Not only are the fire-holes worthless and mischievous ventilators themselves, but they render efficient ventilation by any other means practically impossible. The “Arnott’s ventilator” that we sometimes see applied to the upper part of chimneys is marred in its action by the greedy “draught” below.
The tall chimney-shaft, with a fire burning immediately below it, dominates all the atmospheric movement in the house, unless another and more powerful upcast shaft be somewhere else in communication with the apartments. But in this case the original or ordinary chimney would be converted into a downcast shaft pouring air downwards into the room, instead of carrying it away upwards. I need not describe the sort of ventilation thus obtainable while the fire is burning and smoking.
Effective sanitary ventilation should supply gentle and uniformly-diffused currents of air of moderate and equal temperature throughout the house. We talk a great deal about the climate here and the climate there; and when we grow old, and can afford it, we move to Bournemouth, Torquay, Mentone, Nice, Algiers, etc., for better climates, forgetting all the while that the climate in which we practically live is not that out-of-doors, but the indoor climate of our dwellings, the which, in a properly constructed house, may be regulated to correspond to that of any latitude we may choose. I maintain that the very first step towards the best attainable approximation to this in our existing houses is to brick up, cement up, or otherwise completely stop up, all our existing fire-holes, and abolish all our existing fires.
But what next? The reply to this will be found in the next chapter.
DOMESTIC VENTILATION.
A Lesson from the Coal-Pits.
We require in our houses an artificial temperate climate which shall be uniform throughout, and at the same time we need a gentle movement of air that shall supply the requirements of respiration without any gusts, or draughts, or alternations of temperature. Everybody will admit that these are fundamental desiderata, but whoever does so becomes thereby a denouncer of open-grate fireplaces, and of every system of heating which is dependent on any kind of stoves with fuel burning in the rooms that are to be inhabited. All such devices concentrate the heat in one part of each room, and demand the admission of cold air from some other part or parts, thereby violating the primary condition of uniform temperature. The usual proceeding effects a specially outrageous violation of this, as I showed in the last chapter.
I might have added domestic cleanliness among the desiderata; but in the matter of fireplaces, the true-born Briton, in spite of his fastidiousness in respect to shirt-collars, etc., is a devoted worshiper of dirt. No matter how elegant his drawing-room, he must defile it with a coal-scuttle, with dirty coals, poker, shovel, and tongs, dirty ash-pit, dirty cinders, ashes, and dust, and he must amuse himself by doing the dirty work of a stoker towards his “cheerful, companionable, pokeable” open fire.
It is evident that, in order to completely fulfil the first-named requirements, we must, in winter, supply our model residence with fresh artificially-warmed air, and in summer with fresh cool air. How is this to be done? An approach to a practical solution is afforded by examining what is actually done under circumstances where the ventilation problem presents the greatest possible difficulties, and where, nevertheless, these difficulties have been effectually overcome. Such a case is presented by a deep coal mine. Here we have a little working world, inhabited by men and horses, deep in the bowels of the earth, far away from the air that must be supplied in sufficient quantities, not only to overcome the vitiation due to their own breathing, but also to sweep out the deadly gaseous emanations from the coal itself.
Imagine your dwelling-house buried a quarter of a mile of perpendicular depth below the surface of the earth, and its walls giving off suffocating and explosive gases in such quantities that steady and abundant ventilation shall be a matter of life or death, and that in spite of this it is made so far habitable that men who spend half their days there retain robust health and live to green old age, and that horses after remaining there day and night for many months actually improve in condition. Imagine, further, that the house thus ventilated has some hundreds of small, very low-roofed rooms, and a system of passages or corridors with an united length of many miles, and that its inhabitants count by hundreds.