The stack flues are only, in fact, tall-boys boxed up and not put out in the cold, and it is presumed they would be sufficiently powerful, from their warmth, to ensure a good passing off of the smoke, and secure ventilation to the building.
| Fig. 16. | Fig. 17. |
A forced ventilation to our dwellings, in ever so slight a degree, is a matter of importance. By the proper construction of these proposed stack flues it is presumed that any amount of ventilating power, self-acting and continuous, could be obtained. Their introduction alone would be beneficial; combined with the flue pedestal, to be described, the tubes could be led into one general upward shaft; by either plan we should have some command over the smoke, while the roofs of our buildings might be made ornamental and picturesque. It would be a treatment of bituminous coal alike artistic and novel, surprising to foreigners and creditable to ourselves.
Fig. 18.
It remains to show how the open character of the flue could be taken away (this forms its chief evil), and how a chimney-stack may be formed without chimney-pots. The late Lord Palmerston, when Home Secretary, proposed the abolition of chimney-stacks, and the use of only one chimney-stalk for each separate dwelling. In 1856, a commission was appointed to inquire into the best modes of warming and ventilating the apartments of dwelling-houses and barracks. Their report, given to the General Board of Health, was published in 1857, and it afforded a section illustrating “the principle on which it was proposed to construct dwelling-houses.” There was only to be
Fig. 19.
one flue, and this of metal 10 inches in diameter, enclosed in a large brick flue, which was to serve for ventilation. In the metal flue were to be inserted the flues of the several fireplaces; these were placed back to back, and if the register doors of the stoves were open, a person in one room might both see and converse with another in the next; the music of a pianoforte in one room could be heard in them all; this construction was taken up through four storeys, there being eight fireplaces. For one fireplace alone it would have been perfect, but the smoke from the two kitchen fires would have been sufficient to have choked