ice, and the house-warming will be a simple matter. The conditions are
identical, only turned inside out. In one case the heat is to be kept
from penetrating, in the other from escaping, and both require the
same treatment; not, perhaps, to the extent of stuffing with
sawdust,--confined air is just as good,--but the walls and the floors,
the roofs and the windows, should be made to prevent the escape of
heat. He may think I underrate his scientific attainments, but it will
do no harm to remind him that an air-tight house may be a very cold
one. A man would freeze to death in a glass bottle, when a coarse,
porous blanket would keep him comfortable. Double windows are not to
keep cold air out, but to keep the heat in. India-rubber
weather-strips have, doubtless, caused ten times as many influenzas as
they have prevented. More heat will radiate through a window of single
glass than would be carried out by the air through a crack, half an
inch wide, at the side of it.
These suggestions are "just to set him a thinking."
LETTER XXXVII.
From John.
SHINGLES, SUNSHINE, AND FRESH AIR.
MY DEAR ARCHITECT: When I stepped into the background, I didn't
propose to be left entirely out in the cold. I've followed Fred
through the most of his gropings after grandeur, and listened
patiently to one of Jane's dignified essays on the sublimity of
housekeeping; but when my wife begins romancing, and the schoolmaster
is allowed to run wild, as though his moonshine was brighter than that
of other folks, I think it's time to call the meeting to order.
While you have been gossiping I have been at work, and now our house
is almost done,--that is to say, it's well begun. The stone walls of
the first story are finished, the frame is raised and covered. I've
done one thing without asking anybody's advice; covered the roof with
the best cedar shingles I could find. I hired an honest man to lay
them, who would throw out all that were dubious and lay the
cross-grained ones right side up, and painted the tin valleys both
sides before the shingles were laid. Then I took the difference in
cost between this and a good slate roof and put it in the
savings-bank. At the end of twenty years, if my roof lasts as long, my
deposit will put on the best kind of a slate roof and leave three
hundred dollars to go to the Society for the Promotion of Fine Art in
General and Rural Architecture in Particular. I know the shingled roof
may burn me up, if the chimney should happen to take fire some windy
night, but 't won't cost so much for repairs as slate if they should
blow over, either all at once, or one brick at a time. My neighbors
may not like the looks, especially while it's new; but if we have
nothing uglier than a mellow gray-shingled roof, I don't think
anybody'll be hurt. I wish we had something like the tile roofs I've
seen in foreign pictures. They'd go first-rate with my stone walls.
The eave-spouts bother me. I don't need to save the water from the
roof, and have concluded to let it pour where it pleases. The porches
protect the doorsteps, and I think it will be easier to take care of
it after it falls than to hang gutters all around emptying at the
corners and angles. They are troublesome things anyway. The leaves
clog them, the ice dams them, the snow comes down in an avalanche and
smashes them, they fall to leaking and spoil the cornice, and after
they are all done there's no certainty that the water won't run the
wrong way. I can put them up afterwards if necessary, but don't
believe it will be.
The last counsel you gave me was to open the eyes of my house for the
daylight to shine through without let or hindrance. I'm beyond advice
on that subject. Carpets and curtains shall fade rather than wife and
babies. My windows yawn like barn-doors. There isn't a room in the
house that won't have the sun a part of the day, and he looks into the
sitting-room from the moment his cloudy bedclothes are thrown off in
the morning, till he hides his face behind Mount Tom at night. My
glass bill will count up, but I'd rather pay for glass in windows than
for iron in the shape of tonics.
Now, if you will settle the question of warming and ventilating you
shall be honorably discharged. Don't try to show off your science by
telling me how carbon, the wicked, poison stuff, is heavy, and we must
leave a hole near the floor where it can run out and be coaxed up to
the ridgepole after it gets cold, and then make pictures covered with
arrow-heads to show how well-educated air ought to go! Talk as many
gases as you please to other folks. I know two or three things for
certain. Coal costs ten dollars a ton; that's one. I want just as
large a house in winter as in summer; that's another. I mean the whole
house must be comfortable, in shape to use when needed. I know a man
will be cut off suddenly by his own breath if he has nothing else for
his lungs. Mixing fresh air with it will prolong his career more or
less, but it's only a question of time when he shall give up the ghost
if he attempts to subsist on anything less simple and pure in the way
of respiration than the out-door atmosphere. That's bad enough in some
places. What I don't know and want you to tell me, is how to keep
cool in summer, warm in winter, and at the same time have all the
fresh air we can possibly consume. I know how to keep warm: build a
tight room, keep it shut up, set a box stove in the middle of it, and
blaze away. A ton of anthracite or a cord of hickory will keep you
warm all winter, especially if you die before spring, as you probably
will. I know how to have fresh air too: open the windows and let it
blow; but unless a man lives down in a coalmine he can't well afford
to keep warm under such circumstances.
I believe this question is the chief concern of builders here below,
and whoever invents an economical solution of it will not only make a
fortune, but he'll deserve one. Why don't you go for it?
Yours,
JOHN
LETTER XXXVIII.
From the Architect.
WHEN THE DOCTORS DIFFER.
DEAR JOHN: Your economical reasons for using shingles would justify
cheap jewelry and rag carpets. Try to be consistent. I should object
to slate on a log-barn or shingles on a stone-house. I hope you
furnished your honest carpenter with a stout jack-knife, and required
him not only to lay the shingles right side up, but to lay the upper
ends close together, leaving them apart at the butt. Gutters are
troublesome truly, but often indispensable; there is no resource but
to have them thoroughly made. Poor ones are worse than none. Those
that hang independently of the cornice are safest for cheaper
buildings, but should be treated as an essential feature; that is, you
should not complete the cornice without a gutter and afterwards
disfigure it by a sloping spout having no apparent kinship to the rest
of the finish.
The problem of warming and ventilating is easily solved for those who
desire its solution sufficiently to make the necessary appropriations.
One quarter of what is commonly spent for vanity and deceit will be
ample. Most men and women, at least the unthinking, prefer fashionable
show rather than health! A fearful statement, but sadly true. There is
doubtless more danger from impure air than from cold. Our senses warn
us quickly of the latter; the prompting of knowledge is needed to
guard us against the former,--of a practical knowledge unfortunately
rare. Men, women, and children are dying daily through ignorance and
indifference on this subject. There is hardly a school-house to be
found in which the murder of the innocents is not continually
rehearsed, hardly a church in which the spiritual elevation resulting
from attendance therein is not counterbalanced by an equal physical
depression, and rarely a hall or lecture-room wherein an audience can
even listen to a physiological discourse on the fatal effects of
impure air without experimentally knowing that they are listening to
solemn truth; while as to the dwelling-houses, the homes of the dear
people, it requires no bloodhound's scent to distinguish them one from
another! The moment the front door is opened to me, I am assailed by
the odor peculiar to the establishment. It may be tuberoses or garlic,
mould or varnish, whitewash, gas, lamp-smoke, or new carpets, a
definite and describable or an indefinite and indescribable fragrance,
but it is sure to be something besides pure fresh air.
[Illustration: SHINGLING.]
Let me give you first a suggestion for summer ventilation. Did you
ever shingle the south side of a barn on a calm, hot, sunny day in
July, thermometer at ninety degrees in the shade? Did you ever lay
your hand on a black slate or tin roof exposed to the direct rays of a
midsummer sun? Have you ever, at the close of some hot, labor-spent
day in August, sat out of doors until the evening air became
deliciously cool, and then climbed to your attic dormitory, there to
spend a sleepless night in perspiration and despair, anathematizing
the man who built and the fate which compelled you to occupy such a
chamber of torment?
Now, there is no good reason why the rooms immediately under the roof
of a house should be any more uncomfortable on account of heat than
those of the first story. Nay, more, by the simplest application of
common-sense, these upper rooms may be so coolly ventilated that the
hotter the sun pours his rays upon the roof the more salubrious shall
be your palace in the sky. And this I call a triumph of genius, making
the seemingly destructive wrath of the elements to serve and save us.
M. Figuier tells us with just how many hundred thousand horse-power
the sun, by the caloric of its beams, operates upon the surface of the
earth. I cannot tell precisely how much force is spent upon the roofs
of the houses that cover so much of the good mother's bosom in certain
localities, but I know that it is wonderfully great, and that rightly
controlled it will make the space immediately under these roofs cool
instead of hot.
And this is the way to cause the heat of a burning sun to cool the
attic chamber: Make the space between the rafters on the sunny sides
of your building as smooth and unobstructed as possible. Arrange
openings into the outer air at the lower end of each, simple or
complex, according to your taste and ability. Provide also means for
closing the same in cold weather. Be sure that these spaces, or flues,
are enclosed either by lath and plaster, or by smooth boards, quite to
the highest part of the roof, whether your rooms are finished to the
top or not,--and provided with an abundant outlet at the top. This may
also be as simple as the dorsal breathing-holes of a tobacco barn,
gorgeously imposing as an Oriental pinnacle, or it may be a part of
the chimney; only let it be at the very summit, ample, and so arranged
that an adverse wind shall not prevent the egress of the rising
currents of air. Mind this, too; it is by no means the same thing to
let these flues open into a loft over the attic rooms, with windows in
gables or other outlet.
Now, do you not see that as soon as the sun has warmed the flues,
there will be a stiff breeze blowing, not over the roof, but really
between the roof and the house, and the hotter the sun the stiffer the
breeze; in the words of one who has tried it,--"a perfect hurricane."
That is, the lath and plaster, or sheathing, which forms the inner
roof, is shaded by a canopy of slate, shingles, or tin, and fanned by
a constant breeze as cool at least as the outer air. But we can do
vastly better than that. Instead of opening the lower ends of these
flues to the outer air, they may be extended wherever the needs of the
house require, or its construction will allow.
Let me remind you, under the head of general principles, that there is
no such thing as "suction." Of course, you know it when you stop to
think, but bear it in mind, and wherever the motive-power seems to be
applied on which you rely to lift the column of air, remember that if
raised at all it must be raised from the bottom. Maybe you will
discover room for a moral here.
This summer ventilation is simple enough, and relates rather to
comfort than to health. The great question in building, for New
England and similar climates, is, indeed, how to keep our houses warm,
and, without great expenditure of fuel, have a constant change of air.
As you suggest, we have learned that wood costs eight or ten dollars a
cord instead of the mere labor of cutting and hauling; hence we have
shut the mouths of the old-time fireplaces, mouths that it would cost
a fortune to feed. We find the value of building-timber increasing
every year; so we make thinner walls, lined outside and inside with
paper, and have cold houses, no fresh air, anthracite coal, and
disease. Our grandfathers carried foot-stoves to church, where they
sat and shivered, sometimes with the cold, sometimes at the doctrines.
We have warm air and stale. Let us hope our children will have warmth
and freshness for body and soul. They, in their homes, had big
fireplaces, loose doors, rattling windows, cracks in the walls, and as
they lay in bed looked at the stars through the chinks in the roof, or
felt the snow blow on their cheeks which were ruddy with health and
vigor. We have cylinder stoves, double windows, tight walls plastered
and papered, and pale faces.
[Illustration: GOOD OLD TIMES.]
Yet we build and furnish more wisely than our ancestors. They
ventilated because they couldn't help it, couldn't afford to build as
we do, and could afford to burn an acre of woodland every year.
It is no light task you have set me preliminary to an honorable
discharge. Next to theology and government finance there is no subject
on which the doctors differ and dogmatize as in this matter of warming
and ventilating, most of them preferring that the universe should
suffocate rather than their pet theories and furnaces be found
wanting. (I'm not speaking of the theologians.)
Let me restate a few general principles, simple and obvious, yet so
important that we must not risk forgetting them. Air runs away with
heat fast enough if allowed to move. Confined it is a more effectual
barrier than granite walls and plates of steel. Hence the spaces in
the wall should not extend its whole height unless for local
ventilation. Cut them off surely at each floor, and as much oftener as
you please; also make the floors tight and warm. Deafen with mortar if
you can afford it, and do not allow the open spaces between the
floor-timbers to extend unbroken through the house, or fail to close
them between the rafters when the ceiling of the highest story is
above the plates. If you wish to warm the entire house, it will be
good economy to lath and plaster along the under side of the rafters
quite to the ridgepole. Finally put on your double windows, and you
are ready for winter quarters.
In theory, the house being once warmed, the temperature within should
scarcely change, even if the fire goes out. Practically, the walls
cannot hold this subtile caloric, however scientifically they are
padded. There will be crevices, too, though the prince of joiners
builds your house, through which the warm air will escape. But
replenishing this inevitable loss would be a small matter, if the
breath of life were a needless luxury. Unless, however, we are willing
to suck poison into our veins with every breath we draw, slow but
sure,--poison expired from our lungs and emanating from our bodies,
poisonous gases liberated by the combustion of fuel, poison dust and
decay from the waste of inorganic material,--we must have a
never-ceasing supply of fresh air around us everywhere and always. Now
this incoming fluid, cold as ice, eats fuel like a hungry giant, yet
we must receive it with open arms, and, as soon as fairly warmed, send
it off through the ventilating flue, bearing whatever noxious
elements may chance to be afloat, and, of course, much of the warmth
we love and buy so dearly. We have then to supply these three sources
of loss. Obviously for economy the two former must be prevented to the
utmost, the latter rigidly controlled.
Thus far, except the old fogies who don't believe in ventilation, we
can all travel together harmoniously. Now our way divides, the doctors
begin to differ, and the patients begin to die.
The first fork is at the two modes of warming, direct and indirect.
The former includes stoves of all sorts,--sheet or cast iron,
porcelain, soapstone, brick or pottery, box or cylinder, for wood or
coal, air-tight, Franklin, "cannon," or base-burner, parlor cook or
kitchen cook, charcoal basin, warming-pan or foot-stove,--anything in
which you can build a fire. It includes open grates and fireplaces,
ancient or modern, large or small; it includes steam-pipes, hot-water
pipes, and stove-pipes; and last, but not least, steam-radiators, than
which it has never entered into the heart of man to conceive anything
more surprising and unaccountable,--flat, pin-cushiony things, big as
a bedquilt, dangerous-looking hedgehoggy affairs, some huge and
bungling, others frail and leaky, but radiators still. In brief, the
heating apparatus, whatever it may be, stands in the room to be
warmed.
By the indirect mode it is enclosed in a chamber more or less remote,
commonly called a furnace, and made of brick, sheet-iron, or wood
lined with tin. Into this chamber cold air is admitted from some
source, and escapes by its own levity, usually through tin pipes, to
the rooms where the heat is needed. Sometimes it is driven out by
mechanical means.
The advocates of the latter indirect mode claim for it many
advantages. It is apparently clean. There are no ashes to be taken
up, no hearths to sweep, no andirons to polish, no stoves to black.
One fire will warm the entire house if well arranged, and, for a trump
card, there may be a supply of fresh air straight from the north pole,
but agreeably warmed, constantly entering the room.
The objections are less numerous but more weighty. The liability to
imperfect construction and careless management often makes a furnace,
especially a cast-iron one, a savor of death unto death rather than of
health and comfort; also, when we are warmed by air thrown into a room
at a high temperature, and dry at that, a greater degree of heat is
necessary for comfort than if our bodies and clothing absorb heat from
a radiating surface. The furnace, in short, compels us to breathe an
atmosphere highly rarefied. We have the most careful and competent
authority for believing this to be gravely injurious.
Direct radiation from stoves, or other heating apparatus, except open
fireplaces, is, moreover, economical of fuel, but, on the other hand,
unless abundant ventilation is provided, the atmosphere in rooms thus
warmed soon becomes unfit for respiration.
Now you may stop and think. Next time you shall have the conclusion of
the whole matter.
LETTER XXXIX.
From John.
HOW TO DO IT.
MY DEAR ARCHITECT: I'm in a hurry. Let me ask you a few square
questions. Give me square answers if you can; if not, say so. What
kind of a furnace shall I get? I've interviewed about a dozen; each
one is warranted to give more heat, burn less coal, leak less gas,
give less trouble and more satisfaction, than all the others put
together. I suppose you object to cast-iron, because it's liable to be
heated red-hot and burn the air.
Is wrought-iron any better?
Shall I put the registers in the floors or in the partitions?
What do you say to steam?
How shall I ventilate?
Will it answer to have the ventilating flues in the outer walls?
There seems to be no doubt that the foul air should be drawn from the
bottom of a room; but if it's cold, how am I to get it to the
ventilator on the top of the house? If a room is as tight as a
fruit-can, a chimney might draw like a yoke of oxen without doing any
good, and Nebuchadnezzar's furnace wouldn't drive air into it unless,
in both cases, the inlets and outlets were about equal! When I go to
sleep in such a room I want to be sure the dampers won't get
accidentally shut.
Give me your opinion on these points, but don't make a long story or a
tough one. If a house is to be kept warm from turret to
foundation-stone, I don't see that shutting up the spaces between the
timbers would amount to much, except to stop sounds from echoing
through them; but when the attic is as cold as out-doors, it's plain
that the cold air will be always crawling down next the inside
plastering of every room in the house if it finds a chance.
Yours,
JOHN.
LETTER XL.
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.