Chapter 40
From the Architect.
THE BREATH OF LIFE.
DEAR JOHN: No man ever built himself a house without getting out of patience before it was finished.
Among all the furnaces you have examined, a certain one is doubtless better for you than any other; when I find out which one, you shall be informed. Reliable testimony on the subject can only be given by some one who has tried different kinds in the same house under similar circumstances for a considerable time. As we never have two seasons alike, and do have about three new first-class furnaces every year, it is difficult to find this valuable witness. Printed testimonials are worth three or four cents per pound. I do not know that cast-iron furnaces are more liable to be overheated than others, and you cannot "burn the air" with them if they are, unless you burn the furnace too. You may fill a room with air, every mouthful of which has been passed between red-hot iron plates, not over half an inch apart, and I do not suppose the essential properties of the air will be perceptibly changed, or hurt for breathing when properly cooled.
The danger from cast-iron is in its weakness, not in its strength.
You speak of poison carbon. Carbonic acid is not poison. It is harmless as water,--just. It will choke you to death if you are immersed in it. Trying to breathe it in large quantities will strangle you. But we drink it with safety and pleasure, and may breathe a little of it, even as much as thirty per cent, for a short time, without serious harm. But carbonic oxide, which is also liberated from burning anthracite, is an active poison, and one per cent of it in the air we breathe may prove instantly fatal. Now it is fully proven that these gases laugh at cast-iron and pass through it freely whenever they choose. Wrought-iron plates are supposed to be more impervious. The popular notion that foul air must be drawn from the bottom of a room is based, I think, upon a superficial knowledge of the weight of carbonic acid, an ignorance of the law of the diffusion of gases,--upon a realizing sense of the cost of coal, and an insensibility to the worth of fresh air. Even such unreliable witnesses as our senses assure us that the air at the top of a high room--say the upper gallery of an unventilated theatre--is far less salubrious, though not overheated, than that below. We know, too, how quickly the sulphurous gas that sometimes escapes from those warranted furnaces not only ascends through the tin pipes, but rises in the open stairway if it has a chance. The hurtful carbonaceous gases doubtless go with it, and are then diffused through the room. The most forcible objection to allowing the air to escape through the ceiling is that it is a wanton waste, not only of heat, but of the fresh air that has just come from the north pole by way of the furnace and cold-air box, and which, by virtue of its warmth, goes in all its purity straight to the ceiling. Accordingly the heavy cold air lying near the floor and laden with poison must be drawn out through the ventilating flue, till the upper warmth and freshness fall gently on our heads, like heavenly blessings.
Let me digress here to answer another question. No, don't put your ventilating flues in the outer walls if you expect the air to rise through them in cold weather; for it will not, if they reach the moon, unless it is warmer than that lying at their base. You may as well expect water to rise from the cistern to the tank in the attic because the pipe runs there, as that air will rise simply because there is a passage for it. Sometimes holes are made into the chimney-flues, but this is robbing the stoves or the fireplaces. It is better to build an independent flue so close that it shall always feel the heat from the black warm heart of the chimney, for warmed by some means it must be. Yet warm air does not choose to rise. It falls like lead unless lifted by something heavier than itself.
To return to the former point. When you can warm within a ventilating flue all the air passing through it more economically than you can warm the same quantity in the room from which it is taken, then you may admit the air to feed this same flue near the bottom and perhaps save fuel; but I doubt whether the remaining air will be any purer than if an equal amount had been allowed to escape near the ceiling. The answers to your square questions necessarily dovetail. The hot-air registers should always be in the partitions if possible. It saves sweeping dust into the pipes; it saves cutting the carpets; it lessens the risk of a debilitating warm bath to people addicted to standing over them; it diffuses the heat more evenly through the room; and, owing to this better diffusion, there is less waste through the ventilating outlet at the top of the room, if it should be there.
The foregoing refers to rooms heated on the furnace principle, where all that seems needful for complete ventilation is a sufficient outgoing of the air to cause a constant change. In theory, too, the warm air must cross the room to make its exit. Indeed, the plan of admitting it at the top and drawing the cold air from the base has been strongly urged by one of the most earnest and thoughtful advocates of thorough ventilation. In practice, this fresh air is apt to come from the region of the coal-bin and potato-barrels, especially in very cold weather, and I doubt whether it will find the door of escape sooner at one side than another, unless immediately over the entrance. As to your next inquiry, I do not think our winter quarters can be warmed so safely and healthfully in any other way as by steam or hot-water radiators; but the first cost of the modes now in use puts them beyond the reach of common people, the very ones who need them most. Whether it's the tariff on pig-iron, the patent royalties, the skilled labor, the artistic designs, the steam joints and high pressure, or all combined, that make the cost, I cannot say, but I have faith that some one of the noble army of inventors will, erelong, give us a system more economical in manufacture and simple in use than any at present known. It will hardly bring him a fortune, however. The real benefit to humanity will be too great for a temporal reward. Not only will this coming system be available for cheap and isolated houses, but when they stand compactly, one boiler will send its portable caloric to the dwellers on one entire square, as gas and water are now distributed.
If stoves or other local radiators are used, you must of course provide for the entrance of pure air as well as the exit of the impure. With two openings in the ceiling, the air will commonly ascend one and descend the other. Open fireplaces, whether for wood or coal, are in favor with those who have learned to love fresh air, besides being, for their cheerfulness, an unfailing antidote to melancholy, and other selfish, spiritual ills.
The truth in regard to their healthfulness is simply that they compel us to sacrifice a large amount of fuel to the goddess of ventilation, far more than would be needed to give us a better state of the atmosphere, if applied in some other way; for the fire itself is hungry for oxygen, fireplaces for wood are mightily prone to smoke, and anthracite coal releases its poisonous gases at times so rapidly that none but the most voracious chimney will carry them safely away. To answer your questions directly: with a good stove in the hall and in each of the rooms not commonly used, you would probably afford one or two open fires for those constantly occupied, and keep comfortable with less outlay for fuel than with a furnace. But you would need an accommodating fool to make your fires, and an industrious philosopher to keep them burning. In this matter of warming and ventilating the more you know the more you will wish to learn. My hope is to set you thinking and studying. Read Dr. George Derby's little book on Anthracite and Health, from which I have drawn already for your benefit; read the statistics of the increase of pulmonary diseases; get the physiological importance of fresh air so clearly before your mind's eye that your dinner seems a secondary consideration, and don't be deceived by any bigoted commentators, or forget to use your own common-sense.
While warming our backs we may dispose of some adjacent matters. You can make a very pretty fireplace for wood of the common buff-colored fire-bricks, either alone or variegated with good common red bricks; a hearth of encaustic tile, pressed bricks, or even Portland cement. Let the hearth be a generous one, two and a half feet wide, and at least two feet longer than the width of the fireplace, if you mean it for actual use. You must not suppose I object to cheap things because they are cheap and therefore common. The more so the better if they have real merit; but the marbleized slate mantels so abundant have not enough intrinsic beauty to justify them in supplanting the more honest and unpretending ones of wood. Real marble ought to be too expensive for such houses as yours.
With a furnace your house becomes a lumber-kiln, and any wood that has not been tried as by fire will, under its influence, warp and crack and shrink; in carpenters' phrase, "it tears the finish all to pieces." The rapid shrinking of the joists and studs near the hot-air pipes is also apt to cause cracks in the plastering that would never appear if the whole frame could shrink evenly, for shrink it will more or less. The application of these remarks would be, putting in the furnace as soon as possible, and keeping it steadily at work drying sap from the wood and water from the plastering till it enters upon its legitimate mission of warming the house.
When you have read all this about heating and ventilating two or three times over, these conclusions will begin to crystallize in your mind:--
Open fires give the surest ventilation and the best cheer.
If stoves are used for economy, fresh air must be systematically admitted.
Furnaces are immensely useful to warm the bones of the house and as a sort of reserve force; but the heat they give is somewhat like a succession of January thaws.
If you begin to investigate you will discover a fearful amount of ignorance and indifference where you should find positive information, and the most discouraging obscurity or conflicting statements among those who profess to be wise in such matters.