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

by C. J. Richardson

As regards the low temperature apparatus, if the large pipes belonging to it are laid in sufficient quantity, they doubtless have the effect of producing a moderate degree of heat.

The best way of introducing them into a dwelling-house is to sink them in channels in the floor, with perforated ironwork over them: they are more usually introduced into hothouses, factories, and workshops, where their appearance is not objectionable. A feeling exists in favour of their use in conservatories; in order to show how they can be retained for that purpose, the combined systems are introduced in the plan of the villa here described.

The ground plan shows the entrance hall, the gallery or sculpture saloon in the centre, the principal staircase, the picture room and the servants’ staircase, all warmed by the inch pipes; the larger pipes are introduced into the conservatory. In the picture room—that between the drawing-room and the dining-room—and in the hall, the pipes are sunk in trenches in the floor. They are close to the walls, and lined with brick with an inside covering of zinc. These trenches have over them perforated ornamental ironwork; a´ a´ are pedestals containing coils of pipe; b´ b´ are pipes behind the skirting, likewise perforated. Where these pipes pass the doorways they are sunk in the floor. In the conservatory d´ d´ are the large pipes; f is an open cistern, through which the circulation of water in the pipes flows; at g are placed the expansion and filling tubes.

Fig. 2 is an isometrical view of the pipes, furnace, and cisterns complete to a small scale; e is the furnace placed in the basement; f is a cistern of cold water through which the flow and return pipes from the furnace pass: the water becoming heated in the cistern flows out, and returns in the direction shown by the arrows. The flow pipe, leaving this cistern, passes up to the expansion tube g, whence the tubes run through the building in the manner shown, returning to the furnace. The pipes d, are two other flow and return pipes, furnished with a stop-cock, by means of which the circulation can be confined either to the house or to the conservatory. The furnace

Fig. 2.

should in reality contain two coils of pipe, having two flows and two returns, the whole of which should go through the cistern f, but the small scale of the plate allows one circulation only to be shown.

Dr. Arnott’s principle of nearly equalizing temperatures was applied by him for room ventilation. Its mode of application is explained in the following extract from his report on “Warming and Ventilating Infirmaries, Workhouses, Factories, and Domestic Apartments,” given in the appendix to the Second Annual Report of the Poor Law Commissioners:—“In rooms where the mechanical mode of ventilation already described (by means of fanners) and now common in factories, has been adopted, an addition might be made to the apparatus for extracting the impure air, which would drive fresh air in, and which, by causing the two currents to pass each other in contact for a certain distance in very thin metallic tubes, would cause the fresh air entering to absorb nearly the whole heat from the impure air going out, and would thus render it at once both pure and warm, and would consequently save, after the room was once warmed, any further expense of fuel for the day, and would avoid, how rapid soever the ventilation, all the danger from draught and unequal heating.”

The above idea is extremely ingenious, but as to its practical efficiency, some doubt might be expressed. The temperature of a warm room, even if it was 65°, would be much too low to produce the action described.

A very ingenious application of the small-tube system of warming has been introduced into his dwelling by Mr. Babbage. He placed the furnace in the basement, and divided the whole length of piping by means of a multiple cock into four circulations, any one of which he could turn off or on at pleasure; one circulation warmed the bath, which, when the cistern that supplied it was once up to 160 degrees (and this it took an hour to obtain), remained sufficiently warm for a bath during 24 hours. The whole quantity of pipe in the building was 891 feet, and the quantity in the furnace 135. The thermometer in the smoke-flue was seldom higher than 212 degrees, when that in the flow-pipe was 240 degrees. Any two or three, or all four of the circulations could be worked together, by simply turning an index provided for the purpose.