The daily morning journal and courier. [volume] (New Haven, Conn.) 1894-1907, 1902-10-18
SUBSTITUTES FOR COAL
EXPERIMENTS WITH OIL AND
GAS.
Problem of Heating Large Apartment
Houses-New Devices Being Tested.

There are no doubt thousand men in
New York city, says the~New York
Herald. studying and sweating in the
effort to invent or discover a substitute
for the poor mans coal. A fortune and
humanitys blessing await him who
shall find a way by which he may warm
his home and cook his food as cheaply
as when anthracite coal retailed at six
dollars ton. If the coal strike cOntin-
ues a substitute must be found or pc
riod of unparalleled suffering will sweep
through every large city east Of the AL
leghany mountains. Coal cannot be OBJ
tanned. Wood, if Obtainable, costs sew
enteen and eighteen dollars cord.
Gas for cooking and washing, under the
cheapest conditions possible to be had,
is beyond the poor mans purse. There
fore, kerosene oil, in one form or anoth-
er, must be used or the yet undiscov-
cred fuel must be brought to light.
Several new contrivances for using gas
in coal cook stoves, with the aid of as
bestos composition bricks, are on the
market and selling rapidly, but to put
this apparatus into a coal stove a new
burner is required, which costs fran
five to twenty-five dollars, and even
then, at the lowest figure, it will cost
ten cents an hour to cook with gas.
A large asbestos manufacturing firm
in New York is now at work upon de-
vice by which they say they will be
able to provide a specially prepared as
bestos brick, which, when soaked with
oil, will do two-hours' cooking and bak-
ing for an ordinary family with one
quart of oil. So far the half-dozen or
more fuel cartridges" and other SINH
lar inventions have not proved success
full But the fuel problem is not alone
in the poor mans home. Innumerable
| steam-heated apartments in New York
are beginning to grow cold and damp,
| The supply of hot water is being cut off,
and with the first cold snap will come
intense suffering. A month ago the
agents and owners Of these apartment
houses were saying hopefully: There
is no cause for concern. If we fail in
getting coal we will burn OIL" To-day
these same men tell you, in despair;
Vii IOI IHS III IuNC 10 elOoCiHNNlJ ONN "a
the question 1t is impossible to get
burner which will work.
The manager of one of the largest
furnace concerns in New York, sitting
at his desk Saturday. said to man who
called to ask about heating his apart
ment house: IF you will lay down here
on my desk a suggestion by which we
can make a practical oil burner for our
furnaces, I will write you check for
five thousand dollars and give you, be-
sides. the finest furnace we can manu-
facture" Then he explained that no
one had vet been able to construct
furnace oil burner that could be used.
To begin with, the fire department and
the insurance companies prohibit the
storing of more than five gallons in any
one building. That alone, the manager
of the furnace company said, had re-
tarded them in making their expert
ments.z They had employed all of their
expert men, had offered them big prizes,
and had reached out in every magma
| BILE direction for assistance in perfecting
the large-size furnace burners, but so
| far had not succeeded. 1T is only
| within the last two months that the in
yentive genius of the country had been
at work on this thing" he said, and we
cannot expect to perfect so difficult
work within a year. But it will be done
| in time"
The three chief points in perfecting
these large burrfers are perfect combus-
ton so that there will be as little odor
and smoke as possible, to make it noise
less and safe So heating the apart
ment houses with oil this winter seems
TO be out of the question. Even If
burner were to be perfected the furnace
manufacturers say they would be una
BILE to perfect the apparatus for manu-
featuring them and get them ready fast
enough to supply the demand. And
even if they were available the f1ve-gal-
| Ion restriction in the storage OF OIL
would have to be overcome. How these
| thousands of apartment houses are to
he heated. no one could be found who
would saw, Gas is too expensive, and
the supply would not be sufficient if gas
| burners were placed in the furnaces of
the apartment houses. In half dozen
places it was said that part of the gas
now supplied to the city is not pure coal
gas. and that the quality of the gas will
continue to deteriorate as the demand
| increases.
| A group of workmen and scientists
are hard at work at an asbestos estab-
Iishment on William street perfecting
new asbestos brick for burning oil.
Several tests have been made, and it
| has been demonstrated that fire felt"
block eight by six inches in size, satura-
| ted with one quart of kerosene oil, will
burn an hour and produce in any ordi-
nary cook stove heat enough to do usual
family cooking and heat the oven. The
members of the firm believe that in this
| thew have solved the question of COM
paratively cheap fuel. One brick, if
used carefully, will last many years.
On the outside is coating of firm ma
terial, but the inside is soft and PUPPY
and quickly absorbs the oil. In using
these bricks the proper plan is to have
three, and while one is being used in
the stove the second may be cooling and
the third one soaking in the oil. They
may be put in the stove as one would
place there a stick of wood, and may
| be used in wood or coal stoves. Exper-
iments are being made to get as perfect
! combustion as possible, so as to do
away with dsagreeable smoke and
odor This can largely be regulated
through proper adjustment Of the