New Construction With an Octopus?

Two story homes were the norm during the times.
I'll guess many, many more tons of bit. coal has gone through the octopus furnaces than anth. coal, based on coal prices, availability and before oil and gas made it's wide spread debut.
Octopus's were well suited to be able to add plenty of secondary air burning the cheaper bit. coal.

We use to have one in the living room without the sheet metal. We burned wood in it. Seamed to be ok.

For the man that has everything... except an octopus!

I can see how a VERY large old coal stove, perhaps one of the giant warm mornings or jacketed stoves, could be used to make it, but why? OK, because you can! Now I get it

I am a little confused. Didn't these basically just heat one area of the house and you relied on airflow to get the heat the rest of the way around?

Djcoak6071 wrote:I am a little confused. Didn't these basically just heat one area of the house and you relied on airflow to get the heat the rest of the way around?

Yes,... and no.
There were the types that just had a jacket with a single hood that connected to a large, central floor register. They are a furnace, but not really called an Octopus type because there were no "tentacles".

The more common type I've seen in old homes has many large, long, round tentacle- like ducts coming out around the top of the jacket and leading to different parts of the house. Hence the name "Octopus".

Both types had a large cold air return that lead in under the jacket at floor level to distribute the returning cold air between the jacket and the furnace.

The only part that was not jacketed with sheet metal was the front casting of the furnace with it's loading and ash doors and dampers, plus whatever type of connections for shaking the grates.

If you Google " Octopus Furnace pictures" you'll see what I mean.

Paul

When a kid had one in my house. It was original fired with anthracite as there were a few pieces in the old coal bin. Later converted to oil and me the fool that pulled it out. It certainly was a beast. As a gravity furnace it was ok I converted it to forced warm air and cut fuel use by 30% and then tore it out and installed a 5 zone hot water that really was a fuel miser and cut it down to affordable. I attribute it's short comings on oil as it used 50% of the oil just to get it up to temperature before any heat is delivered that would not be an issue on coal as can fire much lower once up to temp.