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

by C. J. Richardson

Certainly coal smoke is a great nuisance; it is yearly pointed out as such by our paper the Times, in one, probably two, very excellently written leaders. Even the youngest member of the press, the Echo, in one of the common London fogs occurring in April, 1868, thus remarks: “The most sad and remarkable circumstance about the fog of yesterday was that the newspapers and people in the streets spoke of it as a ‘visitation,’ as a ‘gigantic pall,’ as if, indeed, the black darkness was something as strange and unaccountable as a fall of frogs or fishes from the sky. Of course it was nothing but our own familiar coal smoke which stopped the way of the sunlight. It is most lamentable that Londoners are becoming so used to this filthy nuisance that nothing more than a passing exclamation is uttered when it is forced down upon them in such volumes as to produce almost the darkness of midnight at midday. If ‘cleanliness is next to godliness,’ then the people of London must have been yesterday the most ungodly people in the world, for nothing would remain clean which was exposed to the fog of that morning. A plague of locusts would not create more terror and sense of ruin in any foreign capital, where every article of dress and furniture and house decoration, both external and internal, would have been regarded as spoiled by the loss of freshness. But London received its coat of dirt yesterday, and to-day only wonders with the remark ‘how dark it was!’ Will nothing move us to abate the nuisance? Is there no hope but that distant one of the exhaustion of our coal-beds? Must we inhale coal-blacks, and always contemplate dirty houses and grimy furniture? Is it not possible by smoke sewers, or some contrivance or machinery, to relieve us of this plague?” It is very possible it could be done with the greatest ease, but at some first expense; and in some generation or other it will be written that it found London foul and left it sweet, and there will be a time when this will be appreciated; and the man who gives the city the pure atmosphere of a small country town will receive all due honour and acknowledgment, that is, when he is in his grave and securely buried.

The public have so long been accustomed to be choked with smoke, and their health affected by deleterious gases, that they look upon the proposal of any scheme to secure pure air as the hallucinations of dreamy philosophers or inexperienced Utopians.

None of our present flues can, in the very slightest degree, stop these aqueous vapours from ascending into the atmosphere, neither can they effect any purification of the smoke, or retain the blacks for any useful purpose; and it is of no use disguising the fact that any contrivance or appliance, to effect either of these most desirable objects, must consist of an additional construction to the flue, which will be attended with additional expense, and require extra attention. Therefore any such appliance, if introduced, should be effectual, and repay such additional cost to its owner, by a saving, or at least a more economical use of fuel.

The appliance to the flue the author has to recommend, he considers will not only cause an economical use of the fuel by not permitting the present waste of heat, but it will purify the smoke, and retain the blacks for any useful object to which they can be applied.

The principle of the best-constructed flue at present is to get rid of all vapour, smoke, and soot as soon as possible, without the slightest consideration for the people outside. That the smoke should not return to annoy the occupants within the house is the aim of the constructors, and to secure this, the waste of heat in the chimney, and the consequent waste of fuel, is considered of no importance, for is it not the hot smoke that carries up the soot and ventilates the apartment?

This operation of the flue could be taken advantage of. In the construction of chimney-flues in a wall they are often turned at an angle to the right or left to pass an obstruction, such as a fireplace or timber placed within or against the wall. A flue could easily be taken out of the wall and returned, and if the part so taken out was formed in cast iron with a small cistern of water at top, it would become a warm-water pedestal, and could moderately warm or air an apartment in which it was placed; the author calls this the flue pedestal, and it is represented in the following cut.

Fig. 24.—The flue pedestal.

It is about three feet six in height, not much higher than a small cabinet. The door could open, and a small tap supplying warm water for domestic use would be seen. Thus the upper rooms of a house could be warmed or aired by the fires below in perfect safety, and the present waste of heat in the flues prevented. This would be economical, as in most cases no fires would be necessary in the upper rooms.

The flue thus brought out in iron could contain a fine spray of water, that would draw up the smoke, and take down its vapours and soot at the same time into the sewer.