My grandparents lived in Saint Clair, Pennsylvania, which is in the heart of the anthracite coal region. Pop-Pop had a Westinghouse Appliance store and serviced everything they sold. In addition, he had helped to wire homes when electricity first became available and serviced lots of coal boilers. As a young lad, I often tagged along on his service calls and virtually every home had coal boilers. Cleaning out the ash pits was one of my duties and learning how to tend a coal fire became routine.
Fast forward to the early 1980s where I had my own mechanical contracting business and successfully carved out a niche installing and servicing wood and coal boilers. Farmer Brown contacted me to ask if I would take a look at a recently installed coal boiler that wasn’t living up to the stated claims in the manufacturer’s literature. Brown wanted to know if it was installed properly.