Science in Short ChaptersWilliams, W. Mattieu (William Mattieu)
Science
Science in Short Chapters
Williams, W. Mattieu (William Mattieu)
Science
When the interior of the stove is thus sufficiently heated, the
fire-door and the communication with the chimney are closed, and the
fire is at once extinguished, having now done its day’s work; the
interior of the stove has bottled up its calorific force, and holds it
ready for emission into the apartment. This is effected by the natural
properties of the walls of the earthenware reservoir. They are bad
conductors and good radiators. The heat slowly passes through to the
outside of the stove, is radiated into the apartment from a large and
moderately-heated surface, which affords a genial and well-diffused
temperature throughout.
There is no scorching in one little red-hot hole, or corner, or box,
and freezing in the other parts of the room. There are no draughts, as
the chimney is quite closed as soon as the heat reservoir is supplied.
If one of these heat reservoirs is placed in the hall, where it may
form a noble ornament and can easily communicate with an underground
flue, it warms every part of the house, and enables the Russian to
enjoy a luxurious temperate climate indoors in spite of arctic winter
outside.
In a house thus warmed and free from draughts or blasts of cold air,
ventilation becomes the simplest of problems. Nothing more is required
than to provide an inlet and outlet in suitable places, and of suitable
dimensions, when the difference between the specific gravity of the
cold air without and warm air within does all the rest. Nothing is
easier to arrange than to cause all the entering air to be warmed
on its way by the hall stove, and to regulate the supply which each
apartment shall receive from this general or main stream by adjusting
its own upper outlet. In our English houses, with open chimneys, all
such systematic, scientific ventilation is impossible, on account of
the dominating, interfering, useless, and comfort-destroying currents
produced by these wasteful air-shafts.
I should add that the Russian porcelain reservoirs may be constructed
for a heat supply of a few hours or for a whole day, and I need say
nothing further in refutation of the common British prejudice which
confounds so admirable and truly scientific a contrivance with the iron
fire-pot above referred to.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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