4 ms·

"What do you mean? There's still plenty of houses in Poland that use regular coal for heating." you mean directly burning it? or indirectly from a coal plant t

by kmlx 7y ago

"What do you mean? There's still plenty of houses in Poland that use regular coal for heating." you mean directly burning it? or indirectly from a coal plant that produces electricity and/or heating? why not use wood? why coal of all things? lived in a bunch of european countries. first time i hear about it. is this common in poland? or more of an outlier?

TeMPOraL 7y ago
Burning directly. Where do you live? What do people in the countryside there use? I'd say individual coal burning is less common in cities, but still popular in villages. A family I know that lives in the countryside still burn wood most of the year to heat water and cook meals, and only buy some amount of coal (I think few hundred kilos, maybe a metric ton) for heating during winter. Hell, the first location of our Hackerspace in Kraków - in the very centre of a 1M city - had only coal furnace for heating. There's a lot of old buildings in Poland.
- thinkcontext 7y ago
  > Where do you live? What do people in the countryside there use? In the US propane, fuel oil and wood are the popular off-grid fuels. Electricity is also pretty cheap here so resistance heat is not uncommon. Heat pumps have gotten a lot better at low temps in recent years, so a lot of new construction or retrofits by the nonpoor will use them.
  - TeMPOraL 7y ago
    Heat pumps are appearing in Poland too, particularly ones meant for domestic hot water (vs. heating your home), and there are government subsidies attached to them. The people I mentioned in my example are currently considering getting such a heatpump thanks to that subsidy (it wouldn't be economical for them otherwise). Electricity isn't cheap enough here to run resistance heating unless you're desperate. I don't know anyone using propane for heating, but many people - myself currently included - use it for cooking in places that don't have utility gas connection.
gambiting 7y ago
>>you mean directly burning it? or indirectly from a coal plant that produces electricity and/or heating? why not use wood? why coal of all things? Directly in coal fired boiler. As to why - because it's very cheap. Like I said, my grandparents would usually buy a 1000kg of coal for the winter, it would cost them.....800PLN? So like.....200 euro? And that was for a big 250sqm house. Wood would be easily quadruple that, but the bigger problem is that it burns too quickly. With coal you could load up the boiler and it would last a good 6-8 hours, so if you loaded it up just before going to sleep it would keep you warm all night. Wood or eco-pellets burn much quicker, that's why boilers for those usually use some kind of auto-feeding system, but obviously it makes them much more expensive. And no, it's still very common, I'd say on my residential street 2/3 of all houses will be coal fired, unless someone renovated recently and put a gas boiler in(but then we don't live in a city, small town of maybe 20k people).
- kmlx 7y ago
  thank you for the reply!
badpun 7y ago
> is this common in poland? or more of an outlier? In general, most residential buildings (houses and appartment buildings) from before WWII are probably still heated by coal. The post-WWII appartment buildings are usually heated via a warm water sent from an outside coal-based plant (either small one that's just serving a bunch of buildings or a large one serving entire districts/cities). I live in a dense city where most buildings are from pre-WWII and thus most people burn coal (except for the ones who value convenience and can afford to install a gas boiler in their flats). The smog can be hard to bear during the winter. Also, since there a big population of poor people in the city, you can get 10 kg packs of coal in many convenience stores :) It's for those who didn't just buy a tonne of coal up front before the heating season, because they didn't have a spare $200 laying around.

by kmlx 7y ago

TeMPOraL 7y ago

Burning directly. Where do you live? What do people in the countryside there use? I'd say individual coal burning is less common in cities, but still popular in villages. A family I know that lives in the countryside still burn wood most of the year to heat water and cook meals, and only buy some amount of coal (I think few hundred kilos, maybe a metric ton) for heating during winter. Hell, the first location of our Hackerspace in Kraków - in the very centre of a 1M city - had only coal furnace for heating. There's a lot of old buildings in Poland.

thinkcontext 7y ago
> Where do you live? What do people in the countryside there use? In the US propane, fuel oil and wood are the popular off-grid fuels. Electricity is also pretty cheap here so resistance heat is not uncommon. Heat pumps have gotten a lot better at low temps in recent years, so a lot of new construction or retrofits by the nonpoor will use them.
- TeMPOraL 7y ago
  Heat pumps are appearing in Poland too, particularly ones meant for domestic hot water (vs. heating your home), and there are government subsidies attached to them. The people I mentioned in my example are currently considering getting such a heatpump thanks to that subsidy (it wouldn't be economical for them otherwise). Electricity isn't cheap enough here to run resistance heating unless you're desperate. I don't know anyone using propane for heating, but many people - myself currently included - use it for cooking in places that don't have utility gas connection.

gambiting 7y ago

>>you mean directly burning it? or indirectly from a coal plant that produces electricity and/or heating? why not use wood? why coal of all things? Directly in coal fired boiler. As to why - because it's very cheap. Like I said, my grandparents would usually buy a 1000kg of coal for the winter, it would cost them.....800PLN? So like.....200 euro? And that was for a big 250sqm house. Wood would be easily quadruple that, but the bigger problem is that it burns too quickly. With coal you could load up the boiler and it would last a good 6-8 hours, so if you loaded it up just before going to sleep it would keep you warm all night. Wood or eco-pellets burn much quicker, that's why boilers for those usually use some kind of auto-feeding system, but obviously it makes them much more expensive. And no, it's still very common, I'd say on my residential street 2/3 of all houses will be coal fired, unless someone renovated recently and put a gas boiler in(but then we don't live in a city, small town of maybe 20k people).

kmlx 7y ago
thank you for the reply!

badpun 7y ago

> is this common in poland? or more of an outlier? In general, most residential buildings (houses and appartment buildings) from before WWII are probably still heated by coal. The post-WWII appartment buildings are usually heated via a warm water sent from an outside coal-based plant (either small one that's just serving a bunch of buildings or a large one serving entire districts/cities). I live in a dense city where most buildings are from pre-WWII and thus most people burn coal (except for the ones who value convenience and can afford to install a gas boiler in their flats). The smog can be hard to bear during the winter. Also, since there a big population of poor people in the city, you can get 10 kg packs of coal in many convenience stores :) It's for those who didn't just buy a tonne of coal up front before the heating season, because they didn't have a spare $200 laying around.