An open fire-place in the hall and all principal rooms makes, in connection with hot-air heating, the most comfortable and pleasant arrangement for withdrawing fouled air from the room. With the air of the room introduced at a warm temperature, the radiant heat from the fire-place is particularly invigorating and comforting. We all love to gather around a cheerful, glowing fire on the hearth of a cosy home, and exchange pleasant thoughts or dream away twilight hours in looking at the flickering light.
If fire-places are not available for ventilation, outlets must be provided into warm, ventilating flues, arranged parallel to smoke-flues in chimneys. Chimney flues should preferably not be built against outside walls, for they are not apt to draw well in such position, unless a special air space is arranged in the rear of the flue to prevent its too rapid cooling. Ventilating flues must be without sharp angles, smooth on the inside and preferably round in section. If they remove the air from a number of rooms, their cross-section must be proportionately increased. Bedrooms should never be heated by base burner stoves, but should have a fire-place acting at all times as an efficient foul-air flue. Halls must be moderately heated to avoid cold drafts through door-cracks, and to insure a more uniform heat throughout the dwelling. Bathrooms and kitchens must be ventilated with special care.
Ventilation or change of air in dwellings must go on at all seasons of the year. It aims at removing the vitiated air in a dwelling and introducing a sufficient amount of pure air, moderately heated in winter time, supplied with a proper amount of moisture, and thoroughly and uniformly diffusing it in the house interior in gentle currents, without causing undue drafts. Drafts are dangerous to health, because they rob the human body too suddenly of a part of its heat. In summer-time ventilation is happily and easily accomplished by opening doors or windows, and by occasional “air-flushing” by creating cross-currents through rooms. Fire-places should not be covered up in summer by fire-boards. In winter-time ventilation should always be combined with heating.
In the spring or fall of the year we often content ourselves with a small wood or coal fire on the hearth, and in such a case the easiest way to provide for incoming fresh air is by admitting air through the windows, directing the cold current to rise up to the ceiling. This may be done by lowering the upper sash and raising the lower one slightly, not enough to leave openings at top and bottom. A better way is, of course, to have a ventilating open fire-place, such as the “fire-on-the-hearth” stove, or other apparatus.
The so-called spontaneous or accidental ventilation by air penetrating walls cannot, practically, establish a sufficient change of air. Its effect is very much reduced by papering, painting, plastering on the inside, and by treating the outside walls by some water-proof process, as is frequently done, as a protection against driving rains.
For details on ventilation, amount of cubic space in rooms, amount of air-supply required, proper position of inlets and outlets, and other questions, we refer to larger hand-books on ventilation.
