Coal Furnace

The house I grew up in had a coal furnace that we used to heat the house in the winter. I wish I had a picture of the furnace, our "furnace room," and the "coal room" we had in the basement of the house. I am including a schematic type drawing of a stoker-fed coal furnace I found on the internet. I also added a picture of a coal furnace that looks similar to our furnace but not an exact match. 

coal furnace stoker set up

One of the jobs I had as a youth was to "clean the furnace." I inherited this job from Kelly when Kelly left home. (It was likely Kent's job before Kelly, but I do not remember that far back.) I also helped Kelly do this job many times before it became solely my responsibility. 

a coal furnace image from the internet

Cleaning the furnace included filling the hopper with coal, removing the clinkers, and lighting the fire when needed. 

The hopper is labeled in the image above. The stoker was the mechanical device on the left in the image that included the hopper, blower, and auger. The auger is labeled as the "worm" in the image. Filling the hopper was supposed to happen every day. For the most part, we remembered to do it every day.

If I did not remember to fill the hopper with coal, like I was supposed to do, the furnace fire would send smoke back through the wind box to the hopper (see image above), and eventually, the entire house would fill with smoke. About once per month, you would hear someone yell in the house "the furnace is smoking!" This was the signal that I forgot to fill the hopper with coal. It also meant that I was in trouble with Dad for not doing my job. I would rush downstairs, open the basement window in the furnace room and start shoveling coal into the hopper. 

Clinkers are by-products of burning coal. We had a "clinker grabber" tool. We would open the furnace door and grab out the glowing hot clinkers. We would place the clinkers in a set of 4 or 5 five-gallon buckets we kept in the furnace room. The clinkers would burn in a large ring. The ring was too big to remove from the furnace door as a single ring. So, we also had a long rod that we could use to break the ring apart. After all the buckets were filled with clinkers and ash, we would carry them outside and dump them in the driveway in the yard.   

clinker picture from the internet

We would light the fire in the furnace in the fall after it got cold enough that we needed to heat the house. In addition, the fire would go out sometimes for various reasons. Then, we had to light a new fire. If the fire went out during the day when no one was home, the inside of the furnace might get filled with coal because the feeder auger would continue moving coal into the furnace. Then, I had to use a shovel to remove the coal from the furnace and put it back into the hopper. 

It is not easy to get a chunk of coal to start burning. We would build a nest of newspaper, magazines, other pieces of paper, and a few small sticks inside the furnace and place a few pieces of coal in the top of the next. Next, we would light the newspaper. When the paper started burning, we would yell through the floor to whoever was upstairs to "turn the furnace up." When they turned the thermostat to a high temperature, the blower under the hopper (see image above) would turn on and "fan" the fire inside the furnace and hopefully make the fire hot enough to start the coal pieces on fire. 

Some days, it seemed like nothing would work to start the fire in the furnace. A few times, Dad would take a few pieces of coal and soak them in diesel fuel in an attempt to make them start burning. 

One evening, Kelly and I were trying to start the fire and we could not get it to burn. After a long time of trying, Kelly got some gasoline from the fuel tank outside (I think he thought that was what Dad used and not diesel fuel). We dropped a handful of coal in the gasoline and dipped a few pieces of paper in the gas as well. Then we built the nest inside the furnace and put the coal on top. It took a few minutes for us to get the nest and coal ready to light. 

Kelly stood on one side of the auger and I stood on the other. Kelly struck a match along the side of the furnace to light it. Then, he leaned to reach the match into the furnace. During the time after we got the gas-soaked paper and coal into the furnace and the time it took to strike the match. The air inside the furnace was filled with gasoline fumes. As Kelly reached to put the match in the furnace, the gas fumes ignited and flaming air came shooting out of the furnace door! It singed the hair on our arms and Kelly's eyelashes and eyebrows. We decided to leave the furnace fire until later. 

Right next to the furnace room, we had the coal room. The coal room was about 10 feet deep and 8 feet wide and 7 feet high. Dad would buy a load of coal each year in late September or early October. We would back the truck up to the coal shute door outside the back door of the house and use an auger to move the coal from outside to fill the coal room.

We replaced the coal furnace with a propane gas furnace when I was a Sophomore or Junior in high school. It was nice to have the gas furnace as it reduced the amount of "dust" in the air inside the house. It also relieved me of the responsibility of cleaning the furnace. However, the heat from the gas furnace did not seem as warm as the heat from the old coal furnace.