1842.] 



THE CIVIL ENGINEER AND ARCHITECTS JOURNAL. 



123 



foi-mer metliod. Genial air thrown in by a fan. in the basement story of a 

 building, also prevents the stagnation of vavours from damp and miasmata, 

 which lurk about the fjundations of buildings and in sewers, and which are 

 sucked in by the rarefying plan. Many a lordly mansion is rendered hardly 

 tenautable from such a cause, during certain vicissitudes of wind and weather. 



The condensing plan, as executed by the engineers, Messrs. Easton and 

 Amos, at the Reform Club House, consists of a large fan, revolving rapidly 

 in a cylindrical case, and is capable of throwing eleven thousand cubic feet of 

 air per minute, into a spacious subterranean tunnel under the basement story. 

 The fan is driven by an elegant steam engine, working on the expansion 

 principle, of five horses' power. It is placed in a vault, under the flag pive- 

 raent, in front of the building; and as it moves very smoothly, and bums 

 merely cinders from the house fires, along with some anthracite, it occasions 

 no nuisance of any kind. The steam of condensation of the engine supplies 

 three cast iron chests with the requisite heat for warming the whole of the 

 building. Each of these chests is a cube of three feet externally, and is 

 distributed internally into seven parallel cast iron cases (somewhat like 

 empty portfolios), each about three inches wide, which are separated by 

 parallel alternate spaces, of the same width, for the passage of the air trans- 

 versely, as it is impelled by the fan. This arrangement is most judicious, 

 economizing fuel to the utmost degree; because the steam of condensation 

 which, in a Watt's engine, would be absorbed and carried off by the air- 

 pump, is here turned to good account, in ivarming the air of ventilation 

 during the winter months. Two hundred weight of fuel suffices for working 

 this steam engine during twelve hours. It pumps water for household pur- 

 poses, raises the coals to the several apartments on the upper floors, and 

 drives the fan ventilator. The air, in flowing rapidly through the series of 

 cells placed alternately between the steam cases, cannot be scorched, as it is 

 infallibly with air stoves ; but it is heated only to the genial temperature of 

 from 75' to 8.5' Fahr., and it thence enters a common chamber of brickwork 

 iu the basement story, from which it is let otT into a series of distinct flues, 

 governed by dialled valves or registers, whereby it is conducted in regulated 

 quantities to the several apartments of the building. I am of opinion, that 

 it would not be easy to devise a better plan for the purpose of warming and 

 ventilaiing a large house ; and I am only sorry to observe, that the plan pro- 

 jected by the engineers has been ivjudiciously counteracted in two particulars. 



The first of these is, that the external air, which supplies the fan, is made 

 to traverse a great heap of coke before it can enter that apparatus, whereby 

 it suffers such friction as materially to obstruct the ventilation of the house. 

 The following experiments, which I made recently upon this point, will place 

 the evil iu a proper hght. Having fitted up Dr. Wollaston's differential 

 barometer, as an anemometer, with oil, of specific gravity 0'900 in one leg of 

 its syphon, and water of 1000 in the other, covered with the said oil in the 

 two cisterns at top, I found that the stream of air produced by the fan. in a 

 certain part of the flue, had a velocity only as the number 8, while the air 

 was drawn through the coke, but that it had a velocity in the same place, as 

 the number 11, whenever the air was freely admitted to the fan by opening 

 a side door. Thus, three-elevenths, both of the ventilating and warming 

 efi'ects of the fan, are lost. I cannot divine any good reason for making the 

 Members of the Reform Club breathe an atmosphere, certainly not improved, 

 bat most probably vitiated, by being passed in a moist'state through a porous 

 sulphureous carbon, whereby it will tend to generate the two deleterious 

 gases, carbonic oxide and sulphuretted hydrogen, in a greater or less degree. 

 It is vain to allege that these gases may not be discoverable by chemical 

 analysis — can the gaseous matters which generate cholera, yellow-fever, or 

 ague, be detected by chemical re-agent.s? No. truly; yet everyone admits 

 the reality of their specific virus. I should propose that the air be trans- 

 mitted through a large sheet of wire-cloth before it reaches the fan, whereby 

 it would be freed from the grosser particles of soot that pollute the atmosphere 

 of London. The wire-cloth should be brushed every morning. The second 

 particular, which counteracts in some measure the good effects of the fan in 

 steam ventilation— is the huge stove placed in the top story of the building. 

 This potent furnace, consuming, when in action, 3 cwt, of coals per day, 

 tends to draw down foul air for its own supply from the chimneys of the 

 adjoining rooms, and thus to impede the upward current created by the fan. 

 I have measured by Dr. Wollaston's (hfTerential barometer the ventilating 

 influence of the'said furnace stove, and find it to be perfectly insignificant— / 



nay. most absurdly so— when compared with the fan, as to the quantity ot 

 tuel which each requires per day. The rarefaction of air in the stove 

 chamber, in reference to the external air, was indicated by a quarter of an 

 inch dlfl'erence of level in the legs of the oil and water syphon, and this when 

 the door of the stove-room was shut, as it usually is ; the tube of the diitj;r- 

 ential barometer being inserted in a hole in the door. The fan intlic Ues a 

 ventilating force equal to two inches of the water syphon, which is twenty 

 inches of the above oil and water syphon, and therefore eighty times greater 

 than that of the stove furnace : so that, taking into view the smaller quantity 

 of fuel which the fan requires, the advantage in ventilation in favour of the 

 fan is the enormous ratio of 120 to 1, at the lowest estimate. The said stove 

 in the attic seems to me to be not only futile, but dangerous. \t is a huge 

 rectangular cast iron chest, having a large hopper in front kept full of coali. 

 and it is contracted above into a round pipe, which discharges the burnt air 

 and sniuke into a series of horizontal pipes of cast iron, about four inches 

 diameter, which traverse the room under the cieling. and terminate in a b.rick 

 chimney. In consequence of this obstruction, the draught through the 

 furnace is so feeble that no rush of air can be perceived in its ash pit, even 

 when this is contracted to an area of six inches square ; nay, when the asli 

 pit was momentarily luted with bricks and clay, and the tube of the differ- 

 ential barometer was introduced a little way under the grate, the level of the 

 oil and water syphon in that instrument was displaced by no more than one- 

 tenth of an inch, which is only one-hundredth of an inch of water — a most 

 impotent efl'ect under a daily co.nsumption of 3 cwt. of coals. In fact, this 

 stove may be fitly styled an incaidlanj coat devourer, as it has already set fire 

 to the house ; and though now laid upon a new floor of iron rafters and stone 

 flags, it still offers so much danger from its outlet iron pipes, should ihey 

 become ignited from the combustion of charcoal deposited in them, that i 

 think no premium of insurance adequate to cover the imminent risk of fire 

 The stove being, therefore, a superfluous and dangerous nuisance, should b» 

 turned out of doors as speedily as possible. Its total cost, with that of iti 

 fellow in the basement story, cannot be much less than the cost of the steam 

 engine, with all its truly effectual warming and ventilating appurtenances. 



I take leave to observe, that the system of heating and ventilating appa- 

 ratus constructed by Messrs. Easton and Amos in the Reform Club House, 

 offers one striking and peculiar advantage. It may be modified at little 

 expense, so as to become the ready means of intro lucing, during the sultriest 

 dog-days, refreshing currents of air at a temperature of 10, 20, 30, or even 

 40 degrees under that of the atmosphere. An apparatus of this nature 

 attached to the Houses of Parliament and Courts of Law would prove an 

 inestimable blessing to our legislators, lawyers, judges, and juries. Of such 

 cool air a very gentle stream would suffice to make the most crowded apart- 

 ments comfortable, without endangering the health of their inmates with 

 gusts of wind through the doors, windows, and floors. 



It is lamentable to reflect how little has been done for the well-being of the 

 sentient and breathing functions of man in the public buildings of the me- 

 tropolis, notwithstanding our boasted march of intellect and diff"usion of 

 useful knowledge. Almost all our churches are filled on Sundays with stove- 

 roasied air ; and even the House of Commons has its atmosphere exiiausled 

 by the suction of a huge chimney stalk, with a furnace equal, it is said, to 

 that of a 40-horse steam boiler. To gentlemen plunged in air so attenuated, 

 condensation of thought, and terseness of expressiou, can hardly be the order 

 of the day. 



Nearly seven years Lave elapsed since I endeavuured to point public 

 attention to this important subject iu the following terms ■ — '" Our legislators, 

 when bewailing, not long ago, the fate of their fellow-creatures doomed to 

 breathe the polluted air of a factory, were little aware hjw superior the 

 system of ventilation adopted in many cotton mills was to that employed for 

 their own comfort in either House of Parliament. The engineers of Man- 

 chester do not, like those of the metropolis, trust for a sufficient supply of 

 fresh air into any crowded hall, to currents physically created in the at- 

 mosphere by the difference of temperature excited by chimney draughts 

 because they kno.^ them to be ineffectual to renijve, with requijile r.tpidtty, 

 the dense carbouic acid gas generated by many hundred po«erfui lungs,"* 



' Philosophy of Manufactures, p, 3S0, published by Chailes Knight. 

 London, 1835. 



