'Adieu to Anthracite'; an ode to sitting round a coal fire at home.

[Reorte]

Going back to how well coal heating actually works, I have lived in a house with no central heating (there were some electric storage heaters in a few rooms), no double glazing. The storage heaters were useless but the downstairs rooms with fires in them were very pleasant. Yes, there was ice inside on the windows upstairs too, but the duvet did the job (although I'd sometimes get dressed under it).

 

I really liked that place, and the bit I didn't like about it wasn't anything to do with heating but with a rodent infestation.

 

I also lived in a modern flat for a while (early 2000s build) with only electric heating, which was considerably less pleasant. IMO coal fires are not efficient but they are effective, at least for the room they're in.

 

[melmerby]

37 minutes ago, Reorte said:

 IMO coal fires are not efficient but they are effective, at least for the room they're in.

 

Bit of a contradiction?

 

(Not) Efficient = (Not) "productive of desired effect".

Effective = "producing a decided, decisive, or desired effect"

 

Both from the same dictionary.

 

 

[Nearholmer]

Efficiency is a ratio of output vs input.

 

it’s perfectly possible for a thing to be highly efficient, and completely ineffective (a bicycle, as a means of travelling from London to Edinburgh inside an hour).

 

Or deeply inefficient, yet highly effective (an F15 jet fighter as a means of getting from London to Edinburgh inside a week).

 

Being a bit cheeky, I’d suggest that either your dictionary is deficient, or possibly you’ve overlooked the prime definition of ‘efficient’, in favour of a secondary one.

 

Or, you are simply teasing us.

 

 

Edited May 3, 2021 by Nearholmer

[jonny777]

1 hour ago, Reorte said:

Going back to how well coal heating actually works, I have lived in a house with no central heating (there were some electric storage heaters in a few rooms), no double glazing. The storage heaters were useless but the downstairs rooms with fires in them were very pleasant. Yes, there was ice inside on the windows upstairs too, but the duvet did the job (although I'd sometimes get dressed under it).

 

I really liked that place, and the bit I didn't like about it wasn't anything to do with heating but with a rodent infestation.

 

I also lived in a modern flat for a while (early 2000s build) with only electric heating, which was considerably less pleasant. IMO coal fires are not efficient but they are effective, at least for the room they're in.

 

 

Yes, that is true - and I think it stems from the fact that given enough adjacent heat, a lump of coal will catch fire and burn quite well with large flames. This is in contrast to smokeless fuels which will burn, given a good hot draught, but only burn with a small flickering flame. 

 

Of course the secret to this is the 'hot body radiation' (cue sniggers from usual suspects) and the formula "Sigma, T to the 4th". It seems to me that the burning properties of house coal allow a fire to reach a higher temperature (and hence radiate more heat) more quickly than an anthracite fuelled one, which needs plenty of air from underneath. 

 

I don't use much house coal, but it is nice to add near the start of an open fire, and then pile on the smokeless pieces once the temperature is high, which can be judged by the colour of the fire. Red is not warm enough, lightening shades of yellow are much more favourable. 

 

There seems to be an art to creating a decent smokeless open fire, but without small amounts of house coal the art is going to present an increasing challenge.

Edited May 3, 2021 by jonny777

[tomparryharry]

First:- Coal does NOT, repeat NOT, burn. Coal is heated up to drive out the hydrocarbons, which, with the correct fuel-air mixture, will combust.  Chucking coal on a fire in the vain hope it will burn (which it doesn't ) requires knowledge about the consumption process to get the most out of the fuel. 

 

That said, I've seen so-called so-called 'drivers & firemen to whom I wouldn't trust with a packet of peanuts... Aargh!!!

 

Post rant, We've just taken down the rear chimney on our property: the neighbours took theirs down years ago.  I instructed the builder to 'take down the rear, but leave & repoint the front one'. "Why?"

 

" Just in case, just in case..." 

[melmerby]

8 minutes ago, tomparryharry said:

First:- Coal does NOT, repeat NOT, burn. Coal is heated up to drive out the hydrocarbons, which, with the correct fuel-air mixture, will combust. 

Off course if you collect these gases without allowing them to burn you will end up with coke as a residue, which will burn in the presence of oxygen.

[tomparryharry]

Primary air, and secondary air, and the air temperature. 

 

Coal would indeed be fired 'upside down'.  If it's a hard coal, with a layered structure, then trying to get heat from it is bl**dy hard work. Funnily enough, if it's fired 'on its side' then it burns (sorry, combusts ) really well.  sadly, a lot of people don't recognise coke, and as such, chuck it out with the ashes...

 

If I'm making a fire for the house,. then I put a thin layer of  the larger bits of 'ash' back into the fire, to really get my moneys' worth. 

 

Skinflint, Moi? 

[APOLLO]

Ah the good old coal fire !!

 

Born in a large terraced house in south Wigan we had a cast iron coal fired range in the large kitchen. it had a back boiler that gravity heated the copper cylinder in the bathroom, standing there polished to perfection by my dad.. This range had two ovens and mums home made bread (and, of course pies) were superb, as was the toast made on bent wire on the open flames. All six of us lived in the kitchen in winter, small B&W TV and all. Just a small gas fire in the sitting room that went out when "the shilling" ran out - had to remember to light it again - with a match - in a "gassy" room !!!!!!!!!! We also had a couple of stinky paraffin heaters, and expensive to use electric "fire". A fan heater later bought was useful - but again expensive to use. Coal was delivered to the cellar my scruffy mucky men traipsing through the house every couple of weeks, ten bob a bag. Once a year the chimney sweep came - that was fun !!!!!!!!!!

 

One day catastrophe - the back boiler burst and out came the range, new boiler and normal tiled fireplace was fitted - no more bread baked that way - but the toast continued.

 

Mums job was to light the fire every morning, coal and wood sprinkled with paraffin, small coal shovel stood up at the fireplace front, throw on a lighted match and put a large newspaper sheet in front to draw the fire. Occasionally the paper caught fire, mum just poked it onto the smoking coal. When it was burning well back went the carpet - all good fun.

 

Well in 1969 I started my engineering apprenticeship at the Gas Board up the road - part of my work was with gas fitters and completing my first & intermediate years gas fitting course - Yes, we got a superb Canon Icebreaker fire and gas fired cylinder heater, at employee discount and I fitted both - utter luxury (but the rest of the house was still unheated). 

 

We moved out in 1972, the house was due for demolition, but the fire, water heater and polished cylinder came with us - From then on NO MORE COAL - apart from the toast it was not missed.

 

Brit15

[Guest]

I’m reminded of my grandmother’s house which had a gas supply running to the fireplace. It wasn’t for heating. That was done by a coal fired Parkray. The gas supply was purely for the gas poker used to light the coal.

[Reorte]

49 minutes ago, 30801 said:

I’m reminded of my grandmother’s house which had a gas supply running to the fireplace. It wasn’t for heating. That was done by a coal fired Parkray. The gas supply was purely for the gas poker used to light the coal.

There's  the end of a (disconnected) gas pipe poking in to the side of the fireplace here, but the fireplace is a modern-looking affair even though it's an old house (machine-sawn stone with the front rather unconvincingly bashed). I'm assuming it's because there was a gas fire there at some point, it's probably too new for what you describe but you've made me wonder.

[Guest]

9 minutes ago, Reorte said:

There's  the end of a (disconnected) gas pipe poking in to the side of the fireplace here, but the fireplace is a modern-looking affair even though it's an old house (machine-sawn stone with the front rather unconvincingly bashed). I'm assuming it's because there was a gas fire there at some point, it's probably too new for what you describe but you've made me wonder.

 

It was supported housing (Don't pull the wrong string in the bathroom or the warden will think you've had a fall) built probably in the 60's. The tap was a school bunsen burner affair where you pushed a rubber hose on to it and turned it on.

I don't know at what point regulations say having an open gas tap two feet away from a coal fire might be a bad thing.

[Danemouth]

In Cardiff council houses had a gas point near each fireplace for a gas poker, certainly the two my parents lived in did, they were postwar builds.

 

Very handy in the 1960s when we switched to gas fires.

 

And yes I remember the bathroom freezing in winter, eventually my father who used to get up first for work started lighting a paraffin heater in there for the rest of us who arose an hour afterwards.

 

Dave

 

p.s. Both houses were fitted originally with the awful (and potential dangerous) Dorman and Smith electrical sockets

[APOLLO]

Electrical sockets were a luxury in our old house, one only upstairs on the landing. Every room had one of these dangling from the ceiling, one of which powered my old TT layout - Dads darkroom had three in series !!!!!!!!!!!

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

[APOLLO]

As to the old gas "bulb end tap" they became outlawed when North Sea gas conversion work was done, replaced (free if I remember correctly) with a plug in safety type. We fitted literally many hundreds of those as pre conversion works - working 12 hour days 7 days a week during the rolling 3 day coal miners strike electricity blackouts in the early 70's, by torchlight when necessary.

C day (conversion day - sector by sector) in Wigan was hectic (Every other Monday), I was with the new cooker team rolling out old cookers & connecting new ones (sold at a substantial discount) - 6am to midnight. 20 or more a day !!

 

Lots of £££££££££££'s for a young lad back then, saved for my first car !!

 

Come think of it, many local authorities brought in clean air regulations back then in the 70's, and again many subsidised gas fires were fitted to existing fireplaces, a lot had a convenient gas point alongside. Three or four a day was commonplace.

 

I got fed up of the fitting side and opted for the distribution side at the end of my apprenticeship - But the hours got longer !!

 

Brit15

[Adrian Stevenson]

We still have a coal fire at home which heats a back boiler . Patch the cat loves it.

[alastairq]

I sometimes burn locally grown hemp 'logs' [Hemplogz], available at a local farm shop for a reasonable pension-price.

 

They leave a lot of fine ash. They also need a bit of 'help' from other wood to burn & heat well.

 

Being on a pension I constantly look for cheap & cheery means of heating, so my [rented] house has a Danish Morso log burning box.   This will burn dug-up fossil fuels as well, but I burn wood.   Not 'wet' wood, but my garden is littered with stacks of logs [AKA chunks] from several felled trees left on my driveway by a friendly tree surgeon.  The log burner really does heat up the living room in winter[& spring, & autumn]  but my lifestyle isn't suited to a family of more than one [me]...

I have oil central heating and hot water....but oil is costly, mainly because it has to be purchased as a job lot. So I use  solely for bath water. Oil also uses electricity, quite a bit really, so is doubly costly.

Everything else is random, rural electric.  To burn logs properly requires an awful lot of storage space, if intending to take advantage  of what nature provides?  

The current ash die-back epidemic has proven to be a  blessing, since ash is a 'hard' wood, which generally has a low water content, so dries out  fairly quickly.,  ready to be burnt.

Conifers may burn easily, but they also burn quickly, and don't project anything like the heat of , say, ash. [tree, not residue]

The Morso log burner is basically a heat box, rather than a focus of social gathering...Being self contained, the odd pungent pong goes up the flue rather than into my lungs.

So, my 'equipment' consists of a large, long axe, a small  electro-hydraulic log splitter [my tree surgeon chum chainsaws the logs into lengths my fire can accommodate, before tipping on my driveway], a 2nd hand [free] leccy chainsaw, should I need it, helps as well...Burning logs in the proper fashion [not from gucci plaggy bags, all shaped to 'look nice' stacked by the fireside] requires a level of physical ability fast diminishing as I get older and older.  Hence the little log splitter, which does quite large tree rounds, which are a sod to lift at my age.  [2 to 3 foot diameter, some of them!]

[peach james]

1 hour ago, alastairq said:

I sometimes burn locally grown hemp 'logs' [Hemplogz], available at a local farm shop for a reasonable pension-price.

 

My usual way of heating is to burn wood as long as I have dry wood to burn.  This year we've burned about 500L of oil and a cord of wood or so.  I have about 1.5 cords stacked to dry over the summer (8'x20'x16"), and that should provide the majority of the heat for next year.  I've got some more stacked down the back, and a couple more trees to take out- they're just Alder, but its still free. 
I've a gas chainsaw, access to a gas woodsplitter & between myself and next door, we did about 5 cords of wood from some trees that fell due to wind, and the alders I dropped.  The big ends of the Hemlock's next door were big enough that it was 4 square to cut with my 18" bar (have to cut through from both sides, so the tree is ~40" diameter).  We'd have taken them out as sawlogs, but getting them from where they fell to the road wasn't possible given the 30-40' to the trail & the size.