O/T: Activity for a hot summer day

What would a rational person do on a 90 degree summer day, especially a retiree ?

Take delivery of 6 tons of nut coal. As crazy as this sounds, the time to order coal for next winter is as soon as the last fire in the boiler goes out in the spring. The coal truck left here a little while ago, and I had to spend some time on stepladder with a coal scoop (shovel), "trimming" the pile as it came off the chute so the bunker filled evenly. After awhile, I was shovelling the heap from in front of the basement window and winging it to the further corners of the bunker. The last 3/4 - 1 ton of coal always piles way high, blocks the chute, and I have to shovel to keep out in front of it. The coal truck is a 1960's single axle Mack with a scissor lift coal dump box. It is a classic. Since no new scissor lift coal boxes are being built these days, the coal dealer uses this old Mack. He leaves early in the morning, drives about 75 miles over back roads, including over the Shawungunk Ridge, usually calling ahead to find out if the NY State Police have their truck check point setup on NYS Route 28 en route to my house. NYSP is murder on old trucks, no matter how good a condition they may be in.

The coal is in the bunker, and it reminds me of my boyhood in Brooklyn in the 50's and 60's. Back then, almost all the NYC Public Schools were heated with anthracite (hard) coal, hand fired. Around the end of the school year, in late June, the schools got the next winter's coal delivery. The trucks were old snub-nosed Macks, and they used to come from Burns Brothers with advertising for "Blue Coal"- a gimmick where the coal was dyed blue at the breaker to identify it as supposedly a better quality coal than the other sources. I loved to hear the sound of the coal as it came down the chute into the school's bunker. On our block, one old lady a few doors down the street from us heated with coal. Her house had a bad access to the coal bin. The coal truck drivers used to fill wooden barrels with coal and roll them on edge down her alleyway and dump them into the coal bin door. The drivers had a knack for rolling those barrels, and I used to marvel at it when I was a kid. I remember some small stores with apartments on the 2nd and 3d stories also heated with coal in my neighborhood. When those places got a coal delivery, the diamond-plate basement doors were opened and the chute run across the sidewalk and into the basement. We took heating with coal for granted, though my father had converted our home to oil heat around the time I was born. Coal heating kind of quietly faded away in Brooklyn, and the last hurrah came in the 1990's, when politicians and activists started to raise hell about the schools being heated with coal. At the time, the NY Power Authority had a president who was a political whore (what else is new ?). This guy went on the news, wiping away tears and sniffling, then yelling with indignation about school children being subjected to coal fired heating systems. Nest thing was the Power Authority was suddenly in the business of replacing coal fired boilers in the NYC schools with gas fired packaged boilers. That was a real boondoggle and it is a wonder no gas explosions occurred given the types of people hired as inspectors and contractors to do the installation.

I remember a kid, how the sun seemed hotter in the schoolyard, perhaps because it reflected off the concrete pavement and because the brick walls of the school formed a "U", with the boiler room at the "bottom of the U". I'd watch the coal trucks pull in and back up, and then the drivers would talk to the stationary engineer or fireman and soon enough, chute in the coal. I went home the first time I saw this and asked my parents why, in the heat of late June, coal was being delivered. Dad explained this was the normal thing, and buying coal early often meant a discount, aside from buying coal as soon as you could take the biggest delivery.

So, on a hot day when most sane people are probably sitting in the shade or going swimming, I am remembering my boyhood and feeling a bit more secure in having our next winter's heating fuel all stowed in the bunker. It's an old-time thing to do, and goes with old machine tools and so much else I appreciate. No computer controlled burner system, just a manual draft adjustment and a simple "Aquastat" switch to cut the forced draft blower on and off, and my father's old coal shovel from the house in Brooklyn.

The coal truck driver thanked me profusely for getting on top of the bunker and shovelling and trimming. He said most of his customers just hand him the check and let him do it all. I figure the man works hard enough driving an old Mack (5 speed main tranny, 4 speed auxiliary) with no air conditioning in the cab, grinding along for 75 miles to deliver the coal. I never fail to remember coal bunkers on some of the old ore boats on the Lakes, and think of the coal passers (called "trimmers" in the British Merchant Navy) who had to go into the bunkers to keep the coal piles fairly uniform and get the coal to the stokeholds. The coal fired boiler gives a nice even heat to our home, and the bed of coal in the firebox comes in handy for softening up hard steel such as spring leaves or axles as stock for shop projects.

Joe,
How close is your coal to size ?

The old owner of a garage I used to work at bought soft coal
from wampum, and IIRc it was "run of mine" size.

We used to get a triaxle dump load, and set up an old feed conveyor
into the garage, thence into the bunker.

I have climbed up on that %$#@! stack, with my head in the rafters, trying to
shovel a wee bit more back into the corners.

Nary a screen to size it, allot was oversize and the shear pin on the cleveland stoker (Iron fireman) would break all the time.

Another problem was rocks, shale mostly from what I could tell.

They would get mixed in, and covered with the dust, and look like coal, break the
shear pin everytime.

Elevating box truck....We had a customer, retired, wanted an old dump truck.
Being from pizzaborg (and cheap), he brought up a real fender slapper.

An old f-600 with this oddball dump bed. (we had never seen one, we figured it
out pretty quick though)
Keep the pin in place, up it went straight up, and then dumped. It got really high
in the air.

No good on a dirt farm patch.

Remove the pin, and it was a regular dump truck, albeit with these little 6" wide
steel ladders stowed on both sides.....

So we ditched the pin, and patched it up best we could for the guy.

I ran it a few times, standard 300-6 4 speed, and 2 speed rear.
Standard procedure, mash foot to floor till the valves floated, double
clutch as fast as you could to get in the next gear, before you slowed down
too much for the anemic engine.

Dump bed cylinder was maybe 6" dia, and probably 6' long.
Had a water cock for the control (to let it down). Very low pressure system.

When you dumped it, and were done, you'd disengage the PTO, and then open the
valve on the side of the truck to let it down.

This "road oiler" leaked...allot. So was full of air, and took a good long time
to come down. IIRC we switched to used motor oil in the hydraulic tank.

One day, I delivered a load, get out to open the valve, and wait.
Guy comes up to talk with me, get's himself under the bed (it's way up),
kinda leaning on the bed edge, one shoulder under the fender.

This truck came down on a time delay (all that air had to come out),
but then would drop like a rock, almost to the bottom, then bounce right back up,
slowly repeating the process till down.
I was getting worried about this guy, and ended up tackling him, shoving him
out of the way, just as the bed "did it's thing".

A great read there! Interesting how your childhood memories involve such proximity to coal as a heat source...
Out here in the rural West my childhood involved going to cut firewood in the forest with my parents every year. This was back in the mid to late 80's if you can believe that...
We'd hop up into the cab of that 1976 4WD F150 pickup and head out toward the national forest. Okanogan county, Washington, at 5315 square miles is the largest in the state and is significantly larger than the state of Connecticut. Half of this area (2711 square miles) is national forest land, and the sheer amount of tiny gravel roads snaking out into the hills and mountains, over ridges and down ravines, 40 miles from the nearest small town, is amazing. You can imagine then, just how many places on the surrounding map we could point at and drive to in search for our daily load of logs...
Typically it would be a crisp fall morning; my parents at the time worked solely in apple orchards, and this would be between the end of apple picking season and a few weeks before the cold really set in and my pop would begin suiting up to prune trees in the snow all winter.
I could barely see over the dash in that old blue truck... we'd make it out to some such place as Wilcox Mountain Road in about 20-30 minutes, and begin cruising up it and looking for standing dead trees of legal size to cut, or for slash piles left by loggers from the year before. You didn't want any green wood, as it wouldn't burn well soon enough. I had fun standing on the seat, helping to spy out wood to cut... we'd see a prospect, and pile out on the side of the road.
Crisp mountain air, the sound of a light wind in the trees maybe, golden morning light and a fresh scent of fir and larch in the air... well, that's how I remember it anyway, nostalgia being what it is. The hills here are beautiful without question.
The greasy, temperamental old McCullough and Homelite saws would come out, with the handmade wooden saw box with the extra chains, sharpening files, two stroke oil and heavy bar oil. I'd bring down the double bit axe and my little limbing hatchet, Ma would grab a water jug and maybe the come-along, and we'd lay it on the ground, near to our first tree, yet out of the path of fall...
Of course I was taught strictly to remember how to be safe in this work, to avoid being out of the path of trees, to know where my clear path away was, to watch for an unexpected shift in direction of falling timber. I would climb over a downed tree, zealously chopping off whatever small limbs I could manage with my little hatchet, while my folks followed with axe and saw, cleaning the limbs off. We'd normally buck the wood to stove length as it lay on the ground, and carry rounds to stack the truck high with. You had to find wood near the road, to satisfy firewood cutting regulations but more importantly, to save a ton of backache and time in hauling cut wood to the truck. Sometimes it would turn out the area we'd picked that day had little to offer for easy wood to cut and haul, and on a day like that getting a half cord in the truck could be exhausting.
It's simple work, cutting firewood, but all the same I learned how to use cutting tools (it may sound crazy, but my dad had me bucking logs with a chainsaw at home at the tender age of eight years old) and how to problem solve when things went sideways. We might hang a tree up falling it, and have to cut creatively and use a come-along to winch the butt out to get it to drop...
In those several years we did this I recall only minor scrapes, usually from branch stobs, never from an axe or saw. They must have really managed to impress me with what not to do... even now I rarely get hurt in the course of my metal shop work, as it seems the legacy of that teaching (mostly to focus and to visualize where a tool will go if it slips or glances) has remained strong.

I live in a home with electric heat now, but the knife shop in which I make my living has got a wood stove for winter heat. I have nice Stihl saws now, not those ill-balanced and hard to start Macs, but every year I still need to go and find 4-5 cords of firewood out here in the same Okanogan county, then haul, split and pile it down the side of the shop.

I feel very fortunate to have been raised in this way and to have these memories... and although the work is hard every year and the time in which to do it ever shorter, I am very glad to still have a strong tie to those years and to be using these skills they taught me. The woods are still the same on a crisp fall morning, cool, quiet and sweet...

At least until I fire up the saw!

I had aa IH1700 series dump truck I Ran for a couple of years. Driving old trucks was hard work. I replaced shackle bushings and fixed all of what I thought D.O.T. would nit pick but always would sweat them pulling me over. I think they just don't want old trucks on the road. Without Ac in july you cook in the truck cab.
Right now to handle the heat I go out until my shirt is soaked and go in for a shirt change and a couple of glasses of tea. I only get 3 or four hours a day like that. About an hour at a time.
I cant imagine going back and doing a 12 hour day in the printing company/sweat shop. With the steam fed dryers it was 115f all day.
In mid Missouri the humidity and heat can take your breath away at 98 F.
Its to hot to start cutting wood for next winter.
I think coal boilers are cool. There aren't many around this area.

Nothing with dumpers, but had a chore for a while where I was staying, go down and shovel the stoker full every morning. Don't know how much it took, but most of the coal was in the corners, the stoker was n the middle. Wasn't bad once you got the hang of it and did it smoothly.... a couple part shovels take less work and go faster than one full. Like filling sandbags.

It was summer... the boiler had to keep hot water for a big building, so it was working all summer.

Joe,

Do you burn coal because you like it or is it the only fuel available?

I don't have my wood supply in yet. It's an uneasy feeling, I usually get it in by june, but it is late this year. The next couple days will be spent making some pulleys to convert the splitter from chain to multiple belt drive, which should be quieter and spin the pump faster to let the big wisconsin loaf along at a leisurely pace. The chain has not endured well either. There are several broken trees up the hill on a newly aquired piece of land that will be dragged out with the Italian tractor. New this year is our greenhouse, which has a small stove in it, and also needs a supply of wood. It is a secure feeling to have the shed full!

Joe Michaels said:

What would a rational person do on a 90 degree summer day, especially a retiree ?

Click to expand...

Joe -

At least I think you were smarter than me yesterday. I was repointing brick sidewalk in the heat - and having the 8 year old granddaughter reading the directions to mix mortar, explaining components when she asked if it was cement, etc. The almost 10 year old grandson mixed the mortar some and chiseled out loose mortar. Did not blame them when they went to the swings before we got done!

Hopefully you got the same rain we did, later than us, and things cooled down a bit. Maybe not quite as insane temperature wise today.

Had to laugh at the local news when they interviewed a 30 something who was getting shopping carts at a grocery store - telling how one could not be outside more than 5 minutes, then needed rest before getting more carts, etc. But then again he was not soaking wet like you and I were at the end of the exercise!

Dale

SIP6A said:

Joe,

Do you burn coal because you like it or is it the only fuel available?

Click to expand...

Because he's a sadistic, cheap, rat bastard ?....

I burn coal for a multitude of reasons:

-It is easier to handle than wood

-We went thru most of the trees that were taken down to clear the site for our house

-Burning hardwood, with the boiler cut to minimum draft when the thermostats are not calling for heat, builds a lot of creosote in the fire-tubes of the boiler and in the chimney

-Keeping wood piled in the basement in winter caused all manner of insects to hatch out, including carpenter ants

-Fuel oil for the original boiler hit $4.00 a gallon some 8 winters ago, and I got really pissed off and vowed to do something about that. We had a barrel stove in the basement, made from two 55 gallon drums and it added some heat to the house, fired on cordwood. Even with the draft choked way down, it ate cordwood. I had the masonry chimney built with a spare flue for a future wood/coal boiler, and being unable to afford it when we got into the house, put in the barrel stove as a temporary measure. When fuel oil it 4 bucks a gallon, I started looking for a wood/coal boiler. I found a good used one on Craigslist and got it into the basement. I gave the barrel stove to a poor family from my buddy's church who really appreciates having it. My buddy installed it for them and added some galvanized sheet steel and cement board to insulate the walls and ceiling and reflect the heat. He keeps them in cordwood.

-I could not see further enriching "big oil", let alone the sheiks in the middle east. I know the hard coal regions of Pennsylvania and know they have been on hard times for years. I feel LOTS better knowing my money is going to the hard coal regions rather than into the coffers of big oil.

-The other reason is, as has been said, I am a real bastard. The trails advocated and whore politicians who went after our railroad along with our governor are advocating for a complete withdrawl from the use of fossil fuels. The governor is even after the NYS Pension System (which I get my own retirement pension from) to divest of any investment in fossil fuel-related industries. When I am explaining the steam engine to visitors to Hanford Mills, I point to the spinning governor and say something to the effect of: "That's the Real Governor- it's got a real pair of balls and holds things in close and good control- unlike what we've got in Albany (the NY State capital) "

Burning coal is my own little protest against the trails advocates and NIMBY's (not in my backyard) types who block new powerplants and any new industry. Yeah, I'm an S.O.B. and a hard case, but I am NOT a "rat bastard". A "rat bastard" was a really low insult in Brooklyn when I was a kid, and is still a low insult on jobsites and in our hills. It means someone who cannot be trusted, a liar, a snitch, and someone who would take advantage of his own brother. I know I am a lot of things, and have been called a lot of things, some of which may well have been deserved, but "rat bastard" does not pertain. Call me crazy, call me a hard case SOB, call me what you will and even call me late for supper, but not anything with the word rat tied into it.

-Burning coal is quite satisfying. It gives a good even heat. With oil hydronic heat and baseboard radiators, the heat was sporadic, coming on when the thermostats called for it. The result was sections of our home (I would never again build a home with cathedral ceilings, and would go for underfloor radiant heat which was not common when we built the house) were colder. With the coal heat, the house is uniformly warm. We more than paid for the boiler and the piping the first winter I had it in use.

Burning coal is a tie to much in my life that is gone, old steam plants, the old ore boats, and a very good friend who taught me to handle the coal scoop and so much else. The coal scoop shovel I use is a small coal scoop shovel that was in the basement of our house in Brooklyn from the coal boiler. Dad had converted to an oil fired boiler about the time I was born, but the old coal shovel was kept around. As a little guy, I'd help my father shovel snow with it. It is just the right size to fit thru the firedoor on the coal boiler in our house. I have a regular 35 lb "Locomotive Scoop", but it is too wide to fit thru the firedoor of a home heating boiler. Sometimes, I will stand about 6 feet from the boiler and wing a light scoop or two of coal thru the firedoor, remembering how I was taught to fire locomotive boilers. My friend, who was both a marine fireman and railroad fireman, made sure I could handle the scoop with accuracy firing lefty or righty. When I take the coal scoop in hand, even for the little heating boiler, a lot runs thru my mind, thinking of my father who took me up on steam pile drivers when I was a little guy and started teaching me about boilers, the school boiler room where the "custodian engineer" and his fireman taught me, and my old friend and so much more. My wife says I ought to take my father's old recliner (currently in the garage loft for the past 26 years or so) and put it by the coal boiler so I can be like Mike Mulligan.

Call me a sentimental fool, a stubborn dinosaur, or worse, but not a rat.

+ you have clinkers to toss on the icy parts of the sidewalk & driveway...

This post brought a few memories back. We never heated with coal, wood was my father's weapon of choice. House I grew up in you couldn't heat with a blast furnace without going broke. There was a oil furnace (250btu) if I remember correctly. It still struggled to keep up even in a fairly mild climate.

Dad picked up a used wood stove early on. So began the quest for firewood. We usually drove about eight miles to cut a load of wood. He got his dad's old truck from him which had st idle a few years. A 51 Chevy with about 300k on it. I know grandfather had rebuilt the motor once among other repairs.

Early on dad and I replaced the motor with a rebuilt long block. He had it repainted to the original color as well, forest green. I know both my father and uncle drove and took there driving test for their license in this truck. In keeping with tradition i did as well. Not to many kids were driving vehicles from that era by then.(early eighties)

Lot of fond memories driving that old truck to go get a load of wood with my father. incidentally I still have the truck. It's been in the family since 1955.

Coal, Oil, Gas Heating Fuels

Joe,

Think in terms of spillage of heating fuels. Coal wins hands down !!!

COAL: If one spills coal on the floor or the ground, one can clean it up with a broom or a rake and put it back on the pile, still useable. There's no aftermath; the incident is 100% over as soon as the brief cleanup is finished. The well will not be polluted, nor will nearby watercourses.

OIL: If you spill heating oil, it's an automatic EPA case. Every scrap of oil-soaked soil has to be removed and disposed of in a proper and traceable manner. A leaking home heating oil tank incident would cost $8,000 and up in these parts, with there being NO LIMIT on the cleanup.

(Unfortunate local chap had an indoor heating oil tank rupture in a basement with "French drains" around the perimeter. The poured floor had to come up and there was oil under the footings. He went bankrupt.)

You're 100% liable for anything that happens to your neighbor's wells. If there's so much as a "sheen" on a watercourse, you're liable for that, too.

GAS: If there's a gas leak, well there's nothing to clean up, just an empty foundation! <WINK!>

Whimsically Yours,
John Ruth
P.S. on Edit: In my boyhood, one elderly gentleman on the block still heated with Anthracite. The dealer had an ancient chain-drive Mack truck, the only one I ever saw in revenue service, with the scissors-life dump body. The roar of the coal rolling down the chute stands out in my memory.

Doug:

You are correct. I do spread the ash and clinker on the driveway in winter. Having a driveway made of "choke" (stone fines from a crusher plant) mixed with fine crushed stone, the ash and clinker mix in and tighten things up. It gets as hard as pavement.

Re:
Getting in wood: when we first got into our house, in 1991, I did not own a chainsaw. My employer, the Power Authority, was liberal in those days when it came to loaning out equipment. The lines crews were just phasing out the old red "Homelite" chainsaws, so we had plenty to be loaned out. These were heavier, slower saws of an earlier generation. They had a bar and chain oiler you had to pump manually.

I had a Ford Bronco with a 4 ton Ramsey worm drive winch, and some snatch blocks. I also had our Yanmar tractor. My wife and I got to all the wood we could from tree tops, slash, and stuff no good for lumber which was left when our homesite had been cleared. We'd skid it up to near the basement entry and I'd buck it into 16" cordwood. I had gotten an 8 lb "Warwood" splitting maul. In our area, the oldtimers referred to this as a "go-devil". I waited for good hard freezing weather and went to work splitting the cordwood. we started burning up the wood we took off our land. When our son was about 6 or 7, he wanted to join me at splitting wood. At a yard sale, we found a "Stanley Atha" 6 lb splitting maul head in good condition for 50 cents. I bought it with my son, and then bought a handle. I showed my son what my father had taught me- how to "hang" a handle. I also gave him a scraper made from a piece of busted power hacksaw blade and had him take the lacquer or varnish off the handle and then linseed oil it. This makes the handle less likely to slip in a person's hands.

I taught my son to stack wood and swing a maul. We used to have informal "races" in cold weather, splitting wood together. We'd shed our jackets and work in sweatshirts and vests, laughing and going at it. My son was a little guy back then, and he used to get a kick out of being able to split a chunk of cordwood and see it really "grenade" in sub-freezing weather.

Somewhere along the line, probably about 1994 or 95, I was away on a temporary job assignment. A storm occurred and a large tree came down across our driveway. I wasn't home. My wife called a buddy of ours. He arrived with his backhoe and chainsaw and moved and cut the tree into manageable pieces. Then, for sheer fun, he took the backhoe and blockaded my bay of the garage and the bay where the tractor is kept with large pieces of the tree trunk. He had our son on his lap up in the backhoe, telling him and my wife: "Now maybe Joe will loosen up and buy his own chainsaw..." A new word entered our household: "Husqvarna".

In time, our son learned to use the chainsaw, and learned to drop trees and buck them up. At some point in his high school days, he and a group of his peers were staying in some lodge or cabin. The other kids came from suburban homes. It was a cold evening and the kids were complaining about it and trying to get the heat to come on. Our son and one of his buddies found some cordwood and a handaxe and got a wood stove fired up. They are country boys and took it all in stride, knowing how to lay a fire in a wood stove and adjust the dampers while the kids from the suburban homes were pretty much at a loss. My father taught me to make a "one match fire", and I taught our son. He knows some of the basic skills that a lot of his generation are clueless about. I suppose we could be looked upon as "bad parents" as we taught our son things like building fires, using and harpening axes, and when he was old enough, he was taught the safe handling of firearms. When he was 10, a buddy gave him his first axe, a Snow & Neeley axe made in Maine. When he was 12, another buddy gave him a youth model shotgun. By the time our son was in grade school he could set a chain on a log while I ran the tractor, or vise-versa. I taught our son to drive a manual (aka "stick") shift, and he practised his driving with my 1991 Dodge Ram club cab pickup. This truck had the largest turning circle of any vehicle of its class. I took our son up on snow covered back roads that got narrower and narrower and he had to make "broken U turns" with that truck as well as learn to back it along narrow roads and driveways. He took his road test in a Chevy Tahoe we owned and got his license, first shot. I laugh when parents in our area bitch that the NYS DMV road test is "unfair" to their kids since it requires them to parallel park. Our son learned to parallel park the Dodge Ram pickup and the Tahoe, and prefers driving vehicles with manual transmissions. We also got hold of an old Honda 125 cc dirt bike and taught him the basics, then he took the MSF beginning rider course. He rides one of the 1000 cc BMW Airhead bikes when he is home. Even though he does not follow me into anything remotely like my line of work, he did ask for a box of tools. I found an old "hip roof" Craftsman toolbox in the local surplus store, made a new handle for it and painted it (I could not duplicate the original blue-gray wrinkle finish), and filled with used and NOS US made tools, as well as some from my father and some from myself. It was special for me to repair and fill that toolbox for my son. I've taught him to cook some good meals, and with a box of tools and with the basic values, ethics, and skills he has, he will do just fine in this old world.

I don't even know where to go about getting coal around here anymore.............sure not for the lack of mines. There was a trucking outfit that used to supply the last of the residential customers, not sure they keep it anymore.