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I grew up in a large Queen Anne house which was heated by an ancient coal furnace. We used anthracite and a hopper system, but there was still gritty dust all over the house. I can remember getting in trouble for not moving the candles on the mantelpiece when my mother discovered concentric half circles of dust from many dustings. The tedium of dusting the balusters of the open staircase in the hall was just unbelievable! We also had a room sized coal bid loaded by a chute from the truck in the basement, forbidden, but fun to play in.
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Rose:
I wonder if in your reading you made it to the Grainger Lobrary at the University of Illinois in Urbana. The Illinois Engineering Experiment Station did most of the research on residential heating beginning before the turn of the century. The Grainger still has copies of all their reports. One of the homes built for their experiments on Stoughton St. is beginning to face a preservation battle.
Regarding gravity warm air furnaces, the cast grate at the front was for combustion air, except, as allaround mentions, in stoker systems the motor drove the combustion air blower as well as the auger. Most gravity systems had a large return into the side of the unit ducted from the room above. One notable exception is in the Cleveland area, where the gravity unit used the basement or crawl space as a plenum, and had only an opening in the side of the furnace. There was also a vertical duct from a grate in the floor down to close to the floor of the basement or crawl space. Some people link this arrangement called the "Cleveland drop" to the health problems that have appeared there.
For a great read on the history of research on residential heating at Illinois, get a copy of "The Quiet Indoor Revolution" by Bud Konzo from the Illinois Building Research Council 1-800-336-0616.
Your aol address reminds me of my cousin Biff Rose's first album titled "The Thorn in Mrs. Rose's Side."
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Try here:http://www.raingutter.com/ for info on modern cisterns. The fellow who runs the site, Ed Gunderson, is a wealth of knowledge about gutters and cisterns.
*rose... we moved into my parents house in'54.. and it was thoroughly modern millie..the house was built with all the latest and greatest for 1929 when it was brand new..Elec. range with oven on the side and deep fat fryer... ref. with the motor on top and a freezer section..and an ironing board in its's own wall cabinet...and a nice bright basement with a hopper -fed coal furnace for the hot -water radiators...the hopper was the screw feed type... and the grates were circular so the coal was fed to the cednter and as it burned it moved to the edge and fell into the bottom of the furnace...every morning we'd fill the hopper and carry out the ashes..the coal was all ""Blue Diamond"" anthracite pea-coal.. much harder and supposedly cleaner than the soft coal..it was delivered on truck to the curb and then the guy would carry a hundred -pound sack on his back, and dump it with one motion into the chute he had set up into our coal bin..he was at least 4'11".. and he did that all day.. coal delivery..after about four years of that they converted the furnace to an oil burner...
*Rose, my 1927 vintage house had a coal fired gravity air furnace which had been conveted to gas . I disassembled it when I re-did the system a few years ago. The interior was cast iron with a sheet-metal surround. Cold air returns came into the bottom, warm air out the top. Combustion air came in through vents on the doors.Your best source of info. would be old books in the library. I'm sure you can find trade manuals, ads., and books describing many types of furnaces. Ask a reference librarian to dig some stuff up for you.Steve
*Rose, through a coincidence in timing, I was just given a copy of "The Comforts of Home, The American House and the Evolution of Modern Convenience", a new book by Merritt Ierley (Clarkson Potter Publishers, 201 E 50th ST., NY, NY 10022; $30.00, 287pp, http://www.randomhouse.com). Moreover, the author will be here in Williamsburg, VA in a couple of weeks, and I've been invited by a friend to meet him.This book is filled with the history of conveniences in the American home... The evolution of plumbing (and how the plumbing worked with your cistern), quite a bit about heating (including your coal-fired furnace) and a bit on laundry irons that I havn't read yet.If this book interests you, let me know and I'll pick up an autographed copy for you.Regards, Steve
*A two family house I once owned was built in 1884. The steam radiators, installed sometime after the house was built, were heated by a gas fed boiler. On the wall next to the boiler, was a little framed page detailing the operation of what was probably a previous boiler. The fuel it refers to is "coke". Is this the same thing as coal? It sounded similar: feed the fire in the morning, clean ashes once per day. On the back of the page, someone had kept a record of how many tons they used each winter during the years between WWI and WWII. I think the consumption was between 11 and 14 tons per year. (2,000 sq. ft. heated space) As far as I can tell, the heating systems used in the house were one or two wood stoves in each apartment, then radiators with the coke boiler, then an oil fired boiler which was later converted to gas.When I bought the place I changed out the ancient boiler for a new one. After a few years of banging radiators, leaking steam pipes, one hot apartment and one freezing apartment, I junked my $2500 boiler and had duct work put in for zoned gas fed forced air for each apartment. I wonder what the next 100 years will bring?
*Bill R - THANKS for recommending The Grainger/Illinois Engineering Experiment Station reports on residential heating.I found a later copy of this research at St. Louis Public Library - and I've ordered "The Quiet Indoor Revolution."These posts are all so good! So much information. Thank you very much for taking the time to write all those interesting tidbits down. I plan to cut and paste this information to my own file and use it as my writing project progresses.If anyone wants to tell me more - [in the words of Ross Perot] "I'm all ears!"Rose [email protected]
*rich.. if i remember correctly.. coke is the by -product of coal gasification...many of the gas plants created gas for street lighting by heating coal to remove the gas.. the ((coke )) was then burned seperately by industry and homewowners..it still had many btu's left after the gas had been extracted.coke burns hotter than coal.. so alot of it was mfr'd for the steel industry..that's all i recollect...
*Rose - I grew up on a farm south of Carlinville, Illinois. (Not too far north of Alton - we still have relatives in Fosterburg) We always had both a well and a cistern. Both went dry frequently with 4 kids in the house. We were only allowed to bathe once a week, on Saturday night. The cold water was hooked up to the well, since it was better for drinking. The hot water came from the cistern, since it was softer.There were valves all over the basement for switching one thing or another back and forth from the cistern to the well, depending on which one had the most water at the time. The cistern filled up quickly after a rain, but the well held on longer, and would fill up overnight. Taking a shower was quite an adventure. You'd just about get the water adjusted right, and the cistern pump kicked in. That would make the water too hot, and you had to turn it down. Then the well water pump would kick in and you'd get a shot of cold water. The occasional cleaning of the cistern was kinda fun. (When I was a kid) We'd climb down in it, scoop up the mud, shovel it into buckets and haul it out with ropes. Never had coal heat, though.
*Ron - I tried to send you an email, but it came back saying "bad e-mail address". (which I got from Breaktime)At any rate - there is an article on Sears Catalogue Homes in Carlinville, IL posted at a construction-type website whose URL I hesitate to post here for fear I'll get sent far away to a dark place. Is it legal to post info about other websites here?If you're interested, Ron, send me an email and I'll give you the URL. [btw, Carlinville Illinois has the largest collection of Sears Homes in the country.]Rose
*Rose - I've updated my profile here at Breaktime a couple of times, but my old email address keeps coming back to haunt me. My new one is [email protected]. I sent you a test message Monday AM.I'm altogether too well aware about the Sears home thing - There's an area of town that's 80% Sears homes. The're all pretty small, and have poorly concieved additions hanging off the sides of many of them. Never cared for them much........As fort posting website info - I don't think it's bad form unless ou're trying to post a URL for personal gain.
*Ron - you're right about some of those Sears Homes having been seriously remuddled, but IMHO, part of the process of getting an area recognized as "historically worthy" is educating folks in the community as to the value of what they have there.When these homes are opened up for the annual Christmas tour, the biggest response is from people outside of Carlinville.Sears Homes are becoming a real phenomenon across the country and I'm glad to see Illinois is getting recognized as having so many of these catalogue homes.About them being small - you're right - they are very small, but it's important that we preserve our "workers' homes" as well as our grandiose and ostentatious mansions.Don't mean to go on and on here, but historical architecture makes my heart go pitter pat. And those catalogue homes in Carlinville - 152 them lined up like little soldiers in a 12 block area - are something special.Thanks for the e-mail. Rose
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I am writing a book about mechanical systems in turn of the century homes and I've toured many old homes and I've also researched and studied DOZENS of 75-125 year old books, but there are still have a handful of questions which remain unanswered - specifically about the day to day use of the kitchen stove and the coal furnace.
For instance, was a cold air pit at the base of a gravity fed coal furnace used for combustion air or for introducing fresh air into the home? How big a problem were bad smells and black dust [from the coal furnace]? How was the coal loaded into the coal chute? [by shovelful or another way?]
In the kitchen - how did ash-chutes work on coal or wood cook stoves?
And how were flat irons heated up? Were laundry stoves in common use? How were they used?
Did the rainwater cistern ever run dry? Was there a diverter valve on the outside downspout for water that went into the cistern?
If anyone can answer these questions - one or all - I'd be most grateful. Or if you can direct me to an individual that could offer some help, I'd appreciate it!
Thanks!
Rose Thornton
[email protected]
Alton, IL
*Rose, I can remember this much clearly... The coal furnace at home and at the one at my grandparents' were each in the basement. Each home had a "coal bin" in a room (about 10' x 12') adjacent to the furnace. The coal was taken by the shovelful from the bin to the furnace. To fill the coal bin, there was a door at grade, similar to a crawl space door, where the coal could be dumped into the bin. The coal truck operator would back up near the door, open it, insert a metal coal chute (similar to a child's slide), and shovel the coal off the truck onto the chute, where it would slide down into the coal bin.The coal furnace had a grate where the coal actually burned. Dad would get up in the middle of the night and, by moving some handles, "shake" the grate, allowing cinders to drop through and permit the passage of air to a few new shovel loads of coal. As I recall, grandpa's furnace had some kind of electric grate shaker, but I could be wrong.The area around the coal bin became pretty dirty with coal dust, and outside the house, snow quickly turned grey with combustion byproducts. Inside the houses things were toasty warm, with no smell that I can recall. Both households used cheesecloth in the floor registers, and that trapped dust in the warm air convection system.Ah, the memories!Hope this helped, Steve
*Rose, all that I described was about 55 years ago, not a 100 (I'm old, but not THAT old). Other than a truck (as opposed to a horse and wagon), not much else would have changed from earlier times.Still hope I was of some help,Agedly, Steve
*Ours was a little different, back then, I think every house had a slightly different set-up from their neighbours. Up to the '50s in Toronto, deliveries of ice, milk, bread, and coal were made by horse-drawn carts. There were trucks in the 'burbs, but downtown was still horses. Because the chute was at the side of the house, the colliers carried sacks of coal to the chute (ours was a little above knee-high, probably raised to keep it above the snow). The furnace was double-walled so that air went in through an opening about the height of the fire that was fed from a single large return in the floor in the front hall and followed the outside of the heat-dome to the "octopus" (each room had its own 8" duct from the furnace to the register). The furnace also had a sealed bustle boiler that fed hot water registers in the 2cnd floor bedrooms. I don't actually know how the boiler worked (heat tubes ?) There was also an auxillary waterheater that burned mostly garbage, but that could be supplemented by the odd lump of coal. It warmed water in a tank in the attic via convection. The tank was sealed and a city water line was directly attached, it topped up the tank as water was drawn to a faucet. The basement was a little dirty, as was the snow near the chute after delivery days, but not nearly as bad as you'd expect. Because the air circuit was fed from the 1st floor (ie: no air going into the living area was drawn from the basement), there was almost no coal dust carried up. The mechanical grate system was like Steve described. It was in two layers: the upper held the fire, the lower held the hot ciders, ash went to a set of long narrow trays that were periodically pulled out and emptied into large steel pails. The grates were solid steel (cast iron ?) rods that were sitting in saddle bushings and inter-connected by gears: a 2" square rod poked out of the furnace just below the door and was turned by what loked like a car crank - 1/2 turn right, full turn left (the rods/grates had to be rotated this way twice each day or they would eventually sag). The ash grate was just turned one full turn. That's about all I can remember.
*You asked about stoves and flat-irons. In the city, my parents had an electic stove, my grandparents had gas; when we lived in Muskoka we had the old traditional wood-fired stove; when I lived in St, John NB (I was there building the St. John Harbour Bridge in '67), my first apartment had a wood-fired stove converted to oil - smelly. My paternal grandmother heated flat-irons right on the gas stove, my mother had an alcohol burner gizmo - both had electic irons early in the '50s.
*RoseTry this link - Dan Holohan Inc.Dan might know the answers or at least point you in the correct direction.HTH,Phil
*Here's a little more information about coal fired furnaces from my memory as a kid in the late 40's and 50's. Usually if you hand fired the furnace you used coal that was in large chunks - 2" diameter or greater. The hand fired furnaces usually had a damper for combustion air that was hooked to a chain that went around a wheel mounted just above the furnace on the first floor of the house. This damper was used for heat control - open the damper, more combustion air, more heat - close it down when it got too hot.Had to remember to shut the damper at night, then go down to the furnace and bank the coals up. Banking them with the closed damper would let them burn enough so you still had some fire in them in the morning. In the morning you spread out the coals, added more fuel, opened the damper and pretty soon had a warm house. If you didn't close the damper you either woke up feeling like you were in the middle of the furnace or, if the fire burned out, very cold.Some folks had what was called a stoker. It had a hopper that you filled with coal - called "stoker coal", it was crushed to pieces sized about 3/4" diameter. When the thermostat on the first floor called for heat, a motor drove an auger that moved coal from the hopper into the furnace and, if I remember correctly, also drove a fan that forced combustion air into the firebox. With a stoker, you only had to shovel coal once a day and being somewhat automated, the heat was more even. As with a hand fired furnace, you still had to remove and ash (great for putting on icy sidewalks) and the clinkers (cinders) on a regular basis.Yes, downspouts that fed rainwater into cisterns did have diverter valves you could turn if the cistern was full. You will still occasionally find them on older houses that have the original gutter system.My grandmother had a laundry stove, but by the time I came along she was using electric irons and had a water heater, so it was used mainly as a trash burner or for supplementary heat in the laundry room in the winter.Then there's the time when my grandfather used my grandmother's washing machine wringer to squeeze the juice out of rhubarb to make wine.......but that's another story.Feel free to e-mail me with any more questions.
*Possibly not much help, but for wood stoves you might look at:http://www.antiquestoves.com/not much information but there is a links page. Perhaps you can contact some of the individuals who would be able to fill you in.Some interesting history of flat irons at:http://www.uq.net.au/~zzbdavis/A site selling antique irons, not much info, but perhaps someone to contact:http://www.irontalk.com/My grandparents lived on an old homestead until the 1950s with no running water and only a wood stove for heat and cooking. I was too young to remember much, but I remember my grandmother flipping some water on the top of the stove and judging how the droplets danced around to gauge how hot it was. She would then fiddle with the air vents at the bottom of the fire box and perhaps add some appropriate sized wood (kindling to bring it up fast or larger pieces to hold the temperature for a longer time). When she moved and got an electric range, she claimed she could never bake bread or cook things as well on the electric as she could on the old wood stove. I do remember that she baked great bread, pies, and cakes on the old wood stove and I never remember them being burned or uncooked in the center. I believe she put the flat irons directly on the stove, but I could be wrong. I also remember that one of the lids (for lack of remembering the proper name for the round cast iron pieces that could be removed over the fire box on the top of the stove) was a series of concentric rings that could be removed to allowed something to be supported directly over the hot coals without the cast iron piece under it, but I can't remember what the utensil was. We also used coal when I was a kid, but I don't remember much except that I got into trouble for getting all dirty in the coal bin... Both anthracite and bituminous coal were available - the anthracite was more expensive but somewhat cleaner and burned hotter. Most people burned bituminous. I do remember that there was a lot of coal dust in the air in the basement after a coal delivery.
*Rose,Some of the cisterns around here had a neat little system where the rain filled a bucket first then diverted the cleaner water into the cistern. Want a pic?KK
*KK - you ask - do I want a picture of a cistern? Yes! And thank you for all these great responses. I plan to cut and paste them for my ever growing pile of reference papers. I especially love the personal reminiscences - but the technical info is also a tremendous help.Thanks again for the fast and thorough replies.Rose ThorntonPS. Today, we were in a dark corner of the basement of our 1904 built house here in Alton, IL and we took out some rotted wood which was part of the coal bin at one time. There in the cracks and crevices of the floor were dozens of itty bitty pieces of coal. I picked some up and ran it through my fingers and thought - the last time coal came sliding down that chute the world must have looked very different. And after I dropped the coal back on the ground, my hands were covered in black dust. Messy stuff!
*I grew up in a large Queen Anne house which was heated by an ancient coal furnace. We used anthracite and a hopper system, but there was still gritty dust all over the house. I can remember getting in trouble for not moving the candles on the mantelpiece when my mother discovered concentric half circles of dust from many dustings. The tedium of dusting the balusters of the open staircase in the hall was just unbelievable! We also had a room sized coal bid loaded by a chute from the truck in the basement, forbidden, but fun to play in.