What's the best type of furnace?

[Dawg]

What type of electrical appliances did you have back in those days that ran off of a 240 volt ungrounded source and utilized tandem plug prongs to fit into one of those ungrounded outlets that would accept both tandem and standard electrical plugs?

P.S. this receptacle could be wired for 120 volts or 240 volts!

[LazyPup]

Without knowing where the outlet is located it would be difficult to even venture a guess as to what its purpose may have been.

[Dawg]

Mmmm....well these looked like your standard wall duplexes (they were actually) but the way the slots were positioned they could accomodate a 120 volt or 240 volt source. They looked something like this----> -II-

I dunno....what all did you have back then that ran off of a 15 amp/240 volt source that used a non grounded tandem blade plug?

[imeduc]

At that time you only had 110V comeing in and you put a screw in 30 amp fuse in on both legs.lazypup was that steel furnace with fire brick are a cast iron one. What about the stokers we had they worked fine. the the hot water tank by the furnace. it had a hair pin coil that went into the furnace had all the hot water you would need. For summer you had a side arm gas heater for hot water had to light it and turn it off. then some had a monkey stove there that you built a fire in for hot water in the summer. I have sold coal oil gas and electric furnaces. yes I like oil.A good tech can get a oil burner up to 75%to 80% if he knows how. go to www.warmair.net to compare fuels. Now about the only thing we sell and put in are heatpumps, have tried GEO but to many rocks here and well to well the water is to hard If I could I would go with a DXGeo heat pump for sure.

My .02 cent
ED

My mistakes dont define me they inform me.

[Dawg]

Hhhmm...I've asked several historians about this particulat receptacle and they have all told me that it could be wired for 120 volts or 240 volts AC but they couldn't remember for sure what used 240 volts in those days that would utilize a tandem blade plug. They said maybe a heater or something.

Oh, they also said in those days you had to know what voltage was present on that receptacle as it was very easy to plug in a 120 volt item on a 240 volt wall receptacle![:0]

[imeduc]

I dont know at that time of any 220 into a home. Had a lot of DC still going and some 3ph on the old Delt loop.

ED

My mistakes dont define me they inform me.

[mrcaptainbob]

Yeah, I know we're way off track now! But!!.....Before I retired, there were many young engineers wondering what the leather case was hanging on my wall. They were so awed by what the so often heard about, but never had a chance to actualy SEE a real 'live' slide rule!! In our house we had a lil' dinko wood burner in the kitchen. Couldn't've been any more than a couple feet high. Two of those plates on the top. And just about right above it was the ceiling register to the bathroom. Out in the 'garage' was a couple 55 Gallon drums of oil with the hand pump. Mom would go out there and fill a small bucket and then fill the heater in the dining room. That garage faced the alley. And I remember well that old sheenie man holding the reins to the horse. Every trash day he'd make it down the alleys.....

[LazyPup]

When i was growing up we lived in town but my Grandad had a dairy farm about 7 miles away. The monent school was out friday i was on my way to the farm and returned late Sunday nite to make school monday. In summer i went to the farm in June and returned on labor Day or a week later.

While we did have tractors most of our farm work was done the old way with Belgium Draft horses. (I learned to drive a team of horses the summer before i started school in the first grade.)

My earliest introduction to machinery was Threshing machines, Mecormick Deering grain binders (grain binder required a 5 horse hitch), corn binders, horse drawn hay mowing machines,side rakes and a hay loader that was attached behind a wagon and had a converor to lift loose hay onto the wagon. We even had a stationary horse powered hay bailer.

The threshing machine, corn husker, silo filler, and numerous other smaller machines were powered by long flat belts driven off the aux. pulley on the tractors. Everything was open belts, (no guards) and we often had to rub the inside of a belt with a lump of tar to dress it while it was moving.

They had finally got electrical service put into the farm about 1943, (4 yrs before i was born.) but we still had the old DELCO one cylander engine generator and a huge bank of storage batteries that had been the lighting system before they got electric. The Delco engine had an open water jacket surrounding the piston and we had to keep pouring water in it from a bucket every 5 or 10 minutes as the motor was running.

My Grandad was also a Blacksmith so he had a very big shop, hand crank blower on the forge that we later modified with a wasing machine motor. Anvil, metal brakes and a myriad of old tools that are all but lost to time today.

We did have 220v power to the milk house to power the old water bath milk can coolers. They looked like a super heavy duty galvanized chest type deep freezer, but they were half full of water which was cooled to 40deg. (They used sulfer dioxide refrigerant) We had to lift 10gal cans up and over the top to sit them in the water to keep them cool.

I remember there was one plug such as you describe in the shop, which was used to power the motor on the old 48" wood surface planer. (220v 5hp)

That old furnace in the basement of the house was an Iron City, galvanized shell gravity type, brick lined coal burner with cast iron grates.

Our water heater was a huge 10 gallon copper boiler tub, (an oval shaped tub with a handle on each end) which we sat on the coal stove in the kitchen on bath nite.

Oh, by the way, did i mention, there was no TV. We had an old Montgomery Wards -Airline- wooden cse tube type AM radio. (I still have that, and it still works, with the original 1939 tubes in it.)

By the way,,,if any of you guys would like to hear a couple of those old radio shows, send me an email and i will email a couple back to you. I have a whole collection here on my computer now. In fact, just last nite i listened to three episodes of "Gunsmoke", an "Amos & Andy" and one CBS Mystery theater. I also have a bunch of Sherlock Holmes, and oh yes,,,the original recording of Abbot and Costello-Who's on First".

Email to LazyPup@yahoo.com

these are now MP3 files and will play on windows media player.

[Dawg]

Lazy Pup do you have any pictures of the engine driven generator? Did it produce A/C or D/C? And when you finally got A/C power installed was the house already wired from the generator and you just connected power from the line to there? Or did you have to run all new wiring, receptacles, etc.? Also was the generator used for lighting purposes only or were there any radios/irons/toasters, etc that ran off of generated power?

That's pretty cool knowing those t-slotted receptacles I was referring to were used for the heavy machinery...wonder if anything else back then used those things?

I'll bet you guys had to know back then if it was wired for 120 or 240 volt. Too easy to plug a 120 volt apliance into a 240 circuit.

[LazyPup]

I was only about 9 or 10 the last time i saw the old generator run so I dont remember much of the details.

it was a small engine, cast iron block sort of square and the cylander was horizontal. The top of the block was open to pour water in, which surounded the cylander. There was a real heavy fly wheel on the side with a spring loaded crank handle. You folded the crank out to wind the flywheel real fast and when you let go it would spring back into a recess in the flywheel.

It had an open valve linkage that worked off a cam on the flywheel. You could manually hold the valve open as a compression release while you cranked it, and when it was spinning good you let go of the valve linkage, and with a bit of luck it would fire.

There was no throttle on it, just a govenor linkage from the flywheel to the magneto points, when the RPM went up, it stopped firing for a few moments, and when the RPM fell off it fired...sort of a PUTT......PUTT PUTT PUTT.......PUTT...PUTT. etc.

It operated on Kerosine, but it had a small cup that you put gasoline in to start and preheat it, then switched to the Kerosine for power.

It was connected by means of a flat leather belt to a 6v DC generator very similar to those used on eary automobiles. It smoked like the dickens so it was mounted on a big wooden platform outside the cellar and there were two wires running into the basement where about 15 huge lead acid batteries were sitting on wooden shelves.

The house was wired with a two wire network to an open knife switch and one light bulb in each room.

When they actually installed commercial electric in the house it was all surface run with rigid conduit, but we still kept the old Delco working as a backup for storms. You could run all the lights continuously for about 18 hours before you had to charge it up again.

Wow,,i just thought of another thing we had then that ppl would find very odd now...Party line telephones. In those days in rural areas they often hooked two to four houses on the same phone line and you had to know what your ring was. One long ring,,,long & short ring...two short rings..two long rings....You were only supposed to answer when it was your ring, but in those days the neighborhood gossips listened in on all the calls..hehehehee

actually that was not that long ago..single party phone lines only became popular in this area in the late 50's early 60's and there waa a premium fee to have a private line.

[Dawg]

Yeah I've heard of the party lines. I heard in those days farmers used their barbed wire off their barbed wire fences for phone line.

Hank Williams once sang a song called "Mind your own buisness. One line in the song went:

"The woman on our party line is a nosy thing
"She picsk up her receiver when she knows it's my ring"

Something I once saw on a 1949 newspaper I found in our old attic...they didn't have the standard 7 digit numbers you see now. It had a alpha code and a numeric code...I want to stay it looked something like Atlantic-2239 or something like that. I can't remember.

So did all rural houses run off of 6 volt electric batteries with a generator to charge them before standard electricity was avaliable?

[LazyPup]

no,,,most rural homes ran off kerosine lamps and lanterns,,

WE used "carbide lamps" for flashligts.

My Grandad had the only generator in our township.

Those old phone numbers had a word and numbers,,,but you dialed the first two letters of the word then the numbers....ours was Lenox 34813..you dialed LE34813...i wonder why i still remember that?

[Dawg]

Wondewr why that was....dialing the first two letters and the last....5 digits? Wow. Ok, so I guess the first two letters represented the first two numbers we have now?

Wonder when they switched to the 7 digit numbers we have now? They probably didn't have area codes in those days either did they?

I've heard of some houses having gas lights. Were those operated off of gas lines like we have now?

I saw one old house that was built in 1884 that had gas lights in it...the lights were installed in the wall if I remember correctly.

[LazyPup]

Telephone nmbers went all digital in about 1963 and area codes came in about the same time. many ppl complained that it was harder to remember the all digit numbers.

We lived in three different houses while i was in school and all three had the old gas light fixtures, although we never tried to use them. In fact, many homes in this area still have the fixtures, and many of them are still hooked up to the gas.

Most of the bedroom fixtures are wall mounted near the door and they have a swing out arm with the gas vent on the end. To use them you have to first attach a mantle like they use on a coleman gas lantern. You then light the mantle with a match and it burns to an ash. Then you turn the gas on and light the fixture. The gas burns in the mantle and is about as bright as a 100 watt bulb.

Some of the homes had a chandalier fixture in the dining room with 4 or 5 burners on them.

One would think they must have had problems with carbon monoxide with gas lights and ventless gas space heaters in each room, but those old houses were not insulated and most of them were so drafty make up air was never a problem.

In fact, i think i have to work in a house this week that still has some of the old gas light fixtures. If so, i will take my digital camera and get some pics for you.

In 1962 I had a paper route in a very affluent area of our town, and there were numerous older homes on my route that had the old speaking tube intercomes, which was simply a flexible metal pipe that looked like flex conduit with a funnel on the end. You talked into it, then heald it to your ear to listen.

CB radio started in 1958 and I was the second one in our community to have one because my uncle ran an TV & Radio shop, and he had one at his house and put one at my house to demo them. In about 1962 i got a CB walkie Talkie that was good for about 2 miles. We used to take it on our bicycles and ride through the alfluent neighborhoods keying the mike and watching ppls electic garage doors going up and down.

[imeduc]

The first phones had no numbers. It was how many rings you cranked in to who you would get on the phone to talk . Like it that song. Many of the old farms made their own battries and worked them off wind generators . For the 32 volt set up ran the lights and water pumps for them in the home and barn. When the electric wire came in a home with gas lights. They ran all the wire then with a set up called knob and spool in the home . That was so the two wire could not touch

Ed

My mistakes dont define me they inform me.