Frankie found a good source of heat in our house and has been spending a lot of time there.
Photo Friday: The Grate is Great
Bad Cat Chris
The Baddest Cat You'll Ever Love
Frankie found a good source of heat in our house and has been spending a lot of time there.
Bad Cat Chris 
Looks like he’s “suggesting” one of the cat beds be located there!! I’m sure it will become a VERY popular spot…………..
Hugs, Pam
That is a good idea.
we love your heating systemes… we wish we had it too… butt we are da old world… sigh….
The heating system is old world. 🙂
dood….ya knead a hammick over de grate ta chillax in !!! and knot post ree lated tho we did wanna say we hope ewe haz a merree Christmas anda happee healthee blessed 2021 !! 🙂 ☺☺♥♥ we iz headed ta knot on line land for a few ☺☺☺♥♥♥ see ya soon ~~~~
I hammock is a great idea.
Frankie. I like sitting on the heat vents too. ~Ernie
I wonder if he got the idea from you, Ernie.
My cats all have found value on sitting next to a vent. Miss Egypt, she used to lay on top of it if she needed a good warm-up. Other times, they like to listen to the furnace at work. 🙂
I guess they like heat. Our house in Florida has floor vents that the cats did not pay attention to but I’m sure that is because we ran the air conditioner way more than the heat
That is one Great old Grate. I like mine that comes out of wall and it is nowhere near as nice
I guess heat is good no matter where it comes from. Well, mostly anyway.
Floor heating is the best! If you are a kitty, at least.
It sure is.
Oh yea, that would be a good spot for a hammick!
I agree.
It’s been a long time since I’ve seen floor grates like that. Not since my grandparent’s house… Are you on an oil furnace?
No, it’s gas, but there is a very old one down in the cellar. Someone said it was originally coal but I am no expert in heating systems.
When was the house built? Do you know?
It was listed as 1900 but there seems to be evidence that it was somewhere between 1897 and 1902 or later.
Yep. Thought so. It may have been re-worked over time but, that house, originally, had an oil furnace. My paternal GPs houses (they owned several and had renters) all had floor grates like yours. That’s an oil furnace system. It’s really neat that no one decided to rip out the vents or cover up the holes in the floor and just converted the heat to gas. The house I live in, now, had an oil furnace at one time. You can see where the wood was replaced in the floor. In 1972, my GPs remodeled their homes, covered up the holes and brought in central air/heat.
My maternal GPs had a coal stove. It was a small, self-contained unit. There was no central vent system. In fact, I’ve never heard of any kind of central venting system with coal except the stove pipe going straight up into the ceiling and out of the roof. Coal stoves were like fireplaces…situated in one place, only. Coal doesn’t burn clean. Ever seen a coal-powered plant? Black smoke. Coal stoves are good for radiant heat but, to have the air blown around? No. Same with wood burning stoves/fireplaces. You either have a hearth and a chimney or you have a closed door, self-contained unit with a pipe. You may, indeed, have a coal burning stove in your cellar but, it wouldn’t heat the whole house via the existing vent system.
A home with an oil furnace and the corresponding vent system was a sign of wealth for its time. It took money to build a home with a venting system and have oil delivered on a regular basis. Poorer folks built smaller houses with fireplaces or coal stoves.
That makes sense. I wondered about how a coal furnace would work because I knew it would not burn clean. I have been hearing a lot of stories since I moved in and I am sure that half of them are wrong, or at least partially wrong.
One guy even talked about George Washington staying in this town and about the upstairs being slave quarters. I wanted to say there were no slaves in 1900 and even if there were, West Virginia was technically a Northern state. In addition, while George Washington owned this land, there wasn’t a town here during that time. Of course, I just smiled and pretended his stories were interesting.
Exactly! LOL! There may have been servants or employees, sure. A wealthy family would most likely have hired help.
Washington was in the area of what is now WV as he was a young surveyor:
http://www.wvencyclopedia.org/articles/900
Then, there’s the cave:
https://georgewashingtoncave.org/
Yeah, Virginia was split into two pieces during the Wheeling Conventions of 1861 and WV admitted to the Union on June 20, 1863.
We bought a couple of books about the history of this area. As soon as I have time I want to read them by the way, there is a 3′ x 5′ grate in the home that covers a 10 to 15 foot deep shaft that I assume
Feeds air into the heating system. I’m actually a bit afaid to step on it.
They can unnerve you. And, with an oil furnace, the grates can get hot to walk on, too. I’ve never walked over one with a gas system.
I only need to walk over it to get to the closet under the stairs so I intentionally don’t have anything useful in that closet. 🙂
😄
That is a nice spot.
Frankie sure thinks so.
A lamp with a three way bulb generates sufficient heat to attract my cat Andy to it. He likes to sleep under it.
Frankie used to lay in front of the TV. The cable box was under the spot that he laid on so I think it was warmer there.
Andy hasn’t picked up on that yet, but he does manage to block the spot where signals from the remote need to go.
Ha, so did Frankie in the other house.
Clever boy, Frankie!
Yes, he is.