room will not be sensibly cooled, and the fresh air which comes
into the room will, in a very few minutes, be so completely
warmed by these walls that the temperature of the room, though
the air in it be perfectly changed, will be brought to be very
nearly the same as it was before the ventilation.
Those who are acquainted with the principles of pneumatics,
and know why the warm air in a room rushes out at an opening made
for it at the top of a window when colder air from without is
permitted to enter by the door, or by any other opening situated
lower than the first, will see, that it would be quite impossible
to ventilate a room in the complete and expeditious manner here
described, where the air in a room is partially warmed, or hardly
warmed at all, and where the walls of the room, remote from the
fire, are constantly cold; which must always be the case where,
in consequence of a strong current up the Chimney, streams of
cold air are continually coming in through all the crevices of
the doors and windows, and flowing into the Fire-place.
But although rooms, furnished with Fire-places constructed upon
the principles here recommended, may be easily and most
effectually ventilated, (and this is certainly a circumstance in
favour of the proposed improvements,) yet such total ventilations
will very seldom, if ever, be necessary.--As long as ANY FIRE is
kept up in the room, there is so considerable a current of air up
the Chimney, notwithstanding all the reduction that can be made
in the size of its throat, that the continual change of air in
the room which this current occasions will, generally, be found
to be quite sufficient for keeping the air in the room sweet and
wholesome; and indeed in rooms in which there is no open Fire-place,
and consequently no current of air from the room setting up the
Chimney, which is the case in Germany, and all the northern parts
of Europe, where rooms are heated by stoves, whose Fire-places
opening without are not supplied with the air necessary for the
combustion of the fuel from the room;--and although in most of
the rooms abroad, which are so heated, the windows and doors are
double, and both are closed in the most exact manner possible,
by slips of paper pasted over the crevices, or by slips of list or
furr; yet when these rooms are tolerably large, and when they are
not very much crowded by company, nor filled with a great many
burning lamps or candles, the air in them is seldom so much
injured as to become oppressive or unwholesome; and those who
inhabit them show by their ruddy countenances, as well as by
every other sign of perfect health, that they suffer no
inconvenience whatever from their closeness.--There is frequently,
it is true, an oppressiveness in the air of a room heated by a
German stove, of which those who are not much accustomed to
living in those rooms seldom fail to complain, and indeed with
much reason; but this oppressiveness does not arise from the air
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