[Sawdring]

I enjoy going into a house and seeing the old coal chute in the basement and getting to see one of these is heart warming:

[polymuser]

The hot air rising, cold air dropping octopus. 🙂
That’s where my Dad snuck smokes when he was a teen, on coal duty.
See it’s burning gas now, like most that still exist.
We had one with just the bonnet as a deer camp barn heater, long ago.
Memories.

[marktwain]

I helped feed a similar wood/coal burner when I was growing up.

I hated it. The amount of wood it took was enormous. The amount of time it took to process the wood and feed it was enormous, often at the coldest, nastiest time of year.

I would view it differently now, but there is a reason I am living in Arizona, and not Wisconsin, for the past 31 years (mostly it is where the career lead).

[riverrunner]

I am sure many people wished they had alternate source of heating instead of relying on the grid.

I use wood heat.

The stoves now days are much more efficient and the house better insulated.

I burn a third of the wood then in the old farm house I grew up in with a big coal wood furnace.