there are 2 more plants whose cooling tower steam I can see on some days. My house has an old coal cellar and I often find small pieces of bituminous (not Anthracite) coal hidden in odd places in the basement.
I find it hard to believe that there are working coal furnaces left. Who fixes them? Are parts available?
I was hoping there’ds be somebody on the board who would know something about this.
I burn wood here because it’s plentiful and I can. If coal were as easily available here, I’d burn coal. I imagine that coal, like wood burning is discouraged in some areas especially cities because of the air quality problems.
As a child in Eastern Montana we primarily used coal but used wood to start the fire because it was easier to get burning. Any wood stove with grates in it can burn coal.
We use a coal-fired stove to heat the house in the winter, but only as an auxiliary heat source. The house has a natural gas furnace and water heater (forced hot water baseboard heat) that could (and does on cold nights) heat the house. However, coal is much cheaper than natural gas. For about $100, we heat the house all winter. Enough that we have to open windows if the outside temperature is above 40 or so.
The stove uses anthracite (the coal, not *the[/] Anthracite) “pea” coal. Shake the stove down twice a day, fill the hopper and empty the ash bin once a day. A little labor intensive, but its a nice stove.
I will always press Preview first.
I will always press Preview first.
I will always press Preview first.
I will always press Preview first.
I will always press Preview first.
I will always press Preview first.
But seriously…I think Chief Wahoo might have some better ideas about home coal furnaces. I know a lot about coal, and large furnaces - not much about small ones.
All I can really add is that yes, coal is still used for home heating. Here in Milwaukee (and I’m sure other places, too) in an earlier age many homes were built with coal fired boilers right into the brickwork of the basement. 95% of these are probably not in use anymore but the ones that are are incredibly cool.
Ahhh, I still remember those delightful October days when Father would load is truck with 1 1/2 ton coal, bring it home, and say “Girls, go unload that coal!”
I think he said it was supposed to make us strong or something…