Crawlspace Coral? – What the heck is this
ProjectTime
| Posted in General Discussion on
I am under contract on a 1938 brick colonial that needs some love. It has a half basement half crawl. Where the crawl meets the basement it is full of the attached picture. I suspect it came from the old gravity furnace and the previous resident just threw it into the crawl to forget about it.
Any ideas? What is the white stuff?
At first I thought it was left over mortar thrown in with building waste, but it light weight like pumice and has glass smooth parts.
Replies
"Clinkers" from an old coal
"Clinkers" from an old coal furnace.
I think we have a winner!
It is amazing how many people I asked that could not answer that. Is it hazardous at all?
What part of the country is the colonial located?
Clinkers from coal furnaces tell a lot about the geology of the coal seam where the coal was mined.
For instance, the high sulpher coal of central IL (where I grew up) had lots of pyrite (iron sulfide/sulfite; gold to a 5 YO kid) and galena (Lead sulfide, silver to a kid). The clinkers were magnetic since the coal fire reduced the pyrite to very rough 'pig iron'.
I never saw white on any clinker coming right out of a furnace. On your sample, the white may be lead carbonate (white lead) resulting from long term lead reaction with 'acid rain in the cellar' due to moisture and residual sulpher oxide compounds**. Could also be nitrates depending on the coal seam and location the coal was mined.
** re: is it hazarous: Dnt let the kids eat any of it? Get a $5 lead test kit at the hdw store - if Pb positive, get out the white hazmat suits and pay big big bucks for cleanup, or keep quiet? The alleys of most midwestern towns were paved with the stuff (clinkers/ash), but you know how regulations are these days.
edit ps: you may be surprised at how many cisterns and wells were filled with coal ash in coal country during the early half of the 20th century - shallow wells in many parts of the country suffer accordingly.
pps: I spent many an hours sitting on the coal bin floor busting apart coal chunks to find my silver and gold! doent tink dat duh lade ded nutin to me cept stil vizit dis plaec nuw an den......
You still run across high school in central/southern illinois that have cinder tracks and of course its still mixed with salt in the winter to give traction on the roads.
its still mixed with salt in the winter
Yep, do recall that a 5 YO car in the 1960 would be a rust bucket. Up in NW Indiana, they even threw steel mill slag into the road mix, often wondered how low the PH of the road mush could get, 1.5?
A guy in the chem class (circa 1963) said he tested the Gary, IN road slush once and it came up as 2.5!
I ran my fastest 200m run on an all straightaway cinder track: 23.8
We had to re-stud our cleats, we put in longer (3/4" vs 1/4") studs to get the grip we needed.
And note that some folks burned trash in the furnace, so there may be the remains of glass bottles, tin cans, etc. (The man of the house may also have used the furnace to dispose of his liquor bottles he didn't want the Mrs seeing.)
(The fact that the stuff was thrown there vs being put into the ash bin suggests that some previous owner was a hair on the lazy side, and not too fastidious.)
Thanks
Your input is much appreciated. I knew I would get an answer here.
Location: Charlotte, NC.