Crawl Space

For being built in 1896, our home's crawl space is in pretty good condition. And, to boot, it is home to the original cast iron, pot belly, warm, grumbling boiler. In the rear of the crawl space, there is a collection of old coals that were shoveled in by the owners. Very cool. The boiler was converted from coal to gas in the early/mid 1900s.

The best part of the boiler/radiator system is the collection of bronze, etched radiators. They have been painted white, which I like, but we discussed stripping them down to the original metal.

Although we plan to continue to use the radiators when we install a more energy-efficient boiler, we plan to keep the original boiler in the crawl space as a historic element to the home.

Here's a cool close up pic of the clinker door - the resevior that collected the used coals. When this little area was filled up, the homeowner would then open the clinker door and clean out the debris.