Jasper County Democrat, Volume 5, Number 29, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 25 October 1902 — SOFT COAL NEEDS CARE. [ARTICLE+ILLUSTRATION]

SOFT COAL NEEDS CARE.

Those Who Use Bituminous Fuel Must Learn to Handle It. How many people understand how to burn soft coal? Of course, the problem presents but little difficulty when proper furnaces and specially prepared grates are installed for the purpose, but when one turns hurriedly from one to the other fuel with the determination to make present fixings do, something more than a will is required to find the way. Of course, there is a way and it is simple enough in reality, but it is a very different way from that which must be employed with anthracite. In the feed door of every furnace there is a slide damper to admit air over the fire. When anthracite is used this ia opened only if it is desired to deaden the fire and lower the temperature of the house. With soft coal it must be left open all the time. Too much nir for good combustion can be admitted over the fire, but it is not likely to be the case if the slide damper in the feed door of a furnace built for anthracite is left wide oped all the time. The drafts opening in the ash pit, on the other hand, needs to be less widely and continuously open than for anthracite.

With the same amount of bottom draft which it is customary to give hard coal, soft coal would simulate the combustion in a blast furnace and call for constant stoking. The householder must also remember that the check draft in the smoke pipe, which with anthracite is usially

kept open In moderate weather, cannot l>«> opened much if any with soft coal, or the house will fill with smoke. The best way is to leave it closed altogether. With the attention to theso details, which reverse the customary practice with anthracite, a furnace may he run on bituminous coal so as to keep a house entirely comfortable. To the novice perhaps the most difficult problem will be in keeping the fire going oil night, but even this Is easy when one knowß how to do It. In this case the first requisite is one or two big lumps of coal, big enough between them to cover completely the entire surface of the fire, then slack must be honped high over this and beaten or pressed down Into ns solid a mass os possible. A fire thus fixed will burn from twelve to fourteen hours In most cases. It may lie necessury also to dampen the top of the fuel. Patronize thoae who advertise.

HOW TO MANIPULATE FURNACE DRAFTS.