In private houses, the fittest places for warm baths are dressing-rooms annexed to the principal bed-rooms; or, where such convenience cannot be obtained, a separate bath-room, connected with the dressing-room, and always upon the bed-room floor. All newly-built houses should be properly arranged for this purpose, and due attention should be paid to the warming of the bath-room, which ought also to be properly ventilated. A temperature of 70° may be easily kept up in it, and sufficient ventilation is absolutely requisite, to prevent the deposition of moisture upon the walls and furniture.
The objection which formerly prevailed, in respect to the difficulty of obtaining adequate supplies of water, in the upper rooms, has been entirely obviated, by having cisterns at or near the top of the house; and we would just hint that these should be so contrived, as to be placed out of the reach of frost; a provision of the utmost importance in every point of view, and very easily effected in a newly-built house, though it unfortunately happens, that architects usually regard these matters as trifles, and treat them with neglect, as indeed they do the warming and ventilation of buildings generally.
3. The supply of water of proper quality and quantity, is a very important point, as connected with the present subject. The water should be soft, clean, and pure; and as free as possible from all substances mechanically suspended in it. In many cases, it answers to dig a well for the exclusive supply of a large house with water. In most parts of London this may effectually be accomplished, at a comparatively moderate expense; and, if the well be deep enough, the water will be abundant, soft, and pellucid. The labour of forcing it by a pump to the top of the house, is the only drawback; this, however, is very easily done by a horse-engine, or there are people enough about town, glad to undertake it at a shilling a day. I am led to these remarks by observing the filthy state of the water usually supplied, at very extravagant rates, by the water companies. It often partakes more of the appearance of pea-soup than of the pure element; fills our cisterns and pipes with mud and dirt, and, even when cleared by subsidence, is extremely unpalatable. It deposits its nastiness in the pipes connected with warm baths, and throws down a slippery deposit upon the bottom of the vessel itself to such an extent, as often to preclude its being used, at least as a luxury, which a clear and clean bath really is. This inconvenience may, in some measure, be avoided, by suffering the water to throw down its extraneous matters upon the bottom of the cistern, and drawing our supplies from pipes a little above it; there will, however, always be more or less deposit in the pipes themselves; and every time the water runs into the cistern, the grouts are stirred up, and diffused through its mass: this, from some cause or other, has lately become an intolerable nuisance; and he who reflects upon the miscellaneous contents of Thames water, will not have his appetite sharpened by a draught of the Grand Junction beverage, nor feel reanimated and refreshed by bathing in a compound so heterogeneous and unsavoury.
4. and 5. In public bathing establishments, where numerous and constant baths are required, the simplest and most effective means of obtaining hot water for their supply consists in drawing it directly into the baths from a large boiler, placed somewhere above their level. This boiler should be supplied with proper feeding-pipes and gauges; and, above all things, its dimensions should be ample; it should be of wrought iron or copper, except where sea water is used, in which case the latter metal is sometimes objectionable. The hot water should enter the bath by a pipe at least an inch and a half in diameter; and the cold water by one of the same dimension, or somewhat larger, so that the bath may not be long in filling. The relative proportions of the hot and cold water are, of course, to be adjusted by a thermometer, and every bath should have a two-inch waste-pipe, opening about two inches from the top of the bath, and suffering the excess of water freely to run off; so that when a person is immersed in the bath, or when the supplies of water are accidentally left open, there may be no danger of an overflow.
Where there is a laundry in the upper story of the house, or other convenient place for erecting a copper and its appurtenances, a plan similar to the above may often be conveniently adopted in private houses, for the supply of a bath upon the principal bed-room floor. An attempt is sometimes made to place boilers behind the fires of dressing-rooms, or otherwise to erect them in the room itself, for the purpose of supplying warm water; but this plan is always objectionable, from the complexity of the means by which the supply of water is furnished to the boiler, and often dangerous from the flues becoming choaked with soot, and taking fire. Steam is also apt, in such cases, to escape in quantities into the room; so that it becomes necessary to search for other methods of heating the bath; one or two of the least objectionable of which I shall describe.
1. A contrivance of some ingenuity consists in suffering the water for the supply of the bath to flow from a cistern above it, through a leaden pipe of about one inch diameter, which is conducted into the kitchen or other convenient place where a large boiler for the supply of hot water is required. The bath-pipe is immersed in this boiler, in which it makes many convolutions, and, again emerging, ascends to the bath. The operation is simply this:—the cold water passing through the convolutions of that part of the pipe which is immersed in the boiling water, receives there sufficient heat for the purpose required, and is delivered in that state by the ascending pipe into the bath, which is also supplied with cold water and waste-pipes as usual. The pipe may be of lead, as far as the descending and ascending parts are concerned, but the portion forming the worm, or convolutions immersed in the boiler should be copper, in order that the water within it may receive heat without impediment.
This plan is economical only where a large boiler is constantly kept at work in the lower part of the house; otherwise, the trouble and expense of heating such a boiler, for the mere purpose of the bath, render it unavailable. The worm-pipe is also apt to become furred, upon the outside, by the deposition of the earthy impurities of the water in which it is immersed; it then becomes a bad conductor of heat, is cleansed with difficulty, and the plan is rendered ineffective. This system, however, has been adopted, in some particular cases, with satisfaction.
2. A much more simple, economical, and independent mode of heating a warm bath, by a fire placed at a distance from it, is the following, which is found to answer perfectly in private houses, as well as upon a more extended scale in large establishments. It is certainly open to some objections, but these are overbalanced by its advantages. A waggon-shaped boiler, holding about six gallons of water, is properly placed over a small furnace, in any convenient and safe part of the house, as the kitchen, scullery, servants’ hall, or wash-house. The bath itself, of the usual dimensions and construction, is placed where it is wanted, with a due supply of cold water from above. Two pipes issue from within an inch of the bottom of the bath at its opposite extremities; one at the head of the bath, about one inch, and the other at the foot, an inch and one eighth in diameter. These tubes descend to the boiler, the smaller one entering it at the bottom, and the larger one issuing from its top.
Under these circumstances, supposing the pipes and boiler every where perfectly tight, when the bath is filled, the water will descend into and expel the air from the boiler, and completely fill it. Now, upon making a gentle fire under the boiler, an ascending current of warm water will necessarily pass upwards through the larger pipe which issues from its top, and cold water will descend by the pipe which enters at the bottom; and thus, by the establishment of currents, the whole mass of water in the bath will become heated to the desired point; or, if above it, the temperature may easily be lowered by the admixture of cold water.
The advantages of this form of bath are numerous. The shorter the pipes of communication the better, but they may extend forty or fifty feet without any inconvenience beyond that of expense; so that there is no obstacle to the bath being near the bed-room while the boiler is on the basement story. There is but little time required for heating the bath; the water in which may, if requisite, be raised to about 100° in about half an hour from the time of lighting the fire. The consumption of fuel is also trifling.