For warmth, some households still burn coal ( Durango, Colorado )

Durango Herald ^ | March 10, 2018 | Jonathan Romeo

[george76]

Rural residents turn to cheap heating fuel ...

Monte Miller shovels a load of coal into a bucket and makes the short journey from his storage shed to his home on the edge of Bayfield, joking aloud that his wife likes to keep the temperature at a steady 75 degrees.

“But we don’t have any problem doing that with coal,”

Miller and his wife, Marsha, have been using coal as their main source of fuel since they moved to their home in 2000. Each year, the couple uses about 2 tons of coal to keep their 2,500-square-foot house warm throughout the winter.

“We heat the whole place for less than $200 a season,” Miller said. “It would be more than double that if we used natural gas. And if we used wood, we’d need about five cords at $250 a cord. You do the math.”

...

when the area was first settled in the late 1880s, coal was the dominant source of heat ...

“We were a coal mining town,” Smith said. “That’s what people don’t realize.”

All around Durango, a number of small coal mine operations supplied residents with the plentiful, cheap and easy-to-extract fuel source .

...

People are still drawn to using coal because it’s cheap, convenient and can easily heat an entire home, Crawford said.

Because the source of Crawford’s coal is only a few miles away, his price has remained remarkably stable: In 11 years, Crawford has had to raise the price for a ton of coal only one time – from $90 to $100. Other sources of fuel, such as natural gas, fluctuate with global market prices.

“Most people spend about $200 to $300 to heat their home for the whole winter on coal,” Crawford said. “That’s a monthly bill for some.”

[Fightin Whitey]

That’s why natural gas never caught on. It is just too inconvenient.

I'm all for coal, but natural gas is the livin' end.

The people that had this house before me--three different families--had a gas line running to the house...but had it hooked up ONLY to the stove and oven.

The rest of the joint was fabulously expensive electric heat, suppled by the local "co-op," who cooperated lavishly only with their own executives.

I couldn't put a gas furnace in fast enough, and also a 17K back-up generator in a small building outside. Easy, clean, and sooo cheap.

[virgil]

They’re called clinkers. I remember my dad taking them out of the furnace. Memories.

[shanover]

...coal chute and a concrete coal bunker in the basement.

We have one here in NJ adjacent to the Oil Tank in a "Cape Cod" House.

[ProtectOurFreedom]

We just bought a house in an area with a lot of trees and snow. We may not be there for the entire winter so I’m looking at a backup generator in that size range. What did you put in?

[Telepathic Intruder]

But isn’t coal made out of...(almost faints)... c...carbon? It’s carbon more deadly to life on this planet than plutonium?

[sarge83]

I grew up in 60’s-70’s and we burned coal through to early 1980’s. We got a truck load in the coal bin every fall and ran a wood/coal burner stove all fall/winter. We broke up coal and carried several buckets in each evening before dark. If a snow was coming Dad would get a big cardboard box and place on the front porch and we had to fill it up as to have dry coal and then the four or five coal buckets.

My great grandmother had a wood fired cook stove into the 1980’s as well next door so by age five we were had learned to split kindling and had to keep her wood bin full as well. God I miss the homemade popcorn balls she made at Halloween on that stove.

[virgil]

We had a coal bin, separated from the furnace by a wall. That old furnace was a huge monster with arms that rose to the ceiling of the basement. It had a hopper and an auger to load and convey the coal into the furnace. It smoked a lot. I didn’t like the smell very much.

[SuperLuminal]

One of my memories is that during WWII four of us neighborhood 8-9 year old kids would latch on to the side of a slowly moving Boston & Maine RR coal train, ride it for about 4-5 miles to a point where it would typically start picking up speed and jump off. Then we would start walking back down the tracks picking up spilled coal to be burned, helping to keeping our houses warm...

One thing we didn't need in addition to our perpetually empty stomachs would have been a cold house...

[SuperLuminal]

One of my memories is that during WWII four of us neighborhood 8-9 year old kids would latch on to the side of a slowly moving Boston & Maine RR coal train, ride it for about 4-5 miles to a point where it would typically start picking up speed and jump off. Then we would start walking back down the tracks picking up spilled coal to be burned, helping to keeping our houses warm...

One thing we didn't need in addition to our perpetually empty stomachs would have been a cold house...

[SuperLuminal]

One of my memories is that during WWII four of us neighborhood 8-9 year old kids would latch on to the side of a slowly moving Boston & Maine RR coal train, ride it for about 4-5 miles to a point where it would typically start picking up speed and jump off. Then we would start walking back down the tracks picking up spilled coal to be burned, helping to keeping our houses warm...

One thing we didn't need in addition to our perpetually empty stomachs would have been a cold house...

[Mears]

I could stoke a coal furnace when I was 10 years old——and I still remember every step in the process.

.

[Some Fat Guy in L.A.]

My family used to spend weekends in a cabin in the mountains of south central PA when I was a kid. It got cold at night, even in summer. There was an old strip mine nearby - we would gather up a bucket of coal and use it along with wood in the fireplace. Kept us nice and warm and lasted all night.

[cherry]

we moved into a house when I was about 3 but I distinctly remember the coal chute....it was a little special room to we kids...

[saminfl]

When I was in tech school at Chanute AFB, IL in the fifties, our barracks used coal burning furnaces. I remember they would plug up and fill the place up with smoke. I was stationed twice at that base and did not enjoy either time.

[crosdaddy]

My house in NYS had coal also, as a kid I would love watching the coal dump truck, dumping its load down the chute in our driveway. It went into a large concrete coal room, and every night after dinner, my father would go down and shovel coal into a bucket and load the hopper.

[cherry]

your story is why I love FR....

[crz]

Do a search and see if there are any blacksmiths around you. They might know.

[DoughtyOne]

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[Rebelbase]

I’d occasionally see small bits of coal around what used to be the chute in the cellars of old houses back in the 90’s when I was doing inspections.

[libstripper]

“My brother went to get his violin to put in the fire.”

LOL!! Looks like he and your parents disagreed strongly about violin lessons they’d imposed on him by brute force and it was their violin far more than his. From my own experience I know parents can sometimes be unpleasant tyrants and saying “up yours” to them and getting away with it can be one of life’s most satisfying moments. We’ve not all spent our lives living on Walton’s Mountain or believing “Father knows best.”