The Englishman's House: A Practical Guide for Selecting and Building a House

by C. J. Richardson

Plan of one-pair.

d d. These are entered direct from the gallery; in the front of the building are five smaller sleeping

Cross section.

rooms. At the conservatory end the gallery opens on to the roof of the ante-room beneath, and from this there is an entrance to a circular gallery inside the conservatory. On the servants’ side are seen two large sleeping rooms, and a housemaid’s closet; as this portion of the building is kept lower than the other, it could have two or three rooms constructed over the kitchen, or it could be carried up another story. The plan of the principal bedchambers is taken up another floor; the small staircase for this purpose is seen at the end of the gallery.

The cross section (page 347) shows the height of the building, and its general construction. The whole of the principal living rooms in the three floors are of the same height, 16 ft. 6 in. each; 37 steps were required in the principal staircase to ascend to the first floor on one side, and 31 on the other; the roof of the saloon was to be constructed similar to the roof of the Riding-house shown in plate, page 389. Large roofs can be constructed on this principle at a very cheap rate, and it is a very strong and efficient one; the roof of the Pantheon in Oxford-street, constructed by Mr. Sydney Smirke, is of a similar kind; the roofs of the annexes to the Exhibition building of 1862 by Captain Fowkes were on the same principle, but as these were only intended to stand for a year, were very slight. The cross section shows the ventilating flue, proposed and illustrated in a following chapter; the small stack in the low building shows the incline necessary to meet the back eddy of wind from the high building. It would have been better, could it have been effected, to have placed the stack in a position parallel to the high building, and not at right angles to it. The stack on the latter shows two ventilating flues, each with an upward shaft; the whole of the smoke from the fireplaces would be delivered from these two shafts.

It only remains to illustrate the system of warming proposed to have been introduced. This was by a combination of two entirely different systems of warm water circulation through iron pipes.

The various apparatus of warming buildings by the circulation of hot water, may be roughly stated to be of two kinds, each acting on the opposite principle to the other. The first, or more modern one, is the closed system. This has always been preferred by the author, it being more conveniently introduced into a building, less expensive, and giving less trouble than any other, and more certain in its action. In it the water circulates with great rapidity, completely under pressure, the pipes being closed, and the whole of the air expelled from them. The older system is that in which the tubes are not closed, but are connected with a cistern, into which the water is allowed to flow and re-flow; the two may very properly be called the high and low temperature systems, and by these terms they are here designated. With the first, the tubes can be made to reach a higher degree of heat if necessary, by placing a larger proportion of them than is usual in the furnace; but with the second, a temperature of 180 degrees can alone be reached. With the latter, its greater or less efficiency depends upon the position of its open cistern, which regulates the amount of pressure in the tubes, according as its situation is high or low. It was introduced into this country about 1818; the open cistern was placed in the upper part of the house, the boiler being below in the kitchen, thus allowing a considerable pressure in the tubes, and securing a quick circulation of the water. The high temperature system was introduced by A. M. Perkins, Esq., about the year 1832; in its simplest form it consisted of a continuous or endless tube of wrought iron of one inch external diameter, filled with water, and closed in all parts; a portion of the tubing was formed into a coil and placed in a furnace of wrought iron, the fire being enclosed in fire-brick. When it was first introduced a larger amount of tubing was placed in the furnace than is now usually done; with the proper amount, one-tenth or one-eleventh only of the full quantity is necessary, and then it must be obvious that no overheating of the tubes can take place. In practice it is more usual to find objections made to the apparatus not giving sufficient heat, than to its giving too much. The quantity of feet in pipes necessary to raise rooms of a certain size to a given temperature, must be proportioned to their cubical contents, and this depends equally on the situation and aspect of the building, the number of doors, and windows or skylights; no rule can consequently be given which would be applicable to all places with any degree of certainty.

The pipes being only five-eighths of an inch internal diameter, a very small quantity of water is required to fill the apparatus. A tube called the expansion tube is placed above the highest level of the circulating pipes, and is generally of larger diameter. The object of this tube is to allow for the expansion of the water as it becomes heated; a tube is also placed at the highest level, in order to fill the apparatus, so as to leave the expansion tube empty.