Community Chat

[Pqfan]

Oil?

I don't even know but whatever it was our landlord sure was stingy with it lol.

[Desertdi]

House was built in 1917 and had a coal furnace.   After WW2, converted to gas.

[qualitygal]

At the house I mainly grew up in, they had coal. Coal chute, big old oven in the basement next to mom's wringer washer. She had a walk-out basement, to go out and hang our laundry on the lines. There's a rollback for you.

[151949]

When I was little on the farm wed had coal - on our land was a  seam of coal and my Dad and uncles would spend all summer digging it up and my Dad put ours in a bin in the cellar. My uncles would take it home in their pickup trucks. I imagine that seam of coal saved our family a fortune in buying it but they certainly had to work hard to get it out of the ground with picks and shovels. After my Dad had a stroke at a fairly young age we moved to the city and had a gas furnace and AC in the bedrooms.

[ID2]

Wow so many had coal furnaces when you were growing up? I always thought that was waaaay back in the early 1900's! My mother talked of always being cold in the house she grew up in. I grew up in the 50's and had the same type of gas furnace that we have now.

[151949]

I can remember waking up in the night freezing and we would call my Mom to wake dad up to throw some coal on the fire.Pretty soon it would be toasty warm again. He had to get up early to mind the stock before he went to work so he always had the house very nice and warm when we got up for school. 

[151949]

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@ID2 wrote:

Wow so many had coal furnaces when you were growing up? I always thought that was waaaay back in the early 1900's! My mother talked of always being cold in the house she grew up in. I grew up in the 50's and had the same type of gas furnace that we have now.

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I think it depends on where you lived. I grew up in coal country, so it was natural we would use coal.I think they made coal furnaces illegal due to pollution sometime in the 50's or early 60's, but when I was a kid we could see the smoke from all the chimneys as we walked to school and smell the coal burning.

[RetRN]

We heated with wood. I remember grampa used coal and had a coal bin in his basement. I wish we would have used oil or gas, so much cleaner.

[violann]

Coal furnace in the cellar (not basement!) and floor register about 2 1/2' square, of cast iron, in the living room. If you were freezing, you could stand on it and be instantly warm, but the down side was that if anything (jewelry, pencils, coins etc.) went through the grate, they were difficult/impossible to retrieve.

No hot water, no heat on the second floor. Only one bathroom, also on the second floor.

Coal bin in the basement.

[PinkyPetunia]

The house I grew up in had radiators in every room.  There was a gas fired boiler in the basement.