Brings back memories of me at age ten or so hauling the coal ashes out of peoples basements for about twenty five cents every time I did it. Our own family home had a central coal furnace until my parents converted over.

Fuel oil was I think 19.00 for two hundred gallons. So most converted over to oil. Fuel oil is lightly higher now. Like all heating systems you got used to burning coal. Usually the damper was controlled by a pull chain that was extended up to the first floor level. Automatic stokers were not all that common either.

My first house had a gravity coal furnace as most where basically gravity systems. So the ductwork tended to be large. It had been converted to a oil fired unit long before I aquired the house.

I wanted more space in the basement but my father on a visit said I would burn more oil with a modern oil furnace probably. So I did not change it out. That old unit was efficient by the way on oil. The coal furnace installations usually resembled octupus tendecles with the coal furnace in the centre of the basement. Coal was king for a long time frame.

Only when forcd air units came along the space consumption requirement was reduced. In the big cities a lot of back yards have coal ash mixed in with the backyard soil.

One of the worse jobs I observed was the guys that delivered coal. They parked the truck. Donned a leather back apron and put each and every bag of coal on their backs and walked it into the coal chute of the house. Back breaking pure physical labour. I have no ideal of just how many tons of coal they handled this way per day.