The old furnace grate

Jazzy1

Jazzy1

Grooving to the music
Location
USA
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I do remember this old furnace grate. It heated the whole house...at least it was supposed to. We had to leave all bedroom doors open, so we would get heat. I also used it to dry my hair when I was a teenager.

What are your memories of the old furnace grate?
 
The old farmhouse that I grew up in didn’t have heat on the second floor where we slept.

On cold mornings we would stand on the furnace grate in the kitchen to warm up. Our nightgowns would balloon out, we would stand there until our bare feet were burning.

It was also a great place to dry boots and mittens.

Sometimes one of our cats would lose a treasure and stand staring into the grate until someone removed it and retrieved the toy.
 
While my grandparents still had their farm, I loved staying overnight with them. These grates provided the only heat to the upstairs, and it gives me one of my best memories.

I remember being soooo cold (even with blankets piled on) all the time in that bedroom I used... but it was directly over the kitchen, so in the morning in addition to heat, the smell of bacon and coffee came through the grate. :giggle:
 
When I was very young our old farm house was converted from a coal furnance to a fuel oil forced air furnance, man that was nice. Our front room had one of those grates on the floor and I would lay a blanket over it and weight down the edges, then when the heat kicked on it would create a little tent.
 
We always got dressed over the grate in the kitchen under our billowing nightgowns like we were in tents as @AuntBea mentioned.

I would never look down into the grate because I was afraid I might see something. As an adult, I saw a horror movie about an old house built over an old mine. There was something in the mine with tentacles that would reach up through the heating grate and strain people through the grate. Extra gory....

Remembering my childhood fear, that movie gave me nightmares.

I remember burning my bare feet on a particularly hot grate a few times.
 
We called them floor furnaces. In a small house, they were fairly effective and didn't rely on electricity. It was nice to be able to stand near or over the outlet when wanting a quick warm up, but these weren't so good for even heat distribution throughout the rooms.
 
My English grandmother was the ne’er-do-well. She had what I think was an octopus coal heater in the basement. It was a Fugly thing.

There was a heater seat in the living room that my cousins and I would run for in the winter. It would burn one’s butt if we sat there for too long.

The heater grates like @Jazzy1 posted were in the bedrooms upstairs and the bathroom, but they were half that size, if I’m remembering correctly.

Most of us grandkids were sad when grandma switched to fuel oil, because we lost our heater seat.

The farmhouse I grew up in, did not have heat upstairs. We slept downstairs in the winter. The living room had a small fuel oil heater and the kitchen had a pot belly, wood burning stove.

This is where I could reference the “boomers, gobbled up wealth” thread, and say we all worked our way UP to better lives ——- but I won’t😎😎
 
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