The Turkish Bath, Its Design and ConstructionAllsop, Robert Owen
Science
The Turkish Bath, Its Design and Construction
Allsop, Robert Owen
Baths, Turkish
_Glazing_ in the hot rooms requires care. The glass will expand
considerably with the heat, and, what is more, if the furnace fire die
out rapidly at any time, will contract and fracture. This difficulty,
however, is the result of bad management, and does not concern the
architect, unless, indeed, it be the result of improper fixing. Even
moderate-sized sheets of glass should be carefully fixed in chamois
leather with screwed beading, _putty_ being wholly inadmissible. The
sheets of glass should not be of too large dimensions. Rolled glass will
be found the cheapest in the end, as inferior qualities, where
homogeneity of texture is wanting, will crack and split in all
directions. Lead glazing should be altogether discarded.
No provision for draining the hot rooms is necessary, as they must, when
in use, be kept free from moisture. The floor may, however, if thought
desirable, be laid with an imperceptible fall the way the water would be
swept when cleansing--viz. towards the lavatorium.
As the best position for a bather to assume in the sudatorium is one
approaching to the horizontal, a bath cannot be considered complete
unless a liberal number of marble-slabbed benches be provided. These
should run round the solid walls, the risers of the benches being formed
of brickwork--glazed, faced with tiles, or plastered--and white marble
slabs set thereon. These slabs cannot be less than 24 in. wide, and must
be of the ordinary seat height--not lower. In the risers must be
provided a liberal number of "hit-and-miss" ventilator gratings, the
vitiated air finding its way from the space beneath the slabs in the way
designed, which may be into surrounding areas, into hollow walls, or
into a flue or flues running the whole height of the building.
The air at the floor line and that at the ceiling level being of vastly
different temperatures, it follows that an arrangement might be designed
whereby the benches might be stepped in three or four rows, and, by
ascending, the bather could select any temperature he might choose. Such
an arrangement was often employed in the baths of the ancient Romans,
and has been tried in modern institutions; but it should be avoided. The
expirations from the lungs and the exudations from the bodies of the
bathers _fall_, and it therefore follows that all below the first tier
would be breathing air polluted by those above them. The system,
therefore, stands condemned.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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