Re: furnace fireman

This is so000 way off NG. None the less this may be an amusing coal burning anecdote. There used to be a 3 story stone building that sat on the hill overlooking our town that had a georgian porch on the front with 4 columns going up 2+ stories. It was quite a handsome landmark. It had been built in '07 as a County High School, about 10 years later turned into a County hospital, then in the early 50's it was turned into apartments that by the early 1980's had become pretty run down. The steam boiler was a Kewanee locomotive style boiler set in brick. A couple kids that lived in the building had been hired by absentee owners to fill the hopper and haul away the clinkers. They got about half of the job right. They kept filling the hopper, but didn't remove any clinkers. Not sure how long this had been going on, but when we got called because the building was cold, there was plenty of coal in the hopper, but clinkers and partially burning coal were jammed up to the crown sheet. The firebox was literally full and there really wasn't much fire burning because the air that comes out of the tuyeres (firepot) could not get to the coal for all the clinkers and ash. The auger tube had a flanged joint and the bolts had pulled out of the threads and the whole stoker hopper and gear box were starting to back away from the boiler as the auger slowly turned. It must have had a hard pin in place of the usual shear pin, to create that kind of force. We had to shovel out the firebox and haul all of the smoldering mess out of the building in 5 gal buckets. A few years later the building burned down, not from anything to do with the boiler as it had been shut down in favor of electric heaters installed throughout, but by poorly installed wiring for said heaters.