The furnace in the basement - what on earth is it?

I believe they are portals into hell.

I might be wrong.

Tottie Scone said:

I'm always seeing in films or reading about American houses having a "furnace" in the basement, a monstrous, creepy thing with a grating behind which flames glow ominously - what is it? I assume it heats the house - how?

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It's where you get rid of the bodies.

Oh, shit ... I've said too much.

My last house in the UK had the central heating gas boiler in 'the basement'. The ashes from the living room fire also fell about seven feet to the bottom of the ash tray, which was also in 'the basement' and emptied around once a year - if that.

To me, basement is simply the area below where the main living areas are. Could well be the garage area if the house/living area is on a slope or raised in some way. It doesn't have to be a floor underground.

And if you wanted hot water in the summer why have your boiler/furnace in the living area? Times and technology change.

Just another choice. Maybe also conveniently near the wood supply. Could be other reasons, I guess. Maybe the basement had less wooden walls and supports in it- reduced fire-hazard?

First off, you need to realize that basements don't exist in many houses. It's a regional thing and in some regions, there are a lot of houses with basements, in other areas, basements are a rarity.

Second is that there are a wide variety of heating systems, using a wide variety of methods to deliver the heat and to provide the heat.

The classic furnace uses either coal or wood. Modern furnaces use oil or gas. It heats air or water that is conveyed into the living areas by duct work or pipes. If it is heating air, there will be a separate hot water system.

Look up furnace in Wikipedia.

Best of luck,

Jim Clark-Dawe

Tottie, instead of radiators, many houses here have forced air for heating (and cooling). The unit typically sits in the basement and pumps heated or cooled air through a network of tunnels and vents. The furnace takes care of the heating side of things.

Speaking from the UK.
First house I lived in as a kid, was big old townhouse with a basement AND a cellar.... The central heating boiler was basically a furnace in the cellar - big enamelled floor standing metal job that was a bit bigger than an undercounter fridge. Fed with smokeless fuel, of which there were tons - and I mean tons - delivered each year through the old coal hole, direct into the cellar behind a partition.
Second house was similar period and had a cellar - and that had a whacking great central heating boiler in it, about same size as the coal one, but was gas fired.
Third house was only about ten years old, no basement or cellar, and the gas boiler was floor standing in the utility room, and about half the width of the old one.

All of these were radiator systems. The first two were the whacking great cast iron jobs, the third one modern flat panel.

Tottie, what you are describing is essentially a large, coal-fired boiler. They were common in the northern and northeastern parts of the U.S. from about the 1890s to the 1950s and used coal (or later fuel oil) to heat water for circulation in a radiator system. The size is partially due to the size of the boiling tank. Modern tankless boilers, which are relatively uncommon here, may just be a small box on the wall.

From about the 1960s, forced air replaced radiator systems as the most common type of heating in new homes. A forced air system uses a large blower to push hot air through metal ducts to all parts of a house. The furnace in my home, which is of this type, is a rectangular steel box approximately five feet tall by two feet wide. It is fueled by natural gas and sits in a utility closet in our finished basement. Nothing creepy about it.

Oh come on, what's so creepy about this?

Putting the furnace in the basement let them use the thermosiphon principle to circulate water through water radiators, which were normally placed under windows. You fired up the boiler (which usually didn't boil water, just heated it) and the hot water rose, gave up its heat in the radiator, and dropped down again.

Back when those systems were designed there was no residential electricity and therefore no way to pump the hot water. It was thermosiphon or nothing. And the lower the boiler was in relation to the radiators, the more efficient the siphon was.

Steam - boiling water - systems were also used in some places, but were subject to whims of local regulation. A steam system was more efficient than a thermosiphon, but a leak or boiler failure could infict nasty burns. A boiler failure might destroy a house. The issue wasn't so much design a heating system as being able to design something homeowner-proof. Steam might *not* kill you. In an age with no anaesthetics and no antibiotics this was no joke.

Commercial buildings and factories would usually run high pressure steam for maximum efficiency; they often used the steam for powering equipment, like elevators or line shafts, as well as for heating. Most jurisdictions required a licensed boiler operator be on hand at all times; this was usually an extra task for some maintenance men or security guards. [clickety] My state still requires a licensed operator to be on hand any time a commercial boiler is operating, except when it has properly inspected and certified automatic controls, at which a licensed operator must be "in regular attendance."

I have to admit, I was taken aback by the question. In the Upper Midwest, only the very poor or the very stupid don't have basements (okay, that may be an exaggeration ). Seriously - basements are the deep foundation of the house, and tornadoes and cold weather pretty much demand them. The furnace is the heart of the heating system, and it's in the basement mainly because historically it didn't take up needed space in the house itself, particularly when they burned coal or wood. The first house I bought had one of those creepy-looking things - we called it the octopus (thought it looked more like a giant spider). The main furnace was about six feet tall, and almost as big around. Huge tubes (about 18" wide) came out from the top, going to each of the heat vents in the house. It banged and clanged and rumbled threateningly every time it came on. It also wasn't forced air - it was a gravity system, so being in the basement was a necessity because otherwise the heat wouldn't go anywhere. Eventually I got it replaced with a forced air system, which took up about 20% of the space (and caused a visit from the gas company to see if I had bypassed the gas meter), but was still in the basement because there was no place to put it upstairs.

Basement furnaces in older houses also allow for those convenient-for-escape coal chutes that most people have either hidden behind junk or fused shut.

Most of North Texas has black clay. We don't do basements very often because the clay cracks when dry, and as this is Texas, it's dry a lot. Then it hails.

Tottie Scone said:

Boilers are smallish and un creepy and also heat water for baths, sinks and sometimes showers. They do not glow ominously or lurk in basements.

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This is correct -- For newer ones. Old ones had a coal fire, stoked by hand, and were very large with big doors to shovel coal in. There was also a coal bin, a room that held the coal, which came in from a chute to the street.

There really was a time when oil, gas and electricity weren't piped into every household to work wonders.

Jeff

In the Deep South of the US, houses generally do not have below grade (ground level) basements/cellars because the ground water table is typically too close to the surface (often within 6'/just under 2m). Heating, ventilation, and air conditioning (HVAC) systems are typically installed in specific areas (utility rooms/closets) or in attics.

Having lived in different regions of the US, I must admit I do miss having a basement--creepiness factor notwithstanding.

shadowwalker said:

I have to admit, I was taken aback by the question. In the Upper Midwest, only the very poor or the very stupid don't have basements...

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Come to Florida. We don't have basements because they would be called swimming pools (The house I used to own was at an elevation of seven feet five inches above sea level...). And often, our air conditioner (What is this thing you call a "heater" anyway?) hangs on the outside of the house. Water heaters also sometimes go outside so we can get a tiny amount of extra storage space (Remember, no basements...). Besides, we don't need to worry about freezing anything and hurricanes don't care if you have a basement or not.

Jeff

beckethm said:

From about the 1960s, forced air replaced radiator systems as the most common type of heating in new homes. A forced air system uses a large blower to push hot air through metal ducts to all parts of a house. The furnace in my home, which is of this type, is a rectangular steel box approximately five feet tall by two feet wide. It is fueled by natural gas and sits in a utility closet in our finished basement. Nothing creepy about it.

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This is what the furnace in my parents' house looks like. (I live in an apartment; I've never seen the building's furnace, though I know it is in the basement.)

My childhood home, which was in the same general area, had no basement (and for the record, my parents were not stupid and not particularly impoverished, though they certainly weren't wealthy). The furnace was a similar type and was located in a utility closet in the laundry room off the kitchen.

The United States covers a huge area with many different climates and types of housing. As a couple of people noted, many homes do not have basements, particularly if the house is located in an area that floods. Therefore, you'll find all kinds of furnaces.

I can't think of too many stories set anywhere where the furnace played an important role. If for some reason your story does require a particular type of furnace, you might do some research into your setting to be sure such a furnace would be feasible. (You don't want to have a coal-fired basement furnace in a story set in coastal Florida.)

Sat Nam! (literally "Truth Name"--a Sikh greeting)

Slight addendum: Old furnaces in the Pacific Northwest (possibly elsewhere) often burned sawdust, which was readily available. Even in the mid-'80s, there was a mountain of sawdust used for such "sawdust burners" that was near our house, which used to have one of the things.

Basements are also a rarity in Southern California, unless you live on a canyon edge. Clay soil is the problem there too. By contrast, all three of the houses we've lived in in Oregon have basements.

Blessings,

Siri Kirpal

Dumping the ashes and cinders from the furnace could be dangerous work too. At one time it was a somewhat common tragedy for people to be burned to death when the wind blew burning embers back at them while they were dumping ashes outdoors.

Even outside of the house, the furnace could come and get you!

Agreeing with all of the above re: variations in basements and furnaces. Adding: modern construction around here is fond of 'baseboard heaters', 6-8" high, very long, electric radiators that are attached to walls, just above the baseboard moldings. I assume because there's no ductwork, it's cheaper to build and quicker to install. On the downside, you can't put furniture right against the walls. (My current furnace is new - forced hot air - but the ductwork is old, and it bangs when the heat goes off, as the ductwork cools and contracts, I assume.)
And, basementless houses: the only house I ever lived in that didn't have a basement was built that way because it was on a flood-plain and the water level was high enough that the back yard was a marsh in the winter and the water would ease up through cracks in the foundation.
But, new houses in higher parts of town are also sometimes built without a basement, because it's cheaper to just level the building lot and pour a concrete pad on top.

Having grown up in the North/East, I find the very notion of basement-less homes deeply odd. I know they exist plenty of places; I know why. Still so strange.

Furnaces are common in places I know, and are big square or round metal things with a pilot light, that mostly burn oil or gas to send forced hot air or steam up.

Boilers can be those on-demand wall-hung things, or the tank ones, big cylindrical deals, also often stored in basements.

Tottie Scone said:

I'm always seeing in films or reading about American houses having a "furnace" in the basement, a monstrous, creepy thing with a grating behind which flames glow ominously - what is it? I assume it heats the house - how?

We don't have things like that here, we have boilers, either gas, electric or oil, that heat water which is pumped round a set of radiators. Boilers are smallish and un creepy and also heat water for baths, sinks and sometimes showers. They do not glow ominously or lurk in basements.

Fill in my knowledge so I don't make a fool of myself when setting stories in America.

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We just had our gas furnace replaced, so I might be able to explain, at least with regards to the forced-air variety of gas furnace.

These furnaces can be gas or electric, and they're hooked to a thermostat that is set to a temperature. When the temperature falls below the setpoint, it switches the furnace on. With gas furnaces, there is often a pilot light (a little flame that burns all the time--that would be the little, blue "eye" that is sometimes mentioned), but ours has an electric striker mechanism, so there's no flame when it's off. The flames go on when the thermostat switch tells them to, and there's this blower that pulls air through an intake grill through the heat exchange (these metal box thingies that are heated by the flames). The hot air enters this area at the top of the furnace called a plenum, that opens into the ducts (which go to different parts of the house, either inside the walls, or under the floors, or in the attic). The ducts blow hot air into the rooms via little grills called registers when the furnace is on.

There are also heating systems called heat pumps which are somewhat more efficient but more expensive. They work by transferring heat between a heating and cooling system and always (I think) are in conjunction with an AC system. They wouldn't be the kind you're asking about, though.

Ours is a gas furnace, but it's also connected to the air conditioning system (not a heat pump system, but it uses the same ducts and registers). But old-fashioned furnaces tend to be stand alone. Our furnace is in a utility closet, not a basement. This this is common in our area, because homes built from the mid 1900s and later in our part of the country (CA) tend not to have basements. Sometimes furnaces are in the garage, though. Older homes (from earlier 1900s and before) are more likely to have boiler systems with the radiator pipes you describe, unless they've been retrofitted with central heating systems (which may be more modern and allow for more precise temperature control). Some homes in older cities, or the older parts of cities, in CA still have those metal radiator pipes that are heated by steam from the boiler (usually down in a basement, which older buildings are more likely to have here). My association with the things is they're always either too hot or too cold.

http://lerablog.org/wp-content/uploads/2014/05/How-a-furnace-works.jpg

The kind of heating and cooling system a house in the US has will depend on its age, the part of the country (oil burners were pretty common in Northern NY when I lived there, though the Victorian house I rented had been retrofitted with a gas furnace that was indeed in the basement at the foot of the stairs and had a little blue eye), the city itself, and whether or not the home has been remodeled or modernized in some cases.

If you're writing a story set in a specific town or city in the US, it might be good to research the average age of the buildings and the kind of architecture and climate system they tend to have. But if you're setting a story in a more generic part of the country (somewhere, vaguely, in the midwest), you'd likely have more latitude about what the particular house would have.

Just for strange reference, one of my cousins recently bought an older home in Glendale, CA, and it doesn't have any kind of heater aside from a single gas register in one room (operated by a little key in the floor) that barely works. They use their oven to heat the kitchen when it gets cold. Now the LA area isn't known for its freezing winters, so you can survive without heat (not like you, or the pipes, are going to freeze), but it can still get damp and chilly in the winter.

I don't think I've ever been to a house in Australia (where I'm from) with a basement. I guess we don't need them for obvious reasons. Boilers and furnaces are really alien concepts to me. I wish we'd had them. After reading and watching so many horror stories etc with them, they sound like fun. Good fuel for horror.

We don't even have attics usually. So boring.

Basements are common in Eastern Canada, except in the Canadian Shield region where there is a lot of bedrock. Heating systems here used to be oil burning with a fan that blew the hot air through the house using a duct system. Ours developed a hole in the exchange, which prompted us to get rid of the giant oil tank (which was filled via a truck monthly) to natural gas. The actual unit is smaller than a fridge, but there is one small area in the front where you can see the blue flames burning.

My husband lived in a Victorian era house in Toronto when he was a kid, and the furnace (fueled by oil) was one of those big scary ones with the flames visible through an iron grate.

Everyone should have a basement. Just as a courtesy to ghosts.