Home Heating in the 1940s

rusty6

Well-known Member
About 1949. A photo of my dad with a load of poplar logs he had cut for firewood to burn in the cook stove and likely some in the basement furnace. Usually a truck load of coal went into that old furnace through the winter too. Plenty of warmth generated cutting that firewood with the axe by hand too. There was no shortage of exercise on the farm in those days.
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(quoted from post at 22:22:37 12/18/14) What an awesome photo and memories! Thanks for sharing!
Thanks, I forgot to mention that Dad was into tractor farming by 49 but he kept a team of horses around for winter chores as it was hard to start a tractor with no electricity for block heaters.
 
My dad got rid of his last team in 1954. When talking about it he just said that it got where it was just easier to hook up the tractor than to get the horses harnessed. That happened after he got a Farmall H with electric start. Before then when the F-20 was the main tractor it wasn't always so easy to get it started when it was -20°F. Antifreeze was alcohol added to the water in the radiator which boiled away and had to continually replaced or the radiator would freeze up.

Heat in the house was a coal and wood furnace in the basement. Most of the time there wasn't money to buy coal so we cut a lot of wood. At time we would get corncobs from the elevator in town if they had been doing some shelling. Sometimes they were also used as bedding for the young stock pens.

Dead trees would be cut down and drug home where we would split them with a maul and wedges. Once they were split enough to be light enough to handle we would cut them to length with a buzz saw mounted on the front of a Farmall H. That was usually done right outside the basement door so the wood could be thrown directly onto the basement. It took a lot of wood to heat a drafty old house. The only room that was really kept warm was the kitchen. It was common to have ice on the inside of the widows throughout the rest of the house.
 
Hope he put that team in park to hold it there. Looks like its on a pretty good hill.
 

Back in the days where they would cut more firewood. Instead of closing up that gap under the door where the snow blew in.
 
Here is a picture if my grandpa taken in the early 50's. My dad
always said that the wood heated twice. Once when you
made it and once in the stove.

Ranch
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Ah! You make me wish for the good old days. Doing things I long for, like shoveling coal into the old boiler several times a day, hauling out cans of ashes to spread on the driveway, ice on the bedroom windows, crawling into a bed that was cold as a deepfreeze in an unheated attic bedroom, then being unable to turn over because of the weight of the 6 quilts on the bed, getting up in a house that was 50 degrees and floors as cold as an ice rink. Ah, for the good old days.

Unfortunately, I am stuck here by circumstance and will have to struggle through, forced to endure life in a 6 year old energy efficient, climate controlled house. It is a sacrifice I will just have to make....for my wife's sake.
 
If they didn't have snow blowing in, they would
have extremely dry air.

I worked in a building where 10-15% of the air was
replaced every hour. In the winter, that much cold
air brought in produced extremely low relative
humidity. So much so, just touching a door knob was
a shocking experience.
 

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