Hot air and steam

Uncle Ken's recollection of the "octopus" furnace lured me down a delightful rabbit hole of my own childhood memories of basement mysteries.  Everybody called that type of furnace an "octopus," even my father, the furnace fixin' steamfitter.  More correctly, it is a gravity furnace, elegant in it's simplicity.  No fans or blowers, just the gentle action of cold air descending and hot air rising will heat your building, as long as it's only one or two stories.  Gravity furnaces are quiet, cheap to operate because coal was inexpensive (and still is), but terribly inefficient.  If you are serious about heating a building steam is the answer.

I would wager that any large building in Chicago that was built before 1950 is heated by steam.  There is a progression of the heat source for the steam; first coal, then fuel oil, and finally, natural gas.  That's the order in which my childhood home's furnace was upgraded until the old boiler proved too difficult to repair and a newer, smaller but more efficient, unit was installed.

When we had coal delivered, at least a couple of tons at a time, a truck would dump the coal in the street along the curb and a black guy (always a black guy) would take his shovel, fill a wheelbarrow, and use an old plank to get over the curb and then on to the basement window that led to the coal bin.  There were a lot of different coal companies until the 60s and delivery methods varied depending on the building  type.  Chutes were common if the trucks had access but the oddest method I saw was with the coal in canvas bags, bigger than a shopping bag, that were neatly stacked in the back of a truck and the delivery guy would hump them, one at a time, to the coal bin where he would empty the bag.  Hump, dump, repeat until the job was done.

This ruminating about furnaces got me wondering about coal, a dirty word nowadays.  It's not illegal in most places although it is heavily regulated, but if you want the best BTUs for the buck, coal may be the answer.  You can even get it on Amazon but other source are much cheaper.  It's still available in different grades, like bituminous and anthracite but it also comes in different sizes which I wasn't aware of.  The largest size is steam, and it ranges from 4.5 to 6 inches in size.  The smallest size is No. 3 Buckwheat which is about an eighth inch in size.  Seems kind of small to me but then I remembered a field trip my sixth grade class took to the Commonwealth Edison generating plant at Addison and California.  That was a huge place, with gigantic piles of coal just waiting to be burned to help feed the steam turbines.  Their furnaces used No. 3 Buckwheat, or maybe something even smaller, and they used a lot of it.

The rabbit hole went deeper.  Coal and steam led me to the final destination of steam locomotives and the mesmerizing videos on YouTube. I didn't realize that steam engines in the United States reached their peak as late as the late 40s/early 50s.  Some of those beasts are still running and their raw power is almost visceral.  Check out "Union Pacific Big Boy" on YouTube if you have any doubts.