Is the furnace in Home Alone based on a real furnace model?

Cafe Society
1

In Home Alone, a minor plot point involves Kevin overcoming his phobia of a fearsome-looking furnace in the basement of McCallister family home:

The furnace resembles an old-style coal-fired gravity furnace in that it has a front grate and cluster of ducts coming out the top. The movie furnace doesn’t seem to contain coal, but rather has something resembling a radiator and piping inside. OK, so maybe it’s a coal-fired furnace that’s been converted to use oil or natural gas. I understand that such conversions were not unheard of, and it certainly makes sense that a wealthy family like the McCallisters wouldn’t be schlepping dusty, combustible rocks around to heat their house.

But why does the front grate of the furnace rise and fall automatically? Does any real-life furnace do this, or was this simply an invention of the filmmakers to make the furnace seem more menacing?

2

The trivia section at IMDb says that’s the case but they’re less reliable than Wikipedia.

3

Alternatively, was it really doing that at all? Or is the grate opening of its own accord (like the mouth of a scary monster) simply Kevin’s imagination? It looks scary, and makes scary noises, so why wouldn’t he imagine it actually trying to eat him?

4

That furnace is only slightly more menacing than the dark green metallic monstrosity of an oil burner we had in the basement when I was growing up.

It experienced an internal explosion one day that blew its front door off. Nothing calamitous happened and it was repaired, but I was wary around it from that time on.

Some furnaces are evil.