Something I've never seen, a coal fireplace!

So after inspecting homes for more than 25 years, I saw something I've never seen before. Check this out.
Not only never seen them, but never even heard of these before.
You see, recently I was up in North Carolina seeing a good friend of mine, Dave Corbett, with Assurance Home Inspections.
They really rolled out the red carpet, you might say.
I wanted to see things that I've never seen before, like basements.
So we were in a house and there were a couple of fireplaces that were closed up no longer used. Now these houses were about 100 years old, so it makes sense. But what was really strange was the size.
They were a little taller than I'm used to seeing, a little, not as wide.
And Dave went on to explain that these were coal-fired fireplaces.
Now what makes them really, really unique is their size and they're not deep. They're like a foot deep. So these two were closed up, but we did see another one in another home, again about 100 years old.
So what you might expect is over time the mortar breaks down. It becomes more sandy and disintegrates. There's also deterioration to the brick. And that's what we found in this other home where there were some significant deterioration. So it's not something that you want to go fire back up and use because smoke and carbon monoxide, those kind of things go in places that are not supposed to go. Things can catch on fire or you can disphyxiate yourself using these kind of things. So if you've got something that old, yeah, they're cool, but you want to have a chimney
sweep take a look at it and think about installing a liner. I had a recent Zoom meeting of our state association. I brought this up and there's actually some cold burning fireplaces here in Florida. Just not central Florida. This is where I was born and raised and we just don't have that many fireplaces to begin with, much less cold burning fireplaces.
So if you're an inspector, you see something that's in odd shape like that, it might be a cold burning fireplace. If it's not very deep, that's more than likely what you have. And of course, you would recommend an inspection, a chimney scan by a chimney sweep to determine
the condition, but you know something that old is probably going to be deteriorated and it's going to need a liner. Otherwise it's unsafe.
So if you're ever in the Greensboro, North Carolina area and you want to go see one of these for yourself, hey, give my friend Dave Corbett with Assurance Home Inspections a call. He'd be happy to show you.
Thanks for watching.
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[@AProHomeDamon]

See them in the older sections of Pensacola a lot. Most we see natural gas conversion inserts in them.

[@JonBolton-yt2pf]

WOW, I just never knew. What age homes are you seeing them in?

[@AProHomeDamon]

@@JonBolton-yt2pf Historical district. Mostly mid 1800s to early 1900s. We actually have had a few homes here with basements also. Mainly the cliffs area of Pensacola.

[@JonBolton-yt2pf]

very cool!@@AProHomeDamon

[@joeandrenee1997]

Brilliant Video!! Ib didn't know you were born here in Central Florida. Me too!

[@JonBolton-yt2pf]

Thank you brother!

[@tomsmith3045]

There are also fireplaces that are designed to burn either wood or coal. The wood would be to start the coal and make the pretty flames, the coal makes enough heat for it to be useful. Anyone that believes that a fireplace doesn't add heat to a home has never experienced a fireplace burning coal. That said, don't run one on coal that isn't designed for it. It burns way hotter, and will eventually burn through the heavy iron grating. They are a wear item when running on coal.

[@JonBolton-yt2pf]

very interesting Tom, thanks from this Florida born!