Part 15

The suggestion of collecting soot at the chimney-top by means of water was a valuable one, and there is no doubt it could be done to some extent, but not by encircling the pots with cold water, which would chill the smoke and prevent the soot from rising. A

design is here given, fig. 23, to show how it could be effected.

It will be seen that the chimney-pot or funnel has a zinc cover carried by stout ironwork surrounding it; _a_ is the water, _b_ the pipe to convey it away; it would be self-acting, and being washed by every shower would not be likely to get out of order. The rain-water must be looked for as to supply--to pay for high service for the roof of our houses to the water companies would not do.

Our climate is more damp than cold, and a considerable quantity of rain falls on our roofs. The zinc cover is spread out, so as to retain as large a portion as possible of the rain-fall. In winter, when there is most smoke, there is most water, with little or no evaporation. A pool of water could be thus collected, and the smoke projected over it would lose some portion of its soot, which could be floated away by the pipe into a receptacle provided for it in the back yard. The water might be sent into the drain and the soot left; or it could be sent into the drain as well.

The arrows in the diagram show the direction of the smoke, and the cover is so spread out and curved as to render it unlikely for any violent wind to flow out both water and soot into the street beneath.

Certainly coal smoke is a great nuisance; it is yearly pointed out as such by our paper the _Times_, in one, probably two, very excellently written leaders. Even the youngest member of the press, the _Echo_, in one of the common London fogs occurring in April, 1868, thus remarks: “The most sad and remarkable circumstance about the fog of yesterday was that the newspapers and people in the streets spoke of it as a ‘visitation,’ as a ‘gigantic pall,’ as if, indeed, the black darkness was something as strange and unaccountable as a fall of frogs or fishes from the sky. Of course it was nothing but our own familiar coal smoke which stopped the way of the sunlight. It is most lamentable that Londoners are becoming so used to this filthy nuisance that nothing more than a passing exclamation is uttered when it is forced down upon them in such volumes as to produce almost the darkness of midnight at midday. If ‘cleanliness is next to godliness,’ then the people of London must have been yesterday the most ungodly people in the world, for nothing would remain clean which was exposed to the fog of that morning. A plague of locusts would not create more terror and sense of ruin in any foreign capital, where every article of dress and furniture and house decoration, both external and internal, would have been regarded as spoiled by the loss of freshness. But London received its coat of dirt yesterday, and to-day only wonders with the remark ‘how dark it was!’ Will nothing move us to abate the nuisance? Is there no hope but that distant one of the exhaustion of our coal-beds? Must we inhale coal-blacks, and always contemplate dirty houses and grimy furniture? Is it not possible by smoke sewers, or some contrivance or machinery, to relieve us of this plague?” It is very possible it could be done with the greatest ease, but at some first expense; and in some generation or other it will be written that it found London foul and left it sweet, and there will be a time when this will be appreciated; and the man who gives the city the pure atmosphere of a small country town will receive all due honour and acknowledgment, that is, when he is in his grave and securely buried.

The public have so long been accustomed to be choked with smoke, and their health affected by deleterious gases, that they look upon the proposal of any scheme to secure pure air as the hallucinations of dreamy philosophers or inexperienced Utopians.

None of our present flues can, in the very slightest degree, stop these aqueous vapours from ascending into the atmosphere, neither can they effect any purification of the smoke, or retain the blacks for any useful purpose; and it is of no use disguising the fact that any contrivance or appliance, to effect either of these most desirable objects, must consist of an additional construction to the flue, which will be attended with additional expense, and require extra attention. Therefore any such appliance, if introduced, should be effectual, and repay such additional cost to its owner, by a saving, or at least a more economical use of fuel.

The appliance to the flue the author has to recommend, he considers will not only cause an economical use of the fuel by not permitting the present waste of heat, but it will purify the smoke, and retain the blacks for any useful object to which they can be applied.

The principle of the best-constructed flue at present is to get rid of all vapour, smoke, and soot as soon as possible, without the slightest consideration for the people outside. That the smoke should not return to annoy the occupants within the house is the aim of the constructors, and to secure this, the waste of heat in the chimney, and the consequent waste of fuel, is considered of no importance, for is it not the hot smoke that carries up the soot and ventilates the apartment?

This operation of the flue could be taken advantage of. In the construction of chimney-flues in a wall they are often turned at an angle to the right or left to pass an obstruction, such as a fireplace or timber placed within or against the wall. A flue could easily be taken out of the wall and returned, and if the part so taken out was formed in cast iron with a small cistern of water at top, it would become a warm-water pedestal, and could moderately warm or air an apartment in which it was placed; the author calls this the flue pedestal, and it is represented in the following cut.

It is about three feet six in height, not much higher than a small cabinet. The door could open, and a small tap supplying warm water for domestic use would be seen. Thus the upper rooms of a house could be warmed or aired by the fires below in perfect safety, and the present waste of heat in the flues prevented. This would be economical, as in most cases no fires would be necessary in the upper rooms.

The flue thus brought out in iron could contain a fine spray of water, that would draw up the smoke, and take down its vapours and soot at the same time into the sewer.

Fig. 25 shows a section of the flue thus brought out. The wall is two bricks thick, the flue _a_, is 9 inches in diameter, _d_ is the cast-iron flue, and another, _e_, shaped like a funnel, is placed behind it, to collect the soot and water, and pass it off through the pipe _h_. The cistern is partly within the walls and partly covering the two flues. It is not necessary that the water in the cistern should supply the spray: that might be done by a separate pipe with a tap to turn off and on as desirable; _b_ is the moveable pedestal covering the whole.

The adaptation of this simple contrivance to any kind of domestic chimney-flue is not a very difficult operation. It is only necessary to take out the brickwork in front of a flue of a height of 4 to 5 feet, and then introduce the iron flue, gathering up the brickwork beneath it; the section, fig. 25, supposes the iron flues to be in an external wall; should it be required in a party wall the soot goes off at _g_ _g_, to be conveyed outside the building in the nearest way; doors are provided for the purpose of sweeping; any down

draught of air in the chimney might expend itself in the soot flue, and the smoke having passed the spray could not return. The spray of water should be equal to the whole width of the flue, and proportioned in strength to the work it has to do; the smoke from a whole group of flues might be conducted to one powerful spray, one upper flue or chimney would then suffice for the roof, while the soot and flues in any number might be formed into one before passing to the sewer.

The pipe _h_, shown in fig. 25, would not form an open communication with the sewer; it would be supplied with a flap-cover or drain-eye, like the common house drain at its extremity. This would open only when sufficient water and soot was behind it, and close when it was passed. It would not require sweeping, the water keeping it clear. It should have another kind of drain-eye to that at present in use, the lid, or flap of which is hinged from the top, the soot floating on the surface of the water, would require the flap to open from below. Fig. 26 shows the kind of drain-eye that would be required.

If it was not for the difficulty of the present form of drain-eye to our houses, the soot flue might discharge its contents into the house drains at once, below the trappings; there is probably no absolute necessity at all for drain-eyes at the termination of house drains, their use is to make precaution doubly sure, to prevent the rising of the gases from the sewer, and to keep out the rats, to prevent them, by getting through the traps, from entering the house.

Experiments were made with a shower of water in Mr. Cubitt’s descending flue. It will be seen by inspecting the figures 1 to 8 that these flues could easily be formed into one, and taken into the drain; the experiment did not succeed, as none will, that brings heavy smoke in opposition to a water-fall. The smoke must go with the current or water-shower, and not against it.

The flue pedestal, with its water-spray, is the whole of the contrivance by which the author believes the smoke of the domestic hearth could be got rid of, or rendered inoffensive. What the action of the water would be on the gases that escape from the fuel he cannot say, but he presumes it could not be other than beneficial.

He experimented on the subject a few years ago, and had a stove and flue erected about ten feet in height; the lower part of the stove was of brick, the upper part with the cistern of zinc. The coal fire was lighted, and as soon as black smoke appeared at the chimney-top, the water-valve was lifted and about 16 fine jets of water were sprayed against a piece of loose perforated zinc, suspended in the flue; this zinc is shown in fig. 25; in the second flue _e_ (it should have been marked _f_, but by a mistake in the cutting it is made _d_), the smoke had to pass through under this perforated zinc to get to the chimney above. On the instant the water was applied, the smoke appeared at the chimney-top of a light colour, and it came out of the soot receptacle, placed a little height above the ground, nearly as much as it did at top, and of a similar light vapourish character,[H] a sure sign that it was drawn down by the current of water. Soot in large quantities was soon seen in the receptacle; the author has not ascertained the quantity of soot which would be obtained by this process from a ton of coals, but he believes it would be very considerable, possibly two sacks or more. As clean unmixed soot is worth in London 2_s._ 6_d._ per sack, if this soot were retained it would pay for the extra expense of the water, and the retaining of it, and to carry off the water would be an easy operation.

The “blacks” are good things at present in their wrong place; they could in the way proposed be very easily got rid of, and if it were possible to cut into all the chimneys of London and apply the remedy, the whole of the soot, which at present escapes into the atmosphere, might be caught and passed into the drains; it would there probably fully deodorize them. It is certainly not possible, from the herculean nature of the task, to disturb the whole of the chimneys of London, but the worst only might be operated upon, such as the chief kitchen flues of the great establishments, which are continually sending out black smoke.

Among the chief offenders are our bakers, nearly twenty of them being fined weekly for this by the magistrates, and for fires occurring in their chimneys. It appears that the Smoke Nuisance Act bears hardly upon them; the smoke-consuming apparatus forced upon them by the Act has utterly failed in its purpose, and it is impossible for them to comply with the requirements of the Act, and carry on their business in a satisfactory manner either to themselves or the public. They have applied to the Home Secretary for relief, and a bill to repeal so much of the Act 16 and 17 Vict. that relates to bakehouses has been in contemplation.

There would be no difficulty in placing a flue pedestal in their flues at any height above their oven fires; it would not only relieve their neighbours from the annoyance of black smoke from their chimneys, but it would secure the chimneys themselves from taking fire. The water need only be turned on when required, when black smoke was being made, and if they chose to collect the soot the expense of the operation would be trifling, if anything, beyond the first expense of the flue pedestal, in the end.

In large country houses the flue pedestal would warm the upper rooms or passages, and cause a more equal temperature in the building; this, together with the practicability of collecting the soot for agricultural purposes, might be an inducement to its introduction. Water could be lifted to the roof of a country mansion by that ingenious contrivance the hydraulic ram, and passed off to its original source when done with, the soot being left behind.

The beautiful self-acting machine, known as Gwynne and Co.’s improved hydraulic ram, is peculiarly adapted for raising or lifting water to any required elevation. It is necessary to have a fall of water to work it, and the greater the height of the fall, the more effective will be the machine. In favourable cases it will raise water thirty times higher than the fall working it. The greater the height of the lift, of course the less will be the quantity raised in a given time. This machine can be made to deliver comparatively large quantities of water, either in tanks on the roofs of houses, or in farmyards for filling ponds. It will work day and night without any attendance or expense after it is once fixed. Two or more rams may be used to force through the same pipe, or rising main. Where a continuous stream of water to work the machine cannot be obtained, a spring, or even rainfall, or drainage may be stored up in a reservoir or dam, and made to work the ram.

The expense of these machines is not excessive, as the following table will show:--

+-----------+-----------+-----------------------+-------------------------+ |Diameter of|Diameter of| Approximate Number of |Price of Ram, complete, | |Feed Pipe. | Delivery |Gallons of Water raised|with all the accessories,| | | Pipe. | in a day of 24 hours. | but exclusive of Pipes. | +-----------+-----------+-----------------------+-------------------------+ |Inches. |Inches. | | £ | | 2 | 1 | 800 to 1150 | 12 | | 3 | 2 | 3000 to 4000 | 24 | | 4 | 2 | 4000 to 5000 | 34 | +-----------+-----------+-----------------------+-------------------------+

A small room or enclosure must be erected to contain the machine.

The question of how far the removal of smoke from the atmosphere would affect the various gases of combustion floating therein is a question for the chemist. The plan that has been here proposed is founded on the supposition that Nature’s law, relative to the diffusion of gases, permits only carbonic acid gas, the chief product of combustion, to remain in the proportion of 1 in 2000. The introduction of so much water in the sewer, where its presence already is considered an injury to the sewage, is an objection, but the present system of drainage requires a plentiful supply of water, to prevent stoppages or choking. Should the dry earth system ever be generally introduced, the present sewers would serve to remove liquid sewage and all products of combustion. The operation of the sewer in any way in receiving this smoke and soot, would permit the full and cheering light of the sun to shine alike in country and town.

_DESIGN No. 36._

A LECTURE HALL, OR LITERARY INSTITUTION.

This design was made to refront an old chapel in the country which had been purchased for the purpose of forming a Literary Institute. The interior

was one large room, the lecturer’s table at the back, a recess and fireplace behind, a large gallery in front, under which were formed two small rooms, with a

passage from the grand entrance between. The entrance-door with a bust of Socrates over it, under the arch, was made large, to give an important character to the front. A section of the niche over the doorway is given, some details of the angle rustication, together with an elevation of the entrance-door.

_DESIGN No. 37._

ENCAUSTIC TILES.

A slight digression from the subject-matter of the preceding pages may serve to break monotony, and introduce to the notice of the reader an ornamental object--the encaustic tile. They are

now of universal use, both for floor and wall decoration, and have become general favourites for such purposes. A few suggestions, therefore, for the purpose of making them more artistic and pleasing will not be out of place.

The present patterns are almost entirely of a conventional kind, or according to strict geometric forms. The same pattern is repeated all over the surface, without variation, and however excellent the pattern may be, it is designed on the same principle as that of a printed wall paper.

The design just given puts all geometric forms aside, and introduces a free-hand treatment, allowing the pattern to be varied on every surface laid down.

The first tile shows eight points in which the stem of the pattern (suppose that of a flower design) meets in them all. The second tile shows the stem; the third and fourth the flower pattern varied. One tile might have more flowers than leaves, another all leaves or buds, and as all the tiles would fall in their right places, they depend only on the care of the workmen who place them; the pattern might be varied according to the number of tiles of different pattern.

For wall linings a trellis work might be shown on the tile, having a blue ground; some tiles might be without either leaves, stems, or flowers, and the design would show a flowered trellis against the sky. The figure given on page 461 shows this.

These tiles are beginning to be used on columns. Some good examples are to be seen in the South Kensington Museum Galleries. In columns with trellis work a white marble ground with leaves and roses twined round it naturally, would look a great deal better than formal lines of stiff ornaments.

Some of our latest Gothic architects who were at the same time artists, did not trouble themselves to draw out according to rule the geometric lines for the foliation of their Gothic windows. They knew the principles thoroughly, but merely made the vertical lines correct, and then sketched in the foliation with a free hand. This gave an outline greatly superior to the usual stiff conventional forms. Some examples of this may be seen in one of the author’s books, now in the Fine Art Library of the South Kensington Museum, in which the free-hand designs (rubbings) are placed by the side of the same patterns drawn out geometrically.

The vignette shows foreign cut-wood patterns for roof ornament; the section the method of forming the zinc gutter.

_DESIGN No. 38._--RESTORATION OF CASTLE GUNNARSTROP, SWEDEN.

It has been remarked in the Introduction, that the localities in which a residence can be placed greatly affect their picturesque appearance. The north and west Highlands of Scotland, in our own country, and a similar class of scenery in Sweden and Norway, greatly aid by their natural beauties the best effects of the architect, and generally in northern Europe, including Denmark with the above-named countries, those accessories can be largely taken advantage of. An instance of this can be found in the design now under consideration. In this castle the gables are carried up to a greater height, and made more ornamental and of greater importance than with us. In the year 1852 the author was making a design for a villa for the Count de Bark, a Swedish nobleman. It was to be erected on the heights bordering the Sound near Copenhagen, and was seen from the sea in passing, peering above the trees. The upper part of the villa was made as picturesque as possible, with a tower, battlements, and turrets. The lower part of the building was very plain, and the plan merely contained a few living rooms and servants’ apartments; it was much unlike our style, and is therefore not given here: only the view from the vignette is afforded in this description. The Count’s uncle occupied the old castle, the Vrams Gunnarstrop in Sweden, then very much out of repair and unfitted for the requirements of modern domestic life.

It was planned originally on a grand scale; the fronts had high triangular gables in steps, and decorated with cut granite ornaments, but the whole was

very plain. The north front was in two floors, and the angle towers of the building had only two floors. The portions between one storey--that of the ground floor--thus had to be raised. The ground floor was given to the servants, and the southern portion of the building was to remain for a time in its then existing state. The plan shows _a_, the grand staircase, adorned with columns supporting the upper landing. It was 27 ft. in length by 26 ft. in width, and led up to an ante-room _b_, in the centre of the building, 26 ft. in length by 12 ft. in breadth. It opened into the first and second drawing-rooms, _c_ and _d_: one 30 ft. in length, the other 40 ft., and both of a width of 26 ft.

The dining-room _e_, entered from the chief drawing-room, was 40 ft. in length, with a width of 22 ft.; _f_ shows the gallery or library filled with book-cases, and leading to the day-room _h_; the chief bedroom is shown at _i_ adjoining, _k_ is the lady’s dressing-room, _l_ the gentleman’s dressing-room and bath; _m_ is the nursery, with a servants’ staircase and closet adjoining; _g_ is the servants’ serving-place at the entrance of dining-room. The light portions of the plan show the additions made; the black, the old portions of the castle. The two towers contained staircases to the attics which were formed in the high roofs.

The principal elevation faced the west. The perspective view of this front is given. Its length is 130 ft., and the height of the principal entrance from the ground to the top of the gable is 60 ft.