In person I mean.
*Sigh. Not charcoal. Real coal.
Yes. Am Welsh. Coal fires are still pretty common in the South Wales valleys. My Grandfather still gets free coal deliveries every other month due to his time working in the pits.
As in part off his pension is free coal for life?
Could ever have a lump sum or coal for life, he picked the coal as the cash payout was around £5000, which would cover the coal cost for about 3 years at the time. He’s been having that for over 30 years at this point, pretty good deal!
What if he picked the lump sum and received a giant lump of coal worth £5000
Omg they’re not phasing it out? jfc
Well yeah. It was how we heated our home when I was a kid growing up in England.
Same here
I’ve done some blacksmithing as a hobby. The two most common ways of heating the metal are a gas or a coal forge. The coal forge normally has some sort of forced air coming from the bottom to feed the fire. The coal starts burning real smoky like, but then turns to coke and burns hotter the more air you force through it. Typically you pile some coal around the sides of the fire so it converts to coke then you scoop it into the fire as needed. Also it produces a waste product called clinker that builds up at the bottom of the fire at the tuyere (the nozzle or grate the air is forced through). It’s kind of like stone or metal and it needs to be cleaned out to keep the fire going.
Yep. Grew up in a house with a wood stove as the only source of heat, and my parents would occasionally use some coal in it. Dad also had a coal forge for hobby blacksmithing.
In a steam locomotive, but a scale model one that was ridden on instead of in. It was actually pretty cool; they still hand-stoked the firebox and everything, just… really small.
I rode one of those but it must have been gas or diesel.
I’d never really considered that people might not have seen coal burn.
In Ireland both coal and turf are still fairly common as the primary method of heating. That said they are “trying” to phase it out.
Since we produce a lot of NG around here that’s what we use for heating. But we always used electric clothes dryers…
Coal stoves are still sometimes the principal source of heat for rural houses in Eastern Europe. They are slowly being phased out though.
Where the fires were was around the North and North East of Scotland. Coal man used to come round in a truck, filthy black from the coal, load up the bunkers. I remember it being very messy, sooty, but it was less smokey than the peat fires, though coal didn’t smell as nice. There is something really nice about a real fire, though they’re not clean. I doubt many of any of those houses have now, gas came along and there was a lot of change.
Yes. In a fire. Why?
Yeah, I grew up in a poor area in rural Ohio and we heated primary with coal until 2021.
Used to have a coal fire when I was growing up in the 90s, rural Wales, was able to heat our water too.
Nothing beats a baked potato cooked under a coal fire.
Yes, in 1989.
East Perth to Midland train yards on the footplate of the Flying Scotsman.
The fireman was shovelling coal into the firebox, and it was one of the most concentrated sources of heat I have seen in my life.
No, but this topic sent me down a rabbit hole briefly.
You may have heard of the Marshall Fire in Boulder, Colorado that burned 1000 homes and killed two people within the city in 2021.
In the area of the point of ignition of this wildfire, an underground coal fire has been known to be burning for the past 150 years. As far as I know they still haven’t ruled it out as a possible cause.
They didn’t start the fire, it was always burning 🎶
Yes. In the Aga at home and the coal fire in the living room. Also in the grate at a friend’s house.
Why? Aga for cooking and hot water, coal stove for heat, likewise coal in a grate.
ETA: coal as in Anthracite, Stove Esse, Stove Nuts. Not charcoal or coke. The latter two I have cooked on and forged metal with respectively.
A lot of homes where I grew up still had coal fires, so yes, a lot, but its been a long while since I have seen a coal fire. Charcoal as the other commenter said i still see regularly on bbq’s .
Where did you grow up?
