New Old Style Coal Furnace? Heather Furnace

Hi guys,

I was surfing the web and found a newly manufactured old school steel coal furnace with modern forced air. The Heather Furnace at Curwensville, PA True Value hardware. http://heatherfurnace.com/index.php?page=furnaces.html http://www.curwensvilletruevalue.com/AdditionalPa ... rnace.aspx This furnace has piqued my interest and I sure would like to see one in person. Has anyone else seen or heard of the Heather Furnace? They also make a Coal Boiler too. Pretty neat. I just thought I would bring it to your all attention. Interesting?

The firebrick does look very similar to those in the old gravity hot air furnaces....especially the old Lennox model.

Good God! A furnace with the same name as my ex ...

Do you have to feed it Lithium to keep it stable?

The Heather Furnace is based on the old style round warm air furnace. It is made from 10 ga. steel plate, is fire brick lined and has locmotive style cast iron grates. We aquired the original drawings and foundry patterns about 3 years ago. The boiler is made with 1/4'' a-36 plate it has been made since 1980 with a period between 1992 and 2007 when due to demand they were not produced. The boiler now has cast iron doors and a larger water jacket. We also have and continue to have made a large selection of grates, parts, and fire brick for many coal boilers, furnaces and stoves. Some of these are Burnham, American Standard. Hunter, Luxaire, Holland, Oneida, Armstrong, National, and Sunbeam. We stock repair and build furnace kidneys with Luxaire and Oneida on stock. Our emphasis is on boilers and furnaces we are currently trying to sort and identify the stove parts some of them are Kalamazoo, Warm Morning, Round Oak, and Copper Clad. If you have any questions you can contact us at 814-236-0720

Hi GRATE GUY,

It is nice to see you here on the NEPA forum. It sure would be nice to see some more detailed pictures of your products. The ones on the website don't show much and this would be a great help to those of us here, plus you will be able to answer all of our questions right here. Thanks for your response. Hope to read more on your products soon. We'll all be watching for more info.

DOUG

I'll second what Doug said, on here we're always looking to see the closer details of all products...it's what we're all about.

As asked for, here are more pictures of our boilers and furnaces.

Impressive. Do you have any pictures of the inside of the boiler? I'm sure some people want to see what the heat exchanger looks like.

WOW! Very impressive. The 27" furnace, weighing in at 1115lbs is pretty hefty. How does it come shipped? Being so heavy, can the furnace be had broken down for assembly on sight to make it more managable down steps into a basement? If so, what would be the rough weight and size of the pieces? How much anthracite fits into the 27" firepot? Is it better to use nut or stove sizes anthracite? What are the expected burn times of the 27" furnace under heating loads? Low, medium, and high demand?

Pretty neat product. Thanks, DOUG

The 27'' furnace comes on 1 skid it is for the most part assembled. We have been shipping them with the grates, bricks, doors, and door frames installed. We have sucsessfully taken them into basements this way, with planks, and still attached to the skid. It can be broken down to just the barrel to make it lighter, the barrel weighs 320 lbs the kidney weighs 220 lbs. As for the amount of coal the 27'' would hold about 200 lbs of nut anthracite from empty. As for burn times I don't know exactly how to answer that question with draft, coal quality, and heating load all having many variables. I will try to supply more pictures soon, as the kids help me with this as they are a lot more computer literate than I am

Well guys, I took a trip to Curwensville True Value Hardware Store yesterday to see this furnace. All I have to say is WOW!!! I sure wish I would have seen this before I purchased my current units a few years ago. It definetly has me thinking!

This Heather furnace sure is impressive. I checked it out and it looks very well made and the design is thoroughly thought out. This has got to be one heck of a great coal burning appliance from it's appearance. On display, is a cut out version of the furnace minus the blower assembly. What a great idea. The display model allows you to look into what is behind the furnace jacket and see the round combustion chamber and rear kidney style heat exchanger. It is really looks cool!

I received a nickel tour of his cast iron parts building, where all kinds of older and out of production parts are shelved. I just can't believe the amount of original old cast iron stove heater parts and furnace parts he has. He also has a good bit of original patterns for commonly replaced parts for these old furnaces. I have never seen such a vast amount of selection of cast iron stove parts like this anywhere. I'm not talking about kitchen range stoves, but old parlor style heaters and mostly old cast iron furnace parts.

Everyone I talked to there was extremely friendly and more than willing to spend time talking and explaining about their products and parts. I felt very welcome there and this is defintely going to be a place I will return to visit. Next time I'm going with a parts list. I was a little unprepared because I wasn't aware of all the parts he had.

So guys, I just thought that I would share my wonderful experience at the Curwensville True Value Hardware Store. This is a place to put on the list to visit! I know that you will be amazed and shocked to see all of the parts he has, as I was, plus getting a chance to see the Heather Furnace in person was a real treat! The only thing that would be the icing on the cake is to actually see the Heather Furnace in operation there.

If you can, visit, you'll be glad you did, especially if you either need old parts or you are in the market for either a hand fired anthracite central warm air furnace or boiler.

Anybody own one of these?

^^^ BUMP ^^^
Tought this needed re-exposed as it may help others to be aware this option does exist.

Considering the the recent thread WRT to large warm are furnaces, Larger heat producing capacity than a Hitzer 82FA?, think this thread needs a bump

I wonder if they make a gravity version

Think they all can be had as a gravity, as the blower is a add-on. Be aware, W/O blower does reduce BTU output rating some amount.

Version JC is gravity, while JCBF uses the add-on Blower.

BTW: They also have 2-Hand Fed Boiler Models available.

http://heatherfurnace.com/index.php