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JOUBNAL OF HOBTICULTCBE AND COTTAGE GABDENEK. 



( S'arcmb«r 2S, 1869. 



Now what shall we say to such an economical correspondent 

 — and the qnestion of economy will soon be the most prominent 

 of all qnestions — bat to repeat what has been said and said 

 over again ? — that there is no mode of heating lionses for plants 

 or houses for men that is not attended with waste of the heat- 

 ing power. The times are not yet, but we see them coming, 

 when the heat now lost in our great plant and forcing estab- 

 lishments, in our villages and towns, will be made subservient 

 to the heating of water for washing, baths, .fcc, or, in the shafie 

 of heated air, appropriated to help our variable cUmate, so that 

 men may not only sit under, bat eat the produce of their own 

 Vines and their own I'ig trees. Meanwhile we have to do with 

 the present; and wiih some experience of modes of heating, 

 and with much love for the hot-water system and the ease with 

 which it can be applied, we have no hesitation in saying that 

 for small houses, and where only a very moderate artificial 

 temperature is required, the hot-water system, as regards first 

 expense and fuel, is the most costly that could be devised. 

 And this holds troe as respects fuel, because there is likely to 

 be nearly as much loss of heat from the chimney of a house 

 20 feet in length as from one that is 100 or 200 feet in length. 

 The extra loss will ever be greatly dependant on two causes — 

 first, carelessness after the fire is fairly going in not leaving 

 merely a very small opening in the ashpit door and louking 

 alter the damper. Of course, in lighting up and getting the 

 fire established, the damper must be left pretty well out, but 

 when well established very little serves to keep up combustion. 

 The smoke is sooner burned and the fire sooner bright if there 

 is a small opening for air over the fuel — a very small opening 

 does ; and this principle is well attended to in several of our 

 iron or metal stoves. There is so often apt to be a difficulty 

 with the damper — putting it in too far or leaving it out too far 

 — that it is a good plan to have a hole in the centre of it, say 

 1 inch in diameter, and then when the fire is established and 

 the heat well up the dsmper may be pushed home ; afterwards 

 the small opening in the ashpit door and the opening in the 

 centre of the damper will support a slow continuous combus- 

 tion, and the heat, instead of freely passing up the chimney, 

 will be greatly thrown back and concentrated round the boiler. 

 As far as our own practice and observation extend, we should 

 depend more on these matters as regards the ashpit door and 

 the damper than upon any specified form or arrangement of 

 the boiler, looking upon the simplest as ratter the best, though 

 not insensible to the merits of many of the new ones advertised 

 in our pages. 



The second point is keeping the boiler free from sooty in- 

 cmstations. There is little chance of the part directly ex- 

 posed to the fire-box becoming encrusted, but the sides and 

 upper part are more liable, though the heat of the fire comes, 

 but more indirectly, over them. There is no better non- 

 conductor of heat than soot, and where only a moderate heat 

 IB required, much extra fuel is needed to heat a boiler partly 

 covered with soot, and therefore, other things being equal, that 

 boiler is the best which has the most convenient openings for 

 clearing away all soot frequently with a brush and hoe. 

 Neglecting to do this often entails additional expense for fuel. 

 If we wished to utilise the heat that escapes from the chimney 

 top of a boiler, though we should like to keep the boiler clean 

 to receive all the benefit possible of the heat, provided there 

 were room enough left for smoke, &c., we should not be par- 

 ticular in cleaning the sides of the chimney from soot, as the 

 more it was soot-crusted, t'ne less heat would be absorbed by 

 the chimney, and the more be carried to the discharge opening. 

 On the same principle, were we heating by a flue, the economy 

 of heating would greatly depend on keeping the flue clean, so 

 that the material of the flue might absorb the heat instead of 

 60 much of that heat being carried on to the chimney-top by 

 incrustations of powdery soot, llany flues would do their 

 work more efficiently and economically if more frequently 

 cleaned : hence the importance of having openings for this 

 purpose, so that the sweeping m'ly be done without breaking 

 or disturl ing the flue. 



Notwithstanding all these attentions, however, the economy 

 of heating by hot water will ever be in direct proportion to the 

 extent of heating ; and thus, though best and cheapest where 

 much work is to be done from one fumaee, it is, as already 

 stated, the very dearest where only one little house is to be 

 moderately heated. We make the last remark advisedly, on 

 the supposition that a furnace and boiler are to be worked for 

 this individual purpose. Where a small house can be heated 

 from a kitchen range, or from one or more gas argand burners, 

 then the circumstances alter the case. Even when much work 



's done by one boiler, heat would be greatly economised if the 

 heated air, instead of mounting the chimney, were taken some 

 40 feet in a flue, and that made to beat a separate house, pits, 

 frames, or even borders for early crops. 



Passing heating by gas, as having received prominent at- 

 tention of late, and also because our knowledge of that mode of 

 heating has as yet chiefly been confined to observation, we 

 would, for the purpose, at least, of creating more diecaetion on 

 the subject, state our impression, as the result of rough measnre- 

 ments of fuel consumed, that to secure a temperate heat in 

 small houses — say from 12 to ?>'i and -10 feet in length, and 

 from 8 to 12 in width, with an average height of 10 or 12 feet, 

 and all lean-to's, the economy of heating will stand first for 

 ftviw, second for rfm.v, and third for boilers, and that these will 

 not stand as 1, 2, ;i, but if the stove is rei'resented by 1, the 

 flue will be represented by 2J, and the boiler from 1 to 4i, and 

 on to 5, if not well managed. 



A few words, then, on the former two old-fashioned and 

 simple modes of heating, but for small places the most econo- 

 mical as respects fuel. The cheapest-heated stoves are those 

 that are placed in the hou;e to be heated, and that are cleaned 

 out, lighted, and supplied with fuel there. Had we much to do 

 with such stoves, we would prefer brick stoves, topped with a 

 plate of iron, and supplied with en evaporating batin on the 

 top. They have the advantage of giving a regular genial heit ; 

 they have the disadvantage that (hey cannot be removed like 

 an iron etove, and, therefore, the latter is likely to be more 

 generally used. Unlike a tlue, the chief point is to concentrate 

 the heat chiefly in the stove. Standing mostly above the ground 

 level, they will act best when the difcharfc-e pipe is above the 

 feeding-doer near the top of the furnace, and on the opposite 

 side to the feeding door. This discharge pipe should never go 

 horizontally more than from 18 to 30 inches, and then the 

 more upright it rises the better. We have tried it repeatedly, 

 and find it most difficult, next to impossible, to manage, when, 

 for a particular purpose, we had the outlet pipe nearly hori- 

 zontal for 8 or 10 feet. Wherever the stove is placed — near a 

 back wall, or in the centre of the house, the discharge pipe 

 must rise less or more perpendicularly, when at the above dis- 

 tance from the stove. We have a square stove sunk in an 

 opening in the centre of a house, 75 feet by 11 feet, the discharge 

 pipe, alter the short horizontal pipe, being a common 9-foot 

 pipe of y inches in diameter, and that stove has kept the house 

 as yet a number of degrees above freezing. Coke is chiefly 

 nsed, and a pole is now and then pushed np and down tbepipe 

 to dislodge any incrustations. 



In all iron stoves for pUnt houses, we should like them to 

 be double, or large enoush to hold a fire-box from 'J to 12 inches 

 square, quite free of the sides of the stove, or with the fire-box 

 neatly lined with fire clay lumps. When the stove becomes 

 very hot, approaching red, it bums the air round it, and it there 

 are either vegetable or anim-il exhalations present, it tells at 

 once on the senses, and is hurtful to the plants exposed to it. 

 Chemists, we believe, fail to discover bow the red heat sflects 

 the air, just as they frequently fail to discover what it is that 

 brings plague and pestilence, but the effects are so apparent 

 that no stove for plant houses or living-rooms, should be much 

 heated if the live fuel come in direct contact with tbe iron 

 sides. This, to a considerable extent, may be neutralised by 

 an evaporating pan ; and some stoves are so made, less or more 

 on the Arnott system, that the heated air circulates all round, 

 below as well as above the fireplace, and, therefore, if such 

 stoves are placed in a vessel of water, there will be a constant 

 evaporation going on, according to the heat employed. Of 

 course, in proportion to the water evaporated, there will be 

 near the stove a diminution of felt heat — say from one-tenth 

 to one-fifth, but the heat thus rendered latent in evaporating 

 moistnre, will be given out again as the vapour is condensed in 

 the coldest ends of the place to be heated. At any rate, when 

 we have nsed an iron evaporating basin on the top of such a 

 at .ve in the middle of the house, we have found the ends of the 

 house more similar in temperature to the centre of the house 

 close to the stove, than when dry heat alone was used. 



Whatever the kind of stove nsed, it is advisable to have the 

 top moveable, so .is to clean out the stove thoroughly at times, 

 but we prefer the feeding box to be at tbe side. We have a 

 round stove fed from the top, but with an inverted funnel 

 over part of the opening that prevents much hot air escaping 

 when adding a fresh supply of fuel. In feeding any cf these 

 stoves in a house, it is advisable to open the ventilator in the 

 ashpit door a few minutes previously, so as to throw a keen 

 draught into the outlet smoke pipe, and then when opening 



