# The heating of old houses



## Ashful (Jan 8, 2014)

I've seen mention of many "old drafty farm house(s)" this week, which has piqued my interest.  Looking around this old joint, built around 1773, I see one chimney thimble in the basement (walk-out, and likely part of some earlier structure), two on the first floor, and two on the second floor.  In fact, there may be two in the basement, for all I know, except the wall where it would exist has been covered in wall board... so who knows?

In any case, the 1773 portion of the house is 1000 sq.ft. per floor exterior, or roughly 800 sq.ft. per floor interior.  That's at least FIVE wood stoves for 800 sq.ft. of basement plus 1600 sq.ft. of first and second floor space.  It's almost laughable that I'm now trying to keep this same structure warm with one modern EPA stove, but I wonder, how many stoves would have been common in a house of given size?  While it seems sensible to have this many stoves to keep the joint warm, keeping them fed must have been a horrendous nightmare, particularly in an age long before chainsaws and hydraulic splitters.  How much fuel could a 1770's vintage stove eat per day... times five?

With one Jotul Firelight in this space, I can maintain indoor temps up to 70F down to perhaps 20 - 30F outside, with two large plus one small load per day (4 hours, 9 hours, 11 hours), as dictated by my work schedule.  If I let the joint go cold, then I need oil to get back up to temp at outdoor < 30F, but I can maintain pretty well.  When we hit single digits, I can't even maintain.

This house has been called a "transition house", in that it was built with a cooking fireplace in the house, and a summer kitchen containing a second cooking fireplace, but it had doors to close off these fireplaces and stove thimbles permanently built into the chimney of each.  The theory is that the owners of this house intended to install iron cookstoves in front of each fireplace, but not yet knowing how this tech might work out, wanted to be able to go back to their old cooking fireplaces.  I have not verified the validity of this theory, but it was one historian's claim.  In any case, we now have one Jotul Firelight 12 installed in the old kitchen fireplace in the main house, and a second one installed in the fireplace in the summer kitchen (now surrounded by a newer addition, and heated separately from the old house).

I'd be interested in seeing some of these other "old drafty farm houses," both in terms of how they were heated in the past, and today.



begreen said:


> In our old farmhouse I would be happy to be at 73F with the temps you folks are seeing. But tell us a bit about the wood you are burning. When was it cut/split/stacked? What species wood is it?





Mr. Kelly said:


> I have a "circular" floor plan, meaning, I have a typical old New England farmhouse...





Papa-Yankee-Romeo-Oscar said:


> I've been burning the Manchester since the beginning of this season and it's having no trouble heating about 2300sf of a 3100sf drafty old farmhouse.





Stubborn Dutchman said:


> This old farmhouse is almost 100 years old and over 3000 sq. ft. two story. new windows and insulation/vinyl siding installed in mid 1980's but still drafty. I think the F600 is doing well. It just isn't up to all the cold air sucking the heat away.





gyrfalcon said:


> My house is similar, though older, dating from around 1850 or so.  Not so much cheap fuel but lack of insulating materials when it was built.





BradleyW said:


> This year I purchased an old farmhouse with two woodstoves and I am heating with wood for the first time in my life.





drof99 said:


> We have a fairly large old farmhouse. Just over 2200 sq feet. It is an older home but we love it.





Doc21 said:


> ...have been heating a 2300 sqft century old farmhouse with a recent addition.





Thom Griffin said:


> I have a drafty old farmhouse, and possibly inadequate radiation, though I don't think that's the issue.


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## BrowningBAR (Jan 8, 2014)

Joful said:


> but I wonder, how many stoves would have been common in a house of given size?


A good example would be the Parry Mansion in New Hope. Take a tour. You will see a stove in each room on the main floor.


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## tcassavaugh (Jan 8, 2014)

I know my grandmother back in the 60's, in the Adirondack Mountain Champlain region/Essex County of New York, heated their old turn of the century farm house with a cook stove and a parlor stove. I also remember stove pipe running inside, providing additional heat in the upper bedrooms.  My aunt and uncle nearby, had a big wood stove installed in the basement that seemed to take gigantic rounds. it had a central grate in the floor and ceiling grates for the second floor for the air to pass.  it also had a chain operated draft to control the burn not too far away from the grate. Most of my family in that area were loggers and quite adept at cutting firewood. Most of my cousins still are.


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## Jags (Jan 8, 2014)

My old farmhouse is a bunch newer than your old farm house (in IL - anything over 100 years old, is old).  Built in 1896 (by my grandparents) the only wood burning appliance was the cookstove.  A coal furnace was the main source of heat for the house until the mid 50s when a fuel oil furnace was installed.  Changed over to LP in about 92. I am the first to put a wood burning "heating" stove in the joint in 2002.


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## EatenByLimestone (Jan 8, 2014)

Joful said:


> That's at least FIVE wood stoves for 800 sq.ft. of basement plus 1600 sq.ft. of first and second floor space. It's almost laughable that I'm now trying to keep this same structure warm with one modern EPA stove, but I wonder, how many stoves would have been common in a house of given size?



I've been in some of the 300 year old houses in the Schenectady Stockade.  Some of them still have the firing ports in the side of the house, probably installed after the 1690 massacre.  Many of the residents moved down into the basements and lived underground during the winter.  As you can guess, it took a crazy amount of fuel to heat with wood.  And I'm pretty sure it wasn't dried, there wouldn't have been time or space to do that.

By 1800 PA was mining coal so maybe the heat and ease of storage of coal allowed the previous owners of your house to expand upstairs in the winter.


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## begreen (Jan 8, 2014)

We've only been in the house for 20 of its 90 yrs so I can't say how it was heated when it was built. But I would venture a strong guess it was with wood given the very rural nature of this area in 1924 and the abundance of wood at that time. Every one was clearing our woods for fields and farming. When I tore down the original chimney there were two take-offs, so I suspect a kitchen stove and a parlor stove, but don't know for sure. At some point a hot air oil furnace was added. Then in 1984 that was changed to a propane furnace with the Jotul 602 in the leaky entry foyer. I replaced the foundation, rebuilt the foyer (removed chimney), tore out the fireplace and put in the current class A chimney while reversing the living room layout and put in the Castine, then the T6. A modern, 2 stage high efficiency heat pump was installed at the same time.


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## charger4406 (Jan 8, 2014)

10 thimbles ,nearly 1 in each room, house was heated by coal and wood stoves.
converted to oil and wood with electric also.
Now 2 wood stoves with oil and electric back-up.


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## Stubborn Dutchman (Jan 8, 2014)

I don't know the time frame  but there used to be a big old woodfurnace in the basement. There was no ductwork. In the floor under the archway between the living room and dining room was a large grate, I think well over three feet square, maybe closer to four feet sq.. On the trim on the side of the arch you can still see where the chain pulley was mounted. I thought it was pretty neat that even way back then they were ingenious enough to control the draft without trecking downstairs. In the ceilings of the dining and living rooms are two ornate vents that allowed heat to rise to the upstairs bedrooms. I don't think it worked all that well because I remember some sort of small heaters in each of the bedrooms. Somebody told be they put hot rocks in them as they had no fuel source.


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## Cynnergy (Jan 8, 2014)

OK, it's not old by back-east standards, but my great-grandparent's homestead (built in 1937) was heated with a wood furnace.  Apparently it was one of the first (at least in this area).  Ducting is still intact as far as I can tell.  Would love to restore the place one day, but that would be oodles of $$$ that I don't have right now.  At least it has a new roof (courtesy of the rest of the family), so hope remains.


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## Flamestead (Jan 8, 2014)

1797 vintage, fireplaces in each of the non-basement rooms (8), and then at some later point thimbles in every one of those rooms. A relative of the prior owners, who were here 30 years, said a freestanding stove was kept running in each of the 4 downstairs rooms. He said that often wood supply would get low in the winter and they would harness up the team and get some fresh wood. The farmer's wife told us she used to serve the firemen coffee while they waited for chimney fires to burn out.


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## laynes69 (Jan 8, 2014)

Our house is a 2500 sqft Victorian with 42+ windows, and I believe was built around the mid 19th century, with 10' ceilings. I'm pretty sure there were 4 chimneys in the house, 2 that were upstairs to heat the rooms. Based on their cleanliness, I'm sure they burned coal. In the 60's when my grandparents bought the home, it wasn't insulated. There were 2-150,000+ btu fuel oil furnaces. One upstairs and one down. From what I've been told, in the 70's the fuel bill was over 400.00 a month. In 79 the house was insulated with ureaformaldyhyde foam, which cut things in about half but then shrank over the years. Fast forward to now, after a lot of money and work we heat with a little 3.5 cuft wood furnace. 

This year was the first year we met our match though. Since installing the new furnace we have used zero propane for the last 4 seasons. Here just a couple of days ago, our area hit -16 temps with -50 windchills. We were keeping up with wood, but sometime during the night it wasn't enough. When I woke at 4:00 am it was 65 from the woodfurnace, and I kicked on the central furnace for the first time this year. It kinda bums me out, but I know we just don't have the heating capacity for those temps. If we had no wind, I think we would have been fine. 

People look at our home and always make comments about how hard it is to heat. They are shocked when they hear how easy it is to heat. It's amazing to think about from the start, multiple stoves or fireplaces, then years later a huge gravity wood/coal furnace (50's-early 60's), to now the little 3.5 cu ft firebox. Many times we've seen 69-71 overnight in the mid teens after a 9-10 hour period.


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## Ram 1500 with an axe... (Jan 8, 2014)

I know I don't compare but i like your post so I am joining in. I have a 1943 built colonial, no insulation, lots of windows and a crazy wind that can rip through the main living area. A slate roof and two exterior brick fireplaces with some really nice woodwork and stained glass leaded widows in the house. There was a godin coal stove when we bought it 20 years ago but the town said it had to be ripped out to get the co. I have a tank strapped to a storage room ceiling in the basement, looks like it was for some sort of heating, it only looks like 20-30 gallons worth, kind of weird. Also have a really nice brick outdoor fireplace.... So this house has some nice history, not as much as yours but we absolutely love our house, except we had a pipe bust today because of the way the house was built(pipes in a concrete crawl space) and I could use another bedroom now that the kids are getting older and the girls share a room.....but nice thread


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## Paulywalnut (Jan 8, 2014)

My Victorian farm house built in 1899 has a thimble in all the downstairs rooms 5 . There were small coal stoves in those rooms. Like yours Joful there was a summer kitchen destroyed by fire 60 years ago. I've completely renovated the house. I took the wood stove out of the kitchen and never saw the coal stoves. Heat rose to heat the 5 rooms on the second floor. Just one Jotul heating most of the house now. Just me and the wife left. 4 bedrooms have the doors shut to save heat. I'm sure house must really be nice. Love the real old homes.


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## Ram 1500 with an axe... (Jan 8, 2014)

Paulywalnut said:


> My Victorian farm house built in 1899 has a thimble in all the downstairs rooms 5 . There were small coal stoves in those rooms. Like yours Joful there was a summer kitchen destroyed by fire 60 years ago. I've completely renovated the house. I took the wood stove out of the kitchen and never saw the coal stoves. Heat rose to heat the 5 rooms on the second floor. Just one Jotul heating most of the house now. Just me and the wife left. 4 bedrooms have the doors shut to save heat. I'm sure house must really be nice. Love the real old homes.


His house s a beauty, I've seen 2 pics or so of it, maybe he will show some more?


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## eclecticcottage (Jan 8, 2014)

Ram 1500 with an axe... said:


> I have a tank strapped to a storage room ceiling in the basement, looks like it was for some sort of heating, it only looks like 20-30 gallons worth, kind of weird.



Sounds like an expansion tank.


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## Redbarn (Jan 8, 2014)

Ours is a 1815 Federal. There is/was a fireplace in every room. Plus a bake oven in the each end of the basement.
The basement was setup with a central external coal shute and the house was heated by coal until the oil hot water system was fitted by the 3rd family in the 1930s.

The early owners didn't worry too much as they had servants who literally did the dirty work of moving the coal around.
All of the old chimneys are still here. Where the chimneys have been moved in the roof, the bricks are still thick black with carbon.
How they didn't have serial  chimney fires is a mystery to me.

One of the previous owners had the idea of filling all the unused chimneys with straw bales.
We discovered this when trying to put in the SS liner for our pellet stove. 
There was circa 14 feet column of straw to clear so we could get the 4" pipe up the chimney.


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## Isaac Carlson (Jan 8, 2014)

Our house was originally built in the early 1860's and has been added onto a few times.  You can still see the old half log beams under the kitchen and dining room.  Parts of the house sag something fierce, but it will all be fixed.  It will take some work holding up the second floor while we rebuild the first floor and then readjust everything so the second floor is still straight.  The second floor was built after the house was sagging, so it will be fun.  There is one chimney going up through the center of the house, but it is used for the propane water heater now.  We are going to put it back into service with our Kitchen Queen cookstove.  My wife's parents added a short (<10 feet) chimney on the OUTSIDE of the south wall of the living room and put a Lopi Answer on it.  That is what we are using for heat now.  It works, but the lopi has to run wide open when it gets real cold outside.


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## Papa-Yankee-Romeo-Oscar (Jan 8, 2014)

Our house has been in my family since its beginning. The oldest portion of the house was built in the 1850's and the large portion of the house was added on in 1906.The old portion of the house consists of what used to be the main house now our kitchen and a summer kitchen, both of witch have a thimble in the wall but the original chimneys have been torn down below the roof line and roofed over. When the newer part of the house was built they installed a coal furnace which was later retro-fitted to burn gas. I can remember the behemoth of a furnace in the basement which was completely replaced in the early eighties. The summer kitchen still has the original windows.


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## eclecticcottage (Jan 9, 2014)

Our house (the Cottage) isn't old be house enthusist standards (although many general home buyers think of 1950's as "old")...but originally there wasn't any heat, lol.  Well, maybe a moniter type heater, the cottage a couple doors down that hadn't been updated much had one.  At some point someone put in a boiler and baseboard heat.

Our Old House...that was a weird one.  We never did figure it out.  It was a small (850ish) sq ft vernacular (picture the house every kid draws-rectangle with a triangle on top) built in the early 1920's.  When we bought it there was a (nat. gas DV) wall heater up stairs and an in floor gravity heater down.  NO ducting/plumbing/evidence of either, so no central heat ever.  A neighbor that lived there his whole life told us a PO had removed a brick chimney that had been in the middle of the house...from the bottom up (doh).  Weirdly, there was no foundation for it under the house and we couldn't find where it had gone up through the roof, although the bedroom floor did have a square patch in it.  He also had a couple old pics of the house, and one does look like there's a small central chimney.  The house had been reconfigured when we bought it so we aren't completely sure but it appears that there MIGHT have been a wood cook stove in the kitchen which used the chimney.  the neighbor didn't recall.  his house was heated with coal, although when he had passed and it was cleared out, we never could figure out where the coal stove was.  Interestingly, our old garage seemed to have a coal crib, but it might have been a feed crib since they did have horses there at one point.  It didn't have coal dust built up-the neighbor's garage had a coal crib and there WAS dust built up.

We looked at a couple of early 1800's homes here, and both had no evidence of stoves.  One was amazing, a brick vernacular farm home that was built by someone with money with a capitol M.  I am quite sure it didn't have stoves or fireplaces, as there was no space for a walled up fireplace or walls thick enough to hide a roofed over chimney and all of the original mouldings were intact.  It was heated by very decorative radiators.  The other was a mid 1800's cobblestone which also didn't seem to have evidence of hidden fireplaces, but it was no where near as high end so they might just have been remodeled away.  It did belong to/was buiilt by the founder of the town though, so perhaps they didn't go all out of trimwork but still went with high end heating.  Sadly, the brick vernacular has suffered through a few not so historically oriented owners and has either been sold again or is going REO and the cobblestone has been vacant for several years (it was owned by a great older gentleman when we looked at it, he was intending to move to CA where his daughter lived after it sold so it could be an estate stuck in probate).

Edited because I forgot one "lost" heat source in our Old House.  The gravity heater was vented into a cinder bloack chimney that ran up the side of the house.  When we were doing some renos we found a "blocked off" (semi filled with a rough cut piece of drywall) round hole that must have been a thimble for something previous to the in floor heater.  Assume it was gas fired, the chimney isn't built like any wood chimney I've seen, only like the old ones for pre-high efficiency furnaces.


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## jharkin (Jan 9, 2014)

Howdy Joful!


I know we have discussed this before, but I dont think inthe 18th and 19th century they even tried to keep the entire house warm, only the space in use at any given time.  Which in the colonial era meant that during the day probably just the kitchen and maybe a parlor was heated by the fireplace there, and then in the evening they might light some bedroom fireplaces to warm up bedwarmers, before bundling up under a lot of blankets for the night. Having lots of smaller rooms with low ceilings and interior doors made it easier to partion off and heat only the used space..... which is why you didn't see "open concept" till the era of cheap energy.

In our house, which is transitional  period like yours, we have fireplaces in the front two rooms, a cooking hearth in the ell where the modern woodstove is, and I have also found a concreted in stove thimble on the back side of the cooking hearth chimney in the area that's now our kitchen.  Might have been a summer kitchen or storage shed space originally.  On the second floor there is nothing at all, as was common for cape cod style houses which back then where working class homes and the second floor was unfinished attic space where the children or boarders might all have slept many to a bed bundled up under lots of blankets with no heat at all.


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## jharkin (Jan 9, 2014)

eclecticcottage said:


> We looked at a couple of early 1800's homes here, and both had no evidence of stoves.  One was amazing, a brick vernacular farm home that was built by someone with money with a capitol M.  I am quite sure it didn't have stoves or fireplaces, as there was no space for a walled up fireplace or walls thick enough to hide a roofed over chimney and all of the original mouldings were intact.  It was heated by very decorative radiators.  The other was a mid 1800's cobblestone which also didn't seem to have evidence of hidden fireplaces, but it was no where near as high end so they might just have been remodeled away.  It did belong to/was buiilt by the founder of the town though, so perhaps they didn't go all out of trimwork but still went with high end heating.  Sadly, the brick vernacular has suffered through a few not so historically oriented owners and has either been sold again or is going REO and the cobblestone has been vacant for several years (it was owned by a great older gentleman when we looked at it, he was intending to move to CA where his daughter lived after it sold so it could be an estate stuck in probate).



Could well be they had central heat. There are patents for both early steam and gravity hot water radiant systems going all the way back to the 1830s/1840s.  One of the earliest reliable systems was Golds Patent 'Mattress' Radiator  which was introduced a few years before the Civil War.  






And we know that graivty hot air central heat goes back as far as ancient Rome....


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## billb3 (Jan 9, 2014)

eclecticcottage said:


> Sounds like an expansion tank.


Mine was still being used when I moved in here but it was leaking. I finally figured out it was the rusty tank that was causing me to constantly have to bleed the radiators.

There's also a patched hole in the living room floor (center of house) from the central heater. I just happen to know it was coal despite having never seen it but remember my grandfather trying to convince us the roaring coming up from the 3x4  floor grate  was a monster in the basement. Often when a home was heated with coal there's still evidence from the damage the coal chute would do gaining access to dump several tons of coal into the basement. All the basement windwos here have been replaced such that all the evidence is gone, but the house next door still has the damaged window trim. I remember the coal boiler being removed from that house and eventually all the tall cast iron steam radiators.


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## jharkin (Jan 9, 2014)

Yup, and in old gravity hot water systems those expansion tanks where often in the attic....


More fun old reading from heatinghelp:  http://www.heatinghelp.com/files/articles/1223/79.pdf


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## BurnIt13 (Jan 9, 2014)

I've always wondered what the stoves looked like back in the day in the 1700's, I had always assumed they just burnt with wood fireplaces only.

My 2 story, 1500sqft colonial was built in 1899 and I've always wondered how they heated it.  There is one chimney but *no fireplace*.  The house has steam heat on the first floor so I can only assume that they installed a coal fired boiler in the basement when the house was new.  Kinda scary to think about because the masonry chimney is only 6"x6" and the wood framing goes right up to it.

I've done some remodeling on the upstairs and there is evidence of some patch jobs to the chimney in the two bedrooms that are on either side of the chimney.  There is also evidence of a chimney fire or some soot escaping the chimney at some point.  The wood framing abutting the 2nd floor ceiling near the chimney was black and so is the wood where it passes through the roof in the attic.  It is physically sound and bleach, hydrogen peroxides, and other mold remover/surfactants did nothing to it.  I think I have some pictures on here somewhere in my install thread.

If the patch jobs were not due to a chimney fire there might have been small kerosene or coal heaters in these rooms.  The rooms are small so I can't imagine anything too large.  Sounds scary.

There seems to be evidence of a wood cookstove in the kitchen as well.  I think they vented out the wall and went up the side of the house.


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## Seasoned Oak (Jan 9, 2014)

The house i grew up in had a coal heatrola (warm air) in the living room and a small (johnny stove)in the basement for hot water. NO heat in the bedrooms. In the morning it was FREEZING in the bedrooms.


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## mikey (Jan 9, 2014)

1763 colonial not much insulation, with no power and three fireplaces going I could get it to about fifty, I think that's how they lived.


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## BurnIt13 (Jan 9, 2014)

And I'm sure they didn't have to worry about it being so warm that they needed shorts and t-shirts (or less), as those articles of clothing probably weren't what they are today.  You didn't have to worry about pipes freezing either because there were none.


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## Ashful (Jan 9, 2014)

Wow... great replies!  I'll try to respond to all.



BrowningBAR said:


> A good example would be the Parry Mansion in New Hope. Take a tour. You will see a stove in each room on the main floor.


I am very familiar with the Perry Mansion, although I should go back for another tour.  I haven't been in that house since I was a kid, long before I was interested in wood stoves.  I always thought it odd they call it "Perry Mansion", though, when the entire house would fit many times over in many of our houses of similar or much older vintage. 

Perry Mansion, looking mighty small for a mansion:





I do have a few more examples of wood stove usage from my own family:

My uncle Robert Thompson's 1702 house, just down the street from Perry's.  He had only a daughter (no sons), who married William Neely.  Originally heated only by open fireplace (no wood stoves), it's now open as a park, called the Thompson-Neely House (not "Mansion", although at least 3x the size of the Perry house).




The Headquarters House (not "Mansion"), built around 1742, and famous as Washington's headquarters for ten days in 1776.  The famous Christmas day Battle of Trenton was planned in the dining room of this house.  My great grandparents purchased it from the second owner, and it was in my family for many years.  Unfortunately, it burned to the ground in 1984, and the house that stands there today is very much modernized.  I never thought to ask grandma how it was heated.




My uncle Ivins' farm, originally built in 1692 and later expanded, right up Lurgan Rd. from uncle Robert's place.  This was an operating farm until the early 1990's, when my uncle passed away, and was recognized by the USDA as the oldest Heritage Farm in the country, prior to closing the business.  Over 11,000 sq.ft., it was heated with a half dozen fireplaces, and one wood stove in the parlor.  It had one very interesting fireplace in the 18th century addition, which was placed at a 45 degree angle in the corner of two adjacent rooms, such that two adjacent faces of the fireplace were open to the two adjacent rooms.




Kittel House, built 1740, and purchased by a third great-uncle of mine in 1840, it's still in my family.  It has been kept almost entirely original, and only had internal plumbing installed around 1975 - 1980.  It was heated by a single wood stove in the central parlor, one cooking fireplace in the oldest part of the house, and four smaller fireplaces (two first floor, two second floor).  It looks a lot like the Thompson-Neely house above, but I do not have any photo handy to post.



tcassavaugh said:


> My aunt and uncle nearby, had a big wood stove installed in the basement that seemed to take gigantic rounds. it had a central grate in the floor and ceiling grates for the second floor for the air to pass.  it also had a chain operated draft to control the burn not too far away from the grate.





Stubborn Dutchman said:


> I don't know the time frame  but there used to be a big old woodfurnace in the basement. There was no ductwork. In the floor under the archway between the living room and dining room was a large grate, I think well over three feet square, maybe closer to four feet sq.. On the trim on the side of the arch you can still see where the chain pulley was mounted. I thought it was pretty neat that even way back then they were ingenious enough to control the draft without trecking downstairs. In the ceilings of the dining and living rooms are two ornate vents that allowed heat to rise to the upstairs bedrooms. I don't think it worked all that well because I remember some sort of small heaters in each of the bedrooms. Somebody told be they put hot rocks in them as they had no fuel source.


My last house, an 1880'ish Victorian, had a similar setup.  Big coal-fired burner in the basement, with a huge grate (several square feet) in the kitchen floor.  There were ceiling to floor registers in every room, with dampers, to provide natural convective heating and control.



EatenByLimestone said:


> As you can guess, it took a crazy amount of fuel to heat with wood.  And I'm pretty sure it wasn't dried, there wouldn't have been time or space to do that.
> 
> By 1800 PA was mining coal so maybe the heat and ease of storage of coal allowed the previous owners of your house to expand upstairs in the winter.


Very interesting.  I do recall one person here posting (last year) that the average household wood usage was 25 - 30 cords for heating, in the 18th century, although I don't recall them having a source for that info.  In any case, one hell of a task, with no chainsaw, no hydraulic splitter, and no front-end loader.



begreen said:


> I replaced the foundation, rebuilt the foyer (removed chimney), tore out the fireplace and put in the current class A chimney while reversing the living room layout and put in the Castine, then the T6. A modern, 2 stage high efficiency heat pump was installed at the same time.


Anyone who hasn't seen begreen's thread on this project should go find it.  Seriously, now... I'll wait.  It was very cool.



charger4406 said:


> 10 thimbles ,nearly 1 in each room, house was heated by coal and wood stoves.
> converted to oil and wood with electric also.  Now 2 wood stoves with oil and electric back-up.


Wow!  Do you have any evidence on how many of those thimbles were used?  How successful  are you at heating that joint with two stoves?




Cynnergy said:


> OK, it's not old by back-east standards, but my great-grandparent's homestead (built in 1937) was heated with a wood furnace.  Apparently it was one of the first (at least in this area).  Ducting is still intact as far as I can tell.  Would love to restore the place one day, but that would be oodles of $$$ that I don't have right now.  At least it has a new roof (courtesy of the rest of the family), so hope remains.


Interesting.  Some similar stories in my family, with the last generation to operate many of these big farms has been dying over the last 20 years.  Thru several "only child" generations, and a few early deaths, it has funneled down to just a few of us.  I'm the only living survivor of all four of my grandparents, and one of just a handful for all eight of my great-grandparents.  Makes it kinda tough to keep the old properties in the family.



Flamestead said:


> 1797 vintage, fireplaces in each of the non-basement rooms (8), and then at some later point thimbles in every one of those rooms. A relative of the prior owners, who were here 30 years, said a freestanding stove was kept running in each of the 4 downstairs rooms. He said that often wood supply would get low in the winter and they would harness up the team and get some fresh wood. The farmer's wife told us she used to serve the firemen coffee while they waited for chimney fires to burn out.


Sounds amazing.  Got photos?  Are you sure the thimbles were indeed later, and not original?  By 1797, wood stoves were as popular as microwave ovens in the early 1980's.



laynes69 said:


> Our house is a 2500 sqft Victorian with 42+ windows, and I believe was built around the mid 19th century, with 10' ceilings. I'm pretty sure there were 4 chimneys in the house, 2 that were upstairs to heat the rooms. Based on their cleanliness, I'm sure they burned coal. In the 60's when my grandparents bought the home, it wasn't insulated. There were 2-150,000+ btu fuel oil furnaces. One upstairs and one down. From what I've been told, in the 70's the fuel bill was over 400.00 a month. In 79 the house was insulated with ureaformaldyhyde foam, which cut things in about half but then shrank over the years. Fast forward to now, after a lot of money and work we heat with a little 3.5 cuft wood furnace.


I'd love to see some photos!  Very cool, that you're able to keep your grandparents' house.  Interesting to hear that upstairs and downstairs fireplaces had separate flues in 1850.  My first and second floor appliances all share common flues.



Ram 1500 with an axe... said:


> I know I don't compare but i like your post so I am joining in. I have a 1943 built colonial, no insulation, lots of windows and a crazy wind that can rip through the main living area. A slate roof and two exterior brick fireplaces with some really nice woodwork and stained glass leaded widows in the house. There was a godin coal stove when we bought it 20 years ago but the town said it had to be ripped out to get the co. I have a tank strapped to a storage room ceiling in the basement, looks like it was for some sort of heating, it only looks like 20-30 gallons worth, kind of weird. Also have a really nice brick outdoor fireplace.... So this house has some nice history, not as much as yours but we absolutely love our house, except we had a pipe bust today because of the way the house was built(pipes in a concrete crawl space) and I could use another bedroom now that the kids are getting older and the girls share a room.....but nice thread





eclecticcottage said:


> Sounds like an expansion tank.


Yep... classic rig.  Sounds like a cool place, Ram!  I spent a good part of my childhood in a house built in 1953.  Sounds very similar.  It was cavernous, and built like a bomb shelter.  Had four fireplaces (three indoor, one in back yard), all of which got very regular use.  It also had a similar expansion tank in the ceiling, connected to a converted GE boiler.



Paulywalnut said:


> My Victorian farm house built in 1899 has a thimble in all the downstairs rooms 5 . There were small coal stoves in those rooms. Like yours Joful there was a summer kitchen destroyed by fire 60 years ago. I've completely renovated the house. I took the wood stove out of the kitchen and never saw the coal stoves. Heat rose to heat the 5 rooms on the second floor. Just one Jotul heating most of the house now. Just me and the wife left. 4 bedrooms have the doors shut to save heat. I'm sure house must really be nice. Love the real old homes.


I'd love to see some photos!  Our summer kitchen was torn down in 1994, to make way for a new addition to the house.  They kept the old fireplace, though, and incorporated it into the new addition.  Definitely NOT what I would have done, but my wife likes it, which is really all that matters.  I just work there.  



Ram 1500 with an axe... said:


> His house s a beauty, I've seen 2 pics or so of it, maybe he will show some more?


This place has some character, but has definitely lost some of its historical features, due to prior renovations.  I don't think it's nearly as nice as some of the other older houses in which I've spent time, but gimme a few years on that...











Redbarn said:


> Ours is a 1815 Federal. There is/was a fireplace in every room. Plus a bake oven in the each end of the basement.
> The basement was setup with a central external coal shute and the house was heated by coal until the oil hot water system was fitted by the 3rd family in the 1930s.
> 
> The early owners didn't worry too much as they had servants who literally did the dirty work of moving the coal around.
> ...


You MUST post photos!  Sounds like an amazing place.  According to census records (and I guess their religious heritage), the owners of our house never had any form of slaves.  At most, perhaps a wayward teen they might take in for food and shelter, in exchange for helping out with the house work.



Isaac Carlson said:


> Our house was originally built in the early 1860's and has been added onto a few times.  You can still see the old half log beams under the kitchen and dining room.  Parts of the house sag something fierce, but it will all be fixed.  It will take some work holding up the second floor while we rebuild the first floor and then readjust everything so the second floor is still straight.


We have some similar problems.  A wall was removed in the original living room, and replaced with a too-small re-purposed barn post timber, allowing the second floor to sag.  Two basement walls were removed and replaced with timber beams, one of which is way to small for the span, allowing our living room floor to bounce when you walk thru the room.  The living room floor will be fixed when we renovate the basement, but the living room ceiling will remain as it is.



Papa-Yankee-Romeo-Oscar said:


> Our house has been in my family since its beginning. The oldest portion of the house was built in the 1850's and the large portion of the house was added on in 1906.


Very cool.  There were many such houses in my family, up thru my grandparents' generation.  Unfortunately, several of them have been sold in the last 20 years.


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## BrowningBAR (Jan 9, 2014)

Joful said:


> I am very familiar with the Perry Mansion, although I should go back for another tour. I haven't been in that house since I was a kid, long before I was interested in wood stoves. I always thought it odd they call it "Perry Mansion", though, when the entire house would fit many times over in many of our houses of similar or much older vintage. Perry Mansion, looking mighty small for a mansion:


Which only illustrates the heating needs of old homes. There were four stoves on the first floor of the main portion of the house. One for each room. I did not get to see the rest of the home as it is not accessible. I would guess there were at least four more stoves upstairs.


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## EatenByLimestone (Jan 9, 2014)

It just dawned on me that Ben Franklin invented a woodstove or at least an improvement over an open fireplace.  Wiki tells me this was done in 1741.  His invention doesn't appear to have worked well, but I bet a lot of people were tinkering around with fireplaces if they had the free time to do so.   



mikey said:


> 1763 colonial not much insulation, with no power and three fireplaces going I could get it to about fifty, I think that's how they lived.



I'm pretty sure they did have lower expectations on heat.  If you dress for it, it's not a problem.  I wonder if the cooler weather was healthier for them.  Bacteria doesn't reproduce as fast and viruses that cause problems in people would quickly die.


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## BrowningBAR (Jan 9, 2014)

EatenByLimestone said:


> If you dress for it, it's not a problem.


As someone that did w inter with the house regularly sitting at 50 during the day and a stretch were the bedroom was 45, I can tell you, no matter how many layers you have on, your hands get cold. You get real tired of that.


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## Ashful (Jan 9, 2014)

Repeating what my mother told me, about visiting my one uncle who lived in the 1740 house without central plumbing or heat, "you went to the bathroom before you left home, and didn't dare drink when you were there."  Also, "they lived in basically one room during the winter, where they kept a stove running 24/7, and kept the rest of the house mostly closed off."  Not the way I'd want to live, but it never bothered them.  In fact, they have a plantation house in Virginia, where they spend a lot of time both summer and winter.  That house still has no electricity, so they still live old-school when they're down there.  Plumbing is via hand-pump well.

I've never lived without central heat, but I did work in a place with no central heat, and will agree with what BAR said.  After so many hours sitting around in 50F, it gets you cold to your core.  Very uncomfortable, but if it's all you know...


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## BrowningBAR (Jan 9, 2014)

Joful said:


> Repeating what my mother told me, about visiting my one uncle who lived in the 1740 house without central plumbing or heat, "you went to the bathroom before you left home, and didn't dare drink when you were there."  Also, "they lived in basically one room during the winter, where they kept a stove running 24/7, and kept the rest of the house mostly closed off."  Not the way I'd want to live, but it never bothered them.  In fact, they have a plantation house in Virginia, where they spend a lot of time both summer and winter.  That house still has no electricity, so they still live old-school when they're down there.  Plumbing is via hand-pump well.
> 
> I've never lived without central heat, but I did work in a place with no central heat, and will agree with what BAR said.  After so many hours sitting around in 50F, it gets you cold to your core.  Very uncomfortable, but if it's all you know...


My wife and I watch a lot of old movies on TCM. I pay a attention to movies that show how people lived before 1900. How is it heated? What are they wearing? I notice the frost on the single pane windows and the poor quality doors.

We were watching the 1938 version of A Christmas Carol. When Scrooge first hears the ghosts he is in bed, he is wearing heavy pajamas and a nightcap. He has several thick blankets on the bed, and a curtain around the bed to trap heat. They also showed a roaring fire in the fireplace. And this was portraying the comfort level of a wealthy man. It clearly showed that winter homes were cold and that wealth only offered so much in terms of comfort.


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## Charles1981 (Jan 9, 2014)

I think old stone castles version of insulation were huge 6x6 foot fireplaces, hanging tapestries on the wall, and putting brick/stone's heated next to the fireplace under your bed for the evening.

BRRRRR


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## EatenByLimestone (Jan 9, 2014)

BrowningBAR said:


> As someone that did w inter with the house regularly sitting at 50 during the day and a stretch were the bedroom was 45, I can tell you, no matter how many layers you have on, your hands get cold. You get real tired of that.



In the old section of town here, they went down into the basements for the winter.  That should keep them around 50.  More if they had a fireplace and the old houses I've been in had them in the basement.  

The men of the house were not at home sitting around.  I bet they would have been outside where it was colder and the 50 degrees felt very warm.  The women were probably working around the fire where it was warmer.  

I remember when I was in my young 20s and house poor.  I think I kept my house at 55 or so.  I can't remember.  I was sleeping on a futon and had my sleeping bag on the bed.  I remember working 2 jobs to pay for the house and trying to woo my wife with the $30 left over each month.  Why she stuck with me is beyond me.  I never really noticed the cold.  I was only there when I slept .


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## eclecticcottage (Jan 9, 2014)

Joful said:


> I've never lived without central heat, but I did work in a place with no central heat, and will agree with what BAR said.  After so many hours sitting around in 50F, it gets you cold to your core.  Very uncomfortable, but if it's all you know...



Neither the Cottage nor the Old House had central heat.  The Cottage did when we bought it, but the copper lines were full of freeze damage and we didn't have the $$ for the infloor heat we wanted to replace it with.  So no central heat.  The Old House was a bit more annoying cold spot wise, especially the bathroom.  

The wind had this place down to 49F Tuesday and it took until the evening to even hit the 60's (running the Republic at about 700 all day, reloading as soon as there was enough room to fit more splits in on the coasl).  Yup, that got old QUICK.  Sidenote: it's 15 degrees outside now with 0 wind and 75 in here.


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## Redbarn (Jan 9, 2014)

Our oil supplier is a family business in its umpteenth generation and one of their main sales items is still household coal.
Anthracite is their biggest solid fuel sales item. It seems remarkable to me that households still burn coal but it is readily available in SE PA.
On hearing that we were transitioning from oil to wood, they suggested we consider a wood / coal  mix.
Apparently this burns hottest and longest of all. This is an old remedy, well proven in drafty old houses in years gone by.
I've not been brave enough to try this in our Jotul insert but did get a trial bag of coal to test.


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## Cynnergy (Jan 9, 2014)

Joful - thanks for taking the time to respond to everyone!  It is very cool that you have such fantastic history and property in the family.

As for me, we are in a slightly different situation - there are lots of us who could take on my great-grandparents house (and my grandparents house, and the bunkhouses in the old logging camp, and...) but it is hard to make a living on the BC coast these days.  Everyone has moved away for jobs elsewhere.  DH and I could probably live there full time (with a big daily commute), but we'd only have my parents and a cousin for company in the winter.  I am a bit of a natural hermit and would be ok (runs in the family ) but DH is an extrovert and would go stir crazy.

Maybe when we retire some of the others will consider moving back with us.  For now, we feel proud for rescuing one of the cabins and are happy being there for weekends and holidays.


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## Ashful (Jan 9, 2014)

Oh... I forgot to make one of the major points I wanted to argue in my OP!  That is on the topic of convective versus radiative heating, with respect to old stone houses.

Like almost any proper old stone house in my area, our exterior walls consist of 18" thick mud-stacked stone, plastered inside and out with lime plaster.  End walls containing chimneys can be a bit thicker.  Engineers studying heating and insulation sometimes like to treat these walls not as having an "R-value", but as a "thermal mass", the theory being that they're more a constant temperature sink than having any set insulation value.  These walls will remain at or very near soil temperature, year round.  That makes them actually more efficient or favorable than a typical framed and insulated structure when temperatures take a quick plunge to 0F for a few days, but much less so when we have week after week of 30F average weather.

Now, most classic wood stoves, like my old cast iron Jotuls, are readiative heaters.  A radiative heater will try to directly heat objects in their sight path, not relying on air movement.  Heat the objects in the room, and the air in the room will assume the temperature of the objects.  Conversely, a convective heater directly heats the air, and that air will eventually (very slowly, perhaps never fully, due to the mass differential) heat the objects in the room.

Now coming back around to an old stone house, in which you can NEVER get those exterior walls up to 70F... a radiative stove is fighting a battle it can never win.  I can move air to promote convection, and hope that radiation from the stove is falling upon objects, walls and floors in the interior of the home, such that they might heat the air.  However, essentially all heat radiated out the back of the stove toward the exterior stone wall, is a loss.

I think that, perhaps, a convective stove might be the more appropriate heater in an old stone house.  Now, if I could just get past the way they look...


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## EatenByLimestone (Jan 9, 2014)

The house next to me was the original farmhouse for the area.   On the original part of it, the interior walls were brick while the outside walls were stick built.  I bet when the fireplace radiated onto them and they warmed up they helped to keep the temperature fluctuations down a bit.


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## jharkin (Jan 10, 2014)

Dont forget that even 'radiant' stoves still put out a lot of heat via convection as well. There have been many threads arguing it and i remember in one i went and dug my old heat transfer text out of the attic and ran some formulas and we ballparked that a cast iron stove with no blower is still pushing almost half its heat ouput via natural convection to the air.

There is a big window next to my stove, I can see this on a sunny winter day watching the heat waves risingin the stoves shadow on the floor.

Didn't you once consider building a large reflective heatshield behind you stove to reflect backside heat into the room?  That plus a small box fan back there blowing on the stove back might make a huge difference.


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## Bigg_Redd (Jan 10, 2014)

Joful said:


> I've seen mention of many "old drafty farm house(s)" this week, which has piqued my interest.  Looking around this old joint, built around 1773, I see one chimney thimble in the basement (walk-out, and likely part of some earlier structure), two on the first floor, and two on the second floor.  In fact, there may be two in the basement, for all I know, except the wall where it would exist has been covered in wall board... so who knows?
> 
> In any case, the 1773 portion of the house is 1000 sq.ft. per floor exterior, or roughly 800 sq.ft. per floor interior.  That's at least FIVE wood stoves for 800 sq.ft. of basement plus 1600 sq.ft. of first and second floor space.  It's almost laughable that I'm now trying to keep this same structure warm with one modern EPA stove, but I wonder, how many stoves would have been common in a house of given size?  While it seems sensible to have this many stoves to keep the joint warm, keeping them fed must have been a horrendous nightmare, particularly in an age long before chainsaws and hydraulic splitters.  _*How much fuel could a 1770's vintage stove eat per day.*_.. times five?
> 
> ...




Did woodstoves even exist on 1770?  I want to say they did not or if they did they were horribly crude and non-standard.  

I read a book once that made the claim that George Washington burned a cord per day (on average) in the various fireplaces of Mount Vernon.


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## jharkin (Jan 10, 2014)

Bigg_Redd said:


> Did woodstoves even exist on 1770?  I want to say they did not or if they did they were horribly crude and non-standard.
> 
> I read a book once that made the claim that George Washington burned a cord per day (on average) in the various fireplaces of Mount Vernon.



The Shelburne Museum near Burlington, VT has a gallery of antique woodstoves.  Ive seen it and another member here once put pictures up.  Early stoves go back well into the 1700s, but those where mostly basic box stoves.  There is also Ben's  "Franklin Fireplace" mentioned above but its not quite what we would think of as a stove.


I think stoves were around, but not common in the 1700s.  In the first couple decades of the 1800s they start to become mass produced as the industrial revolution kicks off and you start to see some really ornate models.  Around the same time Count Rumford invented his famous fireplace (1796 ?). What Ive seen in a lot of historic museum houses in New England is that homes built before 1800 have big sqaure box fireplace, or later had them bricked in and rebuilt as Rumfords  or had stoves added with the pipe going into the fireplace flue.  Homes between 1800 and 1820 often where built with rumford fireplaces in most rooms and possibly some rooms having a dedicated stove from the start (i believe my house is in this group). When the Greek revival architecture style shows up in 1840s  you dont see fireplaces at all - just box stoves feeding into one small central chimney.  By the Victorian era (1870s on) wealthy homes all have central heat - gravity hot air, gravity hot water, or steam, all usually coal fired. Fireplace come back in the late Victorian era as a decorative item, often coal burning.

When looking at an old house  more often then not what we see today is not original, and whether it is or not often depends on how well to do the owners here over the year.  The wealthy would chase fad and renovate to the latest styles, even in the 19th century, and hence the biggest most well preserved homes sometimes have the most alterations.  If you can find a poor old run down working mans house that's never been updated its more likely to be original.


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## eclecticcottage (Jan 10, 2014)

http://www.spotproperty.com/2632-wilson-cambria-rd-wilson-ny-14172-486110059

This is the brick vernacular I was talking about earlier.  It's not on the market any longer, this is a cached site with the listing pics.  Ignore the kitchen, that was done by this last owner, it is in the Ell.  There is a seperate stairway in the Ell to a large open room upstairs which was not originally open to the rest of the house-we believe this was originally quarters for farm or domestic help.  When we first looked at this house about 10-12 years ago, it still had the original wavy glass windows as well as all of the barns and well house, and a porch on the back of the Ell.  Now all of the barns are gone, the windows replaced and the porch-also the well house was moved and the well filled.  They did NOT replace the roof, or repair failing morter.  We planned to keep the porch and use some of the bricks to repair some which were falling apart (these are soft, being early 1800's).  Whomever did the windows did not do it properly and they damaged some parts, and one wall now bows.  All that said, you can see the main parts of the house that were untouched with the original trimwork and at least one radiator.  I believe this place never had fireplaces or stoves (outside of a wood cook stove, which I believe used the brick chimney seen at the back part of the Ell).  The town lists the date built as 1820.


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## Ashful (Jan 10, 2014)

jharkin said:


> Dont forget that even 'radiant' stoves still put out a lot of heat via convection as well. There have been many threads arguing it and i remember in one i went and dug my old heat transfer text out of the attic and ran some formulas and we ballparked that a cast iron stove with no blower is still pushing almost half its heat ouput via natural convection to the air.


Yes, I did not mean to imply otherwise.  Stoves marketed as "convective" and "radiant" both use both mechanisms for heating, only the ratios vary.



Bigg_Redd said:


> Did woodstoves even exist on 1770?  I want to say they did not or if they did they were horribly crude and non-standard.


Portable wood stoves, as we know them, were mostly invented during the course of the 1700's.  In 1700, there was not much to be had, but it was a new and thriving market by 1799.  The oldest part of my house was built around 1773 - 1779, and wood stoves were the latest home appliance fad, at that time.  Sort of like, 3D TV today... except the stoves actually caught on.

When they built my house, they installed thimbles for iron cook stoves in both the main kitchen and the summer kitchen.  However, they still built full cooking fireplaces below those thimbles.  Whether the owner intended to cook in the fireplace prior to purchasing one of these new-fangled cook stoves, or cook on the stove from day 1 while keeping their trusty fireplace for when the stove inevitably didn't pan out, we can only guess.


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## jharkin (Jan 10, 2014)

Joful said:


> Portable wood stoves, as we know them, were mostly invented during the course of the 1700's.  In 1700, there was not much to be had, but it was a new and thriving market by 1799.  The oldest part of my house was built around 1773 - 1779, and wood stoves were the latest home appliance fad, at that time.  Sort of like, 3D TV today... except the stoves actually caught on.
> 
> When they built my house, they installed thimbles for iron cook stoves in both the main kitchen and the summer kitchen.  However, they still built full cooking fireplaces below those thimbles.  Whether the owner intended to cook in the fireplace prior to purchasing one of these new-fangled cook stoves, or cook on the stove from day 1 while keeping their trusty fireplace for when the stove inevitably didn't pan out, we can only guess.




Ive always found it fascinating to compare notes on our houses Joful, as even though we are in different areas and your place is larger, more ornate and of different construction it seems the builders where in that same transitional period.


Ive shown my stove hearth before:





The fireplace the stove is in is back in the ell. As best we can tell this is original and the ovens where definitely functional, problem is the fireplace opening is waaaay to small, even if we decide the house is later (1820s). There is an actual crane in  the hearth (see second pic) and some evidence it was used as a fireplace but still is way to small to have been used for serious cooking in the 1800s.

The paneling around the hearth is all reproduction, on the back side of the stack under the paneling Ive found a concreted in stove thimble which may have been a summer kitchen stove. Its possible there  is a thimble hidden on the front or I've had old house experts suggest they may have shoehorned an early steptop stove into the fireplace opening, something like this:






If only I had a time machine!!


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## hoverwheel (Jan 10, 2014)

Bigg_Redd said:


> I read a book once that made the claim that George Washington burned a cord per day (on average) in the various fireplaces of Mount Vernon.



I guess that explains what happened to all the old growth forests!


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## jharkin (Jan 10, 2014)

hoverwheel said:


> I guess that explains what happened to all the old growth forests!



Yep, that plus construction.  Also prior to the revolution the tallest and straightest Eastern White Pines (many over 200ft tall!) where tagged with a mark as a "King's Tree" and were cut down and shipped back to England to be made into masts for the Royal Navy.  Cutting one down to build a house was a serious offense, if you go into a colonial period house and see floorboards or wainscot of boards 3 feet wide they likely came from such a tree and were contraband


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## BurnIt13 (Jan 10, 2014)

hoverwheel said:


> I guess that explains what happened to all the old growth forests!



It makes sense why these people had tons of servants and slaves.  You would need a full time crew just to find, split, and stack wood!  Never mind the manpower in bringing in all that wood into the house everyday and to keep the fires going!

Turn back the clock even further to say the renaissance period or before and no wonder why the life expectancy was so low.  Life was truly hard!


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## Dave A. (Jan 10, 2014)

Redbarn said:


> On hearing that we were transitioning from oil to wood, they suggested we consider a wood / coal mix. Apparently this burns hottest and longest of all. This is an old remedy, well proven in drafty old houses in years gone by. I've not been brave enough to try this in our Jotul insert but did get a trial bag of coal to test.



Was considering that sort of thing with my too small Century insert that could never heat my house well enough, but read some warnings against doing that as it could cause permanent damage to the stove.  The coal supposedly burns too hot for a stove that is not made for it (and apparently no epa stoves are made for coal).


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## Ashful (Jan 10, 2014)

BurnIt13 said:


> Turn back the clock even further to say the renaissance period or before and no wonder why the life expectancy was so low.  Life was truly hard!


Way OT, but this is a common misconception.  If you go way back to 400 BC and study the Greek philosophers, you will quickly notice most of them lived into their mid-80's.  Studying the time further indicates that if you survived into adulthood, you would likely have a life expectancy similar to our own.  It was really only during colonial times that life expectancy took a nose dive, due to the dangers of living on the frontier, not so much due to a lack of modern conveniences.  I suspect that farmers and business owners in Europe, excepting a few plagues surrounding the Renaissance, were living similarly well.

Also, when looking at "average" life expectancy, the numbers are swayed drastically by infant and childhood mortality, which has been the biggest factor of change in modern times.


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## Jags (Jan 10, 2014)

Dave A. said:


> , but read some warnings against doing that as it could cause permanent damage to the stove.



Yeah - don't burn coal in a stove that wasn't intended to do so.  There is also design differences.  Coal stoves bring in air from the bottom up.

Now - back to heating old houses.


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## Ashful (Jan 10, 2014)

jharkin said:


> Ive always found it fascinating to compare notes on our houses Joful, as even though we are in different areas and your place is larger, more ornate and of different construction it seems the builders where in that same transitional period.


Mine's just a simple farm house, no Edwardian or Federal manor!  I also suspect yours is a good generation older than mine, no?

_edit:  just saw your 1795.  Thought you had once figured it at 1750, but I may be remembering wrong._



jharkin said:


> Ive shown my stove hearth before:
> 
> View attachment 123534
> View attachment 123535


Every time I see that photo, I think it looks like a bricked-in cooking fireplace.  However, you are right that iron stoves were indeed popular before your house was built, and so it's almost certain that's what would've been installed in your house.  Sort of like building a house on the east coast today without central air... it happens, but not often.

Here's a link to one of the most interesting articles I've read on this subject.  The Goshenhoppen region, of which they speak, is where I live.  In fact, that monster 60" oak I brought home last spring came from Old Goshenhoppen Church, founded 1732.

http://www.berksmontnews.com/article/BM/20130328/OPINION03/130329876


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## jharkin (Jan 10, 2014)

Joful said:


> Mine's just a simple farm house, no Edwardian or Federal manor!  I also suspect yours is a good generation older than mine, no?
> 
> _edit:  just saw your 1795.  Thought you had once figured it at 1750, but I may be remembering wrong._
> 
> ...



Yeah, the town dates my house at 1795... But I think its later, maybe as late as 1820-1830.  Its really a puzzle as I have some features pointing to an early date - like the 20+ inch floorboards upstairs, but the complete absence of handmade nails, relatively high ceilings, and other elements point to later.  Im guessing a bit later but using reclaimed lumber possibly.

Its possible that an older larger fireplace was bricked in, but if they did it was a fantastic job because I cant tell where!

Interesting article I'm reading it now, thanks for sharing.


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## begreen (Jan 10, 2014)

In the old family homes (ca 1750) I looked at, one had a second kitchen/living space in the basement. When the weather got cold, that is where they lived. It was a dirty dark location, but the earthen walls made it easier to heat. They were not wealthy so they had to make do.


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## EatenByLimestone (Jan 10, 2014)

jharkin said:


> Ive always found it fascinating to compare notes on our houses Joful, as even though we are in different areas and your place is larger, more ornate and of different construction it seems the builders where in that same transitional period.
> 
> 
> Ive shown my stove hearth before:
> ...




Is there any chance there was a front cover on it and it was used with coal?  Boston would probably have been one of the larger markets and would have had access to it pretty early.

"As early as 1748, there was a coal mine near Richmond, VA, but the coal would likely only have been used very locally until the transportation industry developed. By the 1820s, coal was being shipped regularly from Europe to some major coastal American cities, but the cost for overseas transport likely limited the use to only large buildings or homes of the most wealthy. Numerous canals were created by the 1840s, enabling America’s land-locked coal industries the ability to distribute this fossil fuels to many ports, cities, and towns. Horse powered wagons could then provide the local delivery from coal yards to all but the most remote rural homes."

http://www.oldhouseweb.com/blog/the-history-of-coal-heating/


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## Ashful (Jan 10, 2014)

begreen said:


> In the old family homes (ca 1750) I looked at, one had a second kitchen/living space in the basement. When the weather got cold, that is where they lived. It was a dirty dark location, but the earthen walls made it easier to heat. They were not wealthy so they had to make do.


A prior owner of my house had told me he suspected one part of my basement was actually part of some earlier dwelling, dating earlier than 1773.  He said that even after the current house was built, he believed they used it as a seasonal kitchen.  I'm not sure why he felt that, but I will say that the foundation for my fireplace above could have originally been a fireplace itself, and there's a curious cupboard installed in the wall next to this fireplace foundation, giving further credence to the claim that this was once a kitchen.  The cupboard door is new, but the interior is very, very old.





Perhaps this is where they spent more time in the coldest of winter days, particularly prior to the 1770's construction of the larger house above.


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## BurnIt13 (Jan 10, 2014)

Absolutely beautiful house you've got there Joful!  If I somehow could I would build a brand new replica with all the charm but none of the "inconveniences" of these historic homes.

That picture above is more charming than any room in my entire house!  I'm truly jealous.

This thread has made me appreciate the convenience of modern heat!


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## Ashful (Jan 10, 2014)

That's the basement, BurnIt13!  Perhaps this photo of the door just out of view to the left of the photo above will dissuade you.  Yes, that's ice on the door handle.




Old houses are beautiful... until you look real close.  

For the record, I have my doubts about the theory of folks living in the basement, at the time this house was built (ca.1773).  The house today is no more or less sealed or insulated than it was then, and we do okay upstairs.  Certainly warmer upstairs than in the basement, even in the coldest weather we get.  I suspect the reports of folks moving into the basement for winter predate the construction of this house by 50 - 100 years, when windows and glass were indeed much more primitive.


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## Redbarn (Jan 10, 2014)

A picture of our Summer Kitchen from a local history book.






Dating uncertain but from the 1770's certainly. Only a single room on each floor.
There is a very large fireplace (hearth) on each floor which are inglenook size and take up about 1/3 of the back walls.
You could stay warm in this place with a fire going. There were sleeping  quarters upstairs.
The construction is so stout that it is easy to see that people just added onto or enclosed a structure like this as the houses expanded.


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## missedbass (Jan 10, 2014)

jharkin said:


> Yup, and in old gravity hot water systems those expansion tanks where often in the attic....
> 
> 
> More fun old reading from heatinghelp:  http://www.heatinghelp.com/files/articles/1223/79.pdf


 My friend Dan! I've learned a lot from him!


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## Ashful (Jan 10, 2014)

Redbarn said:


> A picture of our Summer Kitchen from a local history book.
> Dating uncertain but from the 1770's certainly. Only a single room on each floor.
> There is a very large fireplace (hearth) on each floor which are inglenook size and take up about 1/3 of the back walls.
> You could stay warm in this place with a fire going. There were sleeping  quarters upstairs.
> The construction is so stout that it is easy to see that people just added onto or enclosed a structure like this as the houses expanded.


Nice!  My 85 year old uncle lives in a house built around 1740, which his grandfather purchased in 1840.  The 1740 portion of the house fits the description of yours, with one room on each floor, and a fireplace that takes up almost the entire rear wall of the house.  I don't know the width, but it makes mine look absolutely miniscule, and it's much larger than the 8 footer at my aunt's farm pictured above.  The house was expanded in the early 1800's, and the new portion contains four more fireplaces, sized for heating (not cooking).  It was my childhood dream to someday own that house... then I got married to a woman who has different ideas.


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## Flamestead (Jan 10, 2014)

Our 9th fireplace is in the cellar, along with a second bread oven. People have referred to this as a summer kitchen. I had not heard stories of people retreating to basements in the winter, so the summer kitchen story made some sense to me. This is a walk-out basement, and the 'kitchen' is in a front room of the basement. Unfortunately the fireplace was bricked over, and all the bricks are suffering some degradation, plus an owner in 1970 plopped an oil hot-air furnace right in front of it.


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## Dustin92 (Jan 11, 2014)

Our house is pretty new compared to most here, built in 1950, I am pretty sure it was originally heated with a gravity furnace (probably gas, there is still old,old,old cast iron pipes going to our current furnace) , all the hot air registers are pretty much central, all on inside walls, while the returns are on the outside walls. About 25 years ago a high efficiency gas furnace was installed, but the heat still flows from the registers, even after the furnace has shut off. There is an original fireplace (in the basement of all places, pretty sure it is an early heatform) An insert was installed in 1991, and we have been trying to heat with the insert (rather unsucessfully I might add) for the last two years. I sometimes wonder why the fireplace was built in the basement, which was just two wide open rooms until about 15 years ago. The stairs to the basement came in originally through the unheated garage, and at some point a stairwell was built to connect the basement to the upstairs.


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## eclecticcottage (Jan 11, 2014)

Dustin92 said:


> Our house is pretty new compared to most here, built in 1950, I am pretty sure it was originally heated with a gravity furnace (probably gas, there is still old,old,old cast iron pipes going to our current furnace) , all the hot air registers are pretty much central, all on inside walls, while the returns are on the outside walls. About 25 years ago a high efficiency gas furnace was installed, but the heat still flows from the registers, even after the furnace has shut off. There is an original fireplace (in the basement of all places, pretty sure it is an early heatform) An insert was installed in 1991, and we have been trying to heat with the insert (rather unsucessfully I might add) for the last two years. I sometimes wonder why the fireplace was built in the basement, which was just two wide open rooms until about 15 years ago. The stairs to the basement came in originally through the unheated garage, and at some point a stairwell was built to connect the basement to the upstairs.



My grandparents house had a basement fireplace and one above in the livingroom.  I don't know if it was designed that way or he added it-my mom said they lived in the basement for a while while the house was finished.  I assumed that was the reason for it, since I never saw it used (it was in his workshop part of the basement-he was a carpenter).  He built the house around 1966.


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## laynes69 (Jan 11, 2014)

Here is a picture my wife took a while back in black and white. Unfortunately, years ago the fancy woodwork that surrounded the windows was removed. Also inside most of the woodwork was removed, but luckily we still have the original doors. The roof at one time had build in gutters, which over time deteriorated and were removed. I would give anything to see what our house looked like in its glory days, but I have yet to find any pictures of it. I also don't know the exact date it was built, due to a fire that had destroyed records years ago. I do know our barn was built in 1880, which is hand painted above the 2 doors.


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## Redbarn (Jan 11, 2014)

Joful said:


> Nice!  My 85 year old uncle lives in a house built around 1740, which his grandfather purchased in 1840.  The 1740 portion of the house fits the description of yours, with one room on each floor, and a fireplace that takes up almost the entire rear wall of the house.  I don't know the width, but it makes mine look absolutely miniscule, and it's much larger than the 8 footer at my aunt's farm pictured above.  The house was expanded in the early 1800's, and the new portion contains four more fireplaces, sized for heating (not cooking).  It was my childhood dream to someday own that house... then I got married to a woman who has different ideas.



Our houses reflect the transition of wood to coal for domestic heating. Our Summer House was the original dwelling on the farm and was set up for heating and cooking with wood. As the family prospered, in the early 1810s they built the main house out of brick (an expensive undertaking) and built it to use coal. We are situated less than a mile from a then newly built canal that connected to the coal region in PA, so this was a forward thinking idea. The rooms each have a small fireplace for a coal fire. They did hedge by putting a large wood burning hearth in either end of the basement in case coal was ever in short supply.


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