Coal delivery

[Dave Mellor NJ]

I always go on the A site

[old31]

Kind of odd that they would make the box be raised so high. I would think that just tilting the box would accomplish the same thing. Not sure.

[Keith True]

That's to dump coal into chutes and bins.Coal bin sides were never at ground level,if you wanted to stockpile the second load had to have somewhere to go.With a furnace in the cellar the coal had to be somewhat above the furnace so it could gravity feed into it.

[Joe K]

I grew up in a house which formerly had a "coal room" - and a manually fired coal furnace.

The builder/originator of the house had the house built in 1902 - and he was the coal and oil dealer in town - having bought the business from a great-uncle (who effectively drove the business in to the ground before sale - a family story.)

The furnace was "centered" in the house. "Gravity air" it took its air supply from a 24" diameter concrete flue which started outside under the semi-circular front steps. As children we took delight in the "tunnel" thus created when the furnace was removed. But today I think of how "dry" that house must have been in the winter with outside dewpoints below freezing.

The coal room was adjacent to the furnace in that cellar and the furnace was fed manually using a wheelbarrow. The room was notable in being "planked" on the three exposed sides with "tongue & groove" planking - to keep the dust in.

But the actual coal was slid in through a cellar window - no chute, no hopper - not even a proper door. A tilt up sash with "wavy" glass much like the rest of the cellar windows.

Once the coal furnace was removed (NEW oil furnace - 1960) and the "tunnel" filled in, it left about a 6 x 10 "sandbox" in the floor which became for a while the play area for a five year old me. Dad later mixed up wheelbarrow loads of concrete and "covered" the play area - much to my consternation.

"Dad, it was a lot more fun with the tunnel - why didn't you leave it that way."

1902 and done by the fuel dealer, there was not a stitch of insulation in that house - not even storm windows. Fuel was free (effectively) for him. Dad spent MANY weekends knocking out the fire stops (balloon construction) and pouring in loose insulation from the attic. He later found a complete set of large pane matching period storm windows from a house recycler in New Bedford.

Mom said the first winter in the kitchen she spend in "galoshes" trying to keep her feet warm.

Dad used to joke "The oil furnace came 'on' in Mid-October, and stayed on until mid-April." IIRC, the first year's fuel bill was over $1K - and this with oil at 17 cents a gallon. (5000 gallons of oil?) With the insulation and improvements he cut this down to about $250. (1400 gallons) It was a 14 room house on three floors.

Joe K

[Seth Swoboda]

1938-1939 Ford.

[Gene F]

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Great story Joe

[Joe K]

Originally Posted by Gene F

Great story Joe

That was quite a house. On the third floor it had the "maids quarters" which was a garret room - but it had its own bath. A copper tub with wooden handrail/surround, and a toilet with the tank on the wall and a pull-chain. Haute couture for 1902.

Dad was so proud when he scrapped the tub. "I got $75 from the scrap-man."

Today such a tub would be be $1750, if you could find it.

The house still exists in Bridgewater, MA today: hard on their "lower campus" the house has been bought by Bridgewater State University - and is the domicile for the University President. I imagine they've $olved any other problems that were still with the house when we left it in 1968.


Joe K

[51504bat]

My Dad grew up in Northeast Pa, coal country. Of course the house had a coal furnace. Sometime in the late '50's my Dad and his BIL had my grandfather convert the heating system to fuel oil. You would have thought that they killed the pope. But several years down the road similar conversions began to happen all over town.

[mercman from oz]

[51504bat]

Did some further investigating. Apparently L.K. Burket and Bro was from Wayne, PA where I grew up as a kid.

Early ads: Edgar C. Humphrey’s Tin & Sheet Iron Worker, L.K. Burket & Brother, T. T. Worrall & Sons – Radnor Historical Society | Your Town and My Town (radnorhistory.org)


L.K. Burket and Brothers, now operating more than 60 years later under the same firm name, could sell the housewife “the best Lehigh and Susquehanna Coal at the lowest market rates” as well as “the best Virginia pine kindling wood, two or three sticks of which will be of service in getting up a quick fire, at a trifling cost, for an early breakfast or hurried meal.”


Attached is a 1939 photo of the Lincoln dealer pictured in the OP.


https://ohtm.pastperfectonline.com/a...B-136518194839

[Dave Mellor NJ]

Looks like a Ford in that showroom

[David in San Antonio]

I had a house in Minneapolis built around 1905. I don’t know the original heating system but when I got it there was a gas-fired furnace. Which was fine. However the walls were completely uninsulated and there were large gaps between the foundation and the bottom sills. I caulked the sills and covered the windows with shrink wrap. Ha! In the coldest parts of the winter the furnace ran 24 hours a day but the indoor temperature never hit 63 degrees. It was so drafty that candle flames would lay down horizontally. I can’t imagine trying to hear it with wood or coal.

[Bruce of MN]

My first house, a 1913 bungalow in Des Plaines, IL, had evidence of a coal room in the basement and a big grate in the main floor for gravity flow. The gas fired central heating furnace that it had in 1978 was old then and was a monster, surely 10X the size of a modern one. The previous owners hadn’t seen fit to sweep/mop up the remnants of coal dust!

[tin man]

My grand father had a AA high lift coal truck. Served him well through the 40s