Bert Stephenson

[Dave]

My wife knew an older couple in Watertown we used to visit who had built a house in a nice part of the city after they retired and installed a coal furnace. People just didn't get the same physical or psychological warmth from a gas furnace, I guess. Anyway, recognizing they were getting older, he bought (probably one of the last) Iron Fireman. This device was bolted to the floor in front of the furnace and consisted mostly of hopper into which one poured or shoveled I think a couple of days supply of coal and an augur that stuck right through a newly installed door to dump coal right on to the fire. Another device removed the ashes. But there were evidently different versions, because I saw a discussion on the web where one person had the ash removal device and another did not. That discussion is here:

blog.modernmechanix.com/2009/06/10/the-house-of-a-thousand-servants/


But here's the post where The Iron Fireman is best described: (same link)

"During the mid- 30s we had an”Iron Fireman” system. It had a hopper, which was filled with anthracite pea-coal every couple of days (by me!). The hopper fed an electricity-powered auger which slowly fed the coal into the center of the furnace. The coal was pushed outward toward the edge of the circular firebox plate. The ashes fell over the edge, and another device; this one a chain with little plates on it, dragged the ashes out and dumped them into a 5 gallon pail. From there they had to be carried out to the curb (by me!)."

The most interesting thing, to me at least, was that this was all thermostatically controlled, and the thermostat included a wind-up clock which could be set. After setting the thermostat, which was, I think, in the living room, the temperature of the room would control when the auger fed more coal to the furnace. The wind-up clock shut the system down during the night, and started it up in the morning at a pre-set time. So, we got up to a warm house; not like most people we knew, who had to go to the basement and bank the fire at night; get up to a cold house; go down to the basement, and throw on more coal to get things started."

The Iron Fireman company still exists, but I couldn't find an example of the old coal-augur type in their online catalog. I wonder what Bert thought of them?

[Dave]

Here's all I could find:

[keith]

I remember two houses with octopus furnaces. The one in Fergus Falls, MN, was coal fired and auger fed. The hopper was a lot larger than the one shown in your drawing. The mid-west mostly burns soft coal which means more coal burned & more ash & clinkers. I think it was controled by a thermostat but I don't remember a timer. As the oldest, it was my job to keep the hopper filled and haul out the ash and clinkers.

When we moved to Jamestown, ND, we had an octopus which had been converted to oil (no gas there until at least 20 years later). No hopper to fill & no clinkers: almost heaven.

[Dave]

You know, my first house in Syracuse ... our first house, actually ... had an oil conversion coal furnace. I hadn't thought of that.

For the non automated furnace ... and I use the term lightly ... did you have a thin chain that ran from the furnace damper up through the floor to little device on the wall that looked like a ships telegraph. It had a twist know for controlling the damper from upstairs. In one house we had one, but it didn't work and my father would probably have not used it in any case. He was of the "look in the firebox before adjusting it" school.

[keith]

I don't remember any remote damper control device but it was a long time ago. We moved into that house when I was 8, moved away when I was 10.

[Dave]

I didn't see the upstairs damper controls in every house, but it's possible that only some of the furnaces had them. My father told me that in one of the homes where we lived either ours or the neighbors in the other flat had no damper at all ... one wonders how that came about ... and instead jamed something into position on the air intake and lived with that single "setting."

[fiona]

OMG! I remember those old coal stoves and furnaces! We had a coal stove in our kitchen, upstairs, on Bacon Street, in the family house. It was a monster, but by God, did it ever throw heat. My grandmother used to wash out things - socks, underwear - dish towels and hang them on the pipe, which snaked across the kitchen and into the wall. there was constantly a profusion of Irish lace on the ceilings from the coal dust and it was my job to get it down. I had along pole with a brush on the top and I had to go over the whole ceiling every week, especially the corners. I hated that job. My other job was to spread the ashes with a garden rake on the drive way in the winter. Horriible work. We also had a coal furnace in the basement and I have vivid memories of the truck - the coal truck - waking to the thunder of all that coal going down the chute into the bin - and the smell and the dust. A Funny story: My father decided he was going to roast a turkey in the basement furnace - why - God only knows - because he was my father and he did stuff like that - so, he wrapped the sucker up in tin foil and buried in down in the coals with some potatoes. I think he must have fallen asleep in front of the TV when my mother came screaming in - there was a terrible smell coming from the basement - guess what it was? Bingo! The turkey was completly char blackened, a little stump of a thing and the praties - forget it ! The whole house stunk for days. It was terrible. My mother NEVER let my father forget it either. But, the mince meat pies that came out of that coal oven for funerals and holidays were delectable - the crusts were so light and brown - like eating air - some where in heaven my grandfather is sitting in front of that roaring stove on a cold winter night. He has a brown glass bottle of Pabst Blue Ribbon on the table, two glasses and he and my uncle Dave are playing cards. The smoke from their Lucky Strikes curls around there heads and I can still hear the slap, slap, slap of the cards as they hit the table.

[Dave]

What a wonderful memory, and wonderfully described. I should say vividly described. Mine are similar, but Dad never tried to cook on our coal furnace. Do you remember how dirty the coal guys were? Working all day in the stuff the coal dust got into their pores and reddened their eyes around the edges, white beacons shining out from their darkened faces. The coal truck was divided into three partitions ... I can't remember how much coal by weight was between each baffle ... and they'd set up a portable chute from the back of the truck to our cellar window over the coal bin and then tip the dump up and the coal came down the chute into the cellar.

My uncle over on Neilson Street burned twice as much coal as we did in the same size flat. We could never figure out why. We were toasty warm all the time. He was in fact on the second floor and those Cornhill houses had not a bit of insulation in them.

[Dave]

[Dave]

Here's the wide shot with UFA center, looking west: