When I lived in Norwich in 1950 we had a coal fired steam heating system. There was a rudimentary thermostat to adjust the temperature in the house however, the furnace required banking at night and lots of work in the morning and attention during the day to keep the fire going to heat the water to make steam. It was a laborious task. I do not remember the processes in previous homes but assume it was similar.
Early in the morning Dad would start the ritual by shaking down the ashes from the previous nights burning. This process consisted of placing a handle on the outside connection of the grates at the bottom of the fire box. Then turning it back and forth so that the burned coal ashes and clinkers (unburned impurities left over in the burning process) to fall through the grate into the ash pit. This allowed room for fresh fuel to be added. One had to have enough experience to not allow the hot coals to escape y
et remove enough ashes that they did not retard the fire. You also had to pick out the "clinkers" (residue from low quality coal that wouldn't burn.) That way you had something to start the next batch of coal burning. It took a careful eye watching the process and then also avoiding getting the ash dust all over you.The next step was to shovel out the ashes into a 5 gallon paint pail for later discarding, close the ash pit door and adjust the intake dam
per, shovel in some fresh coal, check sight glass to gauge the water level in the boiler and add more as necessary. Then came the patience of waiting for the fire to build up to heat the water to make steam and for the steam to heat the radiators and the room to warm. This process would take about 20 minutes before the room became comfortably warm. In the mean time as the steam came out of the boiler the pipes would create a cacophony of clanks and groans from heat expansion or the pipes with the final hiss of the release valve at the end of the radiator pronouncing heat has arrived.
Adding more coal during the day usually fell to my mother as she was the only on at home and if heat was needed there was no one else to do it.
At night the process was nearly the same except you “banked the furnace” with several shovels-full of coal and the damper in the exhaust flue was nearly closed and the dampers on the ash pit door were tightened down to reduce the air flow. This slowed the burning of the coal, lowering the temperature of the water, lowering the temperature in the house and keeping the fire going for the next eight hours with little or no attention.
The process
of getting coal to the coal bin was also labor intensive. Because there wasn’t an access to the coal bin delivery was by hand from the street. A 10 ton dump truck brought a load of coal to the front of the house. Usually there were two people to deliver the load, a driver and a loader. Once parked the driver would elevate the dum
p body enough that the coal would gravity feed out the dump gate in the rear of the dump body. The loader would shoulder a container and place it under the dump gate and the driver would open the gate and fill the bag with about 100 lbs of coal. The loader walked up the steps, to the side of the house where they had slid a coal chute through a small window right over the coal bin. After about 20 loads we had a ton of coal which would last about a week in the winter. Cost was about $5 per ton delivered when $100 per week was very good income.Be very grateful that all you have to do is turn up or down the thermostat.
Next issue is the kerosene oil fired kitchen stove.
