AIR AND ITS ENTRANCE AND EXIT
“Am I an _airess_?” not _heiress_, ought to be the question to ask
yourself if you are really a responsible home manager. It seems strange
that with all the air to be had for the asking you let it pass you by,
content with whatever draughts and gusts filter through the cracks and
crevices of your house.
Now it so happens that although air is to be had for the asking, you
have to woo it if you want it. But it pays. Keep the air about you in
good condition and you and all those of your household will soon find
yourselves approaching the 100% efficiency ideal.
Business has found this out already. Do you know of any factory, good
school, bank or department store, where there is not installed some sort
of ventilation apparatus including weather strips as well? Of course
not. Why? Because fresh air keeps costs down and keeps health up. On
this relation of health and output, efficiency depends.
Does it not flash into your mind now that if housewives thought more of
home ventilation and especially kitchen ventilation, you might have
improved service, better tempered cooks, and more satisfactory life in
general?
Of late there are cults of out-door fiends. All kinds of
cold-attracting, pneumonia-coddling out-door fanatics, who try to tell
you it is good to sleep in draughts, to have cold feet, and the like.
Their advice is wrong. The thing to do is not to subject yourself to
the rigours of cold, but to approximate, in your warm, comfortable
rooms, the sweet clean purity of out of doors. And this is easy to do by
proper ventilation.
Ventilation can render air even better than the outdoor variety by
purifying it of dust and by supplying it with the right amount of
moisture and motion.
For the ordinary home the great air conditioners and ozonators, which
are installed in institutions and factories, are unnecessary, so we will
not consider them. The best, simplest and least expensive ventilating
system for the home is the system regulated by fans and blowers, and to
this method we will introduce ourselves.
Now, it is conceded by ventilating and heating engineers that the air,
to be healthful, must be in ceaseless motion, and it must be renewed
constantly and evenly. In other words, it doesn’t make much difference
if the air is burdened with carbon dioxide gas which we exhale from our
lungs, as it does if the air is stationary. Hence the use of air
agitators such as fans, etc. The theory is that, as the pores of our
skin exude moisture, the body is comforted and cooled by its evaporation
which is effected more readily by constantly moving air. Moving air,
however, does not mean a draught.
In the ideally warmed house, the doors and windows are nicely placed so
that the warm air gracefully exits from the top of the room and the cold
air comes in from the lower parts of the room (such as lower windows or
well-placed air takers.) Thus, the air is moving nicely without the
least draught.
So it will in the use of the fan and blower types of apparatus on the
market. But before we go on to describe them, it will be well for us to
review some of the reasons why humans need special air treatments.
It is said by scientists that:
A Woman exhales 600 cubic feet of carbon dioxide per hour.
A Young Man exhales 614
A Young Woman “ 453
A Boy “ 363
A Girl “ 343
Whereas women don’t breathe so much of what is noxious yet they have to
look after their men folk! But joking aside, doesn’t this impress you
with the foolishness of inhaling so much vitiated air when the supply
can be renewed so easily with fresh air? Also when you realize that
humans give off 1000 grams of water vapor under normal conditions per
hour, and emit 350 British Thermal Units per hour. (A B. T. U. is the
amount of heat which will raise 1 pound of water 1° Fahrenheit or from
32° thru 33° of heat--at normal, not heavy work.)
Another authority says that air should be renewed per hour:
10 times for public toilet rooms.
6 “ “ clothes lockers.
4 “ “ small meeting rooms.
5 “ “ public offices.
4 “ “ ball rooms.
15 “ “ kitchens.
20 “ “ laundries.
3 “ “ libraries.
The average air change in the average room is one to two times per hour.
In the well-built house it is two to three--due to fire-places, windows,
doors, etc.
Of course there are other opinions, but this data gives you an idea of
the necessity of changing old for new air.
[Illustration:
_Courtesy of Ilg Electric Ventilating Co._
SHE IS COOL EVEN IN SUMMER WITH MOVING AIR]
GOOD VENTILATION
The requisites then for good ventilation are:
1. Equable temperature from about 60 to 65 degrees Fahrenheit, and the
moderate relative humidity or moisture of 45 to 65 per cent. In order
to keep the room moist in winter it is well to keep a pan of water on
the radiator. Regular humidifyers can be bought for this purpose.
2. Clear air, free from impurities such as dust, insects, oily vapors,
soot, etc.
3. Odorless air (you have been sickened by the use even of the most
costly of perfumes!) free from gases and vapors.
4. Air motion; but the motion must be accomplished without those
objectionable blasts of wind that so frequently startle you in some
houses which are supposed to have the most up to date equipment. The
weather strip is insurance against the gale.
Air isn’t a mysterious chemical combination. It is a mechanical mixture
of 21 parts nitrogen, 79 parts of oxygen, from 0 to 4% of moisture, and
usually 4 parts of carbon dioxide gas per 10,000 parts of air, so it
need not distress you to effect a good clean supply of air and equip
your house with some of the steadily improving devices now on the
market.
SOME DEVICES
Any device to be useful to the home must, of course, be convenient,
economical, safe to operate, and durable.
Well, let’s begin with the kitchen; for this ventilation is more
necessary than any place else in the house.
Not only is it difficult to keep the kitchen in equable temperature, but
to have it cool often means a draft, and a draft means a cold for the
cook, and a cold for the cook means danger to the whole household. Then
there are odors from the kitchen. These are continually getting loose,
unless the door of the kitchen is kept closed (which is trying) and
infecting the house prematurely with the taste of dinner. All of which
is uncomfortable and gives the home a commonplace, tenementy atmosphere.
Your home may be judged by its laundry and cooking odors! The fewer, the
better. Did you ever think of that?
The cellar is another important room to keep well aired and should be
provided with windows and doors to formulate a current of air. Pantry
and laundry, too, should be built with ventilation in view in order
that, as in the kitchen, these rooms can be kept sweet and savory.
Without extra ventilation apparatus, you can take advantage of the
movement of air; as it cools, it falls and as this falls it is heated
and rises again--keeping up a rotary circulation:
1. Lower windows from top and bottom so that the warm air will go out
at the top and the cold air come in at bottom, starting the
circulation of air.
2. If not too draughty, have a door open opposite the windows, or use
a draught board or screen which can be easily placed on window sill to
curb current.
3. Cool moist air can be had often by hanging up a damp sheet and
re-wetting it as it dries.
4. Fireplaces with small or large fires in them cause air current.
5. In some rooms which have a grated air intake cut into the walls
near radiator--air circulation is effected easily.
6. Give the risen hot air a chance to get out of the top of room, and
give the cold air a chance to come in at the bottom of room--and keep
it agitated--this is about the best advice. If you can’t do this, call
in a ventilating and heating engineer--he will.
With the new type of ventilators, cookery odors, draughts, smoke, steamy
vapors, smudges collecting over walls, curtains, etc., are obviated
because they are all dissipated and sent flying to the big outdoors. Its
blowers blow out the bad air. The apparatus, which is simplicity itself
to operate, is attached to the ordinary lamp socket and placed in
effective places. The improved motors are encased and almost
frictionless in action, which means the minimum wear and tear and no
cost for repairs. Some of the motors are self cooled which also does
away with wear and hot boxes.
There are various kinds of fans which may be used. Those which change
their direction in process of revolution are good. Some think they are
better than the one-direction fan, and maybe, where the fan is used
alone without other attachments such as purifiers and blowers, this
style may be more efficient. It at least does the work more swiftly. But
whatever kind you use, they should be so placed as not to make draughts.
The steady movement of air is the only thing necessary, not hurricanes.
In the study it is necessary to have light and air and no draughts to
blow papers away. The ventilator (which may be put on the window sill
over the radiator thus obviating the uncertain winds coming crassly
through the open window) will prove a boon to the writer or housewife.
Oh, Homekeepers, it is often that these office devices which are always
employed where work is done, if installed at home, would keep your men
folk and even your women office workers happy. You would be surprised
how many people would come home to do after-hour work if the home were
as office-shape as business places. And the ventilator is a very good
point at which to start.
It is nice to think that along with ice cream, the steam boat, and other
American inventions, applied ventilation seems to be an almost pure
American product! So, you patriots, here is a way to build real air
castles that will build finer and finer things as you profit by the
stimulus which fresh air, more than any one commodity in the universe,
can give.
WEATHER STRIPS AS AID IN VENTILATION
No consideration of ventilation of houses could be complete without a
few words on the value of weather strips. It is strange too that this
precaution in the home is so little known and that the house-wife has so
little knowledge of their infinite good.
Disregarding them as a factor in the cleanliness and noiselessness of
the home, disregarding in this chapter the intriguing facts of their
manufacture and application, they are adjunct at their best in the home
because:
They reduce the possibilities of draughts and therefore reduce the
possibilities of colds and rheumatism and the like. See Chapter XXXIII.
They keep the temperature of all the rooms as even as it is possible
here below to keep anything even and therefore give the ventilating
régime a square chance to function well.
In keeping welcome air in and unwelcome air out, in so far as is
necessary, the reduction of fuel bills is enormous ... from 15 to 50%!
This to-day is a favorable asset when fuel is expensive.
With all the systems of ventilating in the world, if you have tornadoes
flying about your floors from the air you do not wish admitted, you
cannot have a properly or healthfully ventilated home.
In short, the weather strip makes it possible for you to have your say
as to the air that comes in and out and makes it possible for your
heating and ventilating systems to work as they should. The hit or miss
element in the home is again routed by the weatherstrip and anything
that does this is worth considering.