J28 



THE FLORISTS' MANUAL. 



Heating by steam is very simple and 

 if the water gauge is watched has no 

 possible danger. Rise to a conven- 

 ient height with your main pipe, drop 

 from that to the time the condensed 

 steam enters bottom of boiler again. 

 Keep the boilers well down, and with 

 four or five pounds of steam you will 

 heat a large establishment with less 

 fuel and less labor than by any other 

 method. 



Healing by Hot Water. 



I beg most humbly to submit that 

 using small wrought iron pipe in hot 

 water heating is as much in advance 

 over the old cast iron 4-inch pipe as 

 the 4-inch pipe was over the brick 

 flues. The 4 T inch cast iron pipe will 

 heat a house very well, and so did the 

 stage coach take an emigrant from 

 New York to Buffalo, but not as 

 quickly or as cheaply. It seems al- 

 most irresistible now we are out of it, 

 to smile and partly shudder at the 

 cumbersome old pipe associated with 

 hands covered with red lead or iron 

 borings, Portland cement, etc., lying 

 on your back at some difficult joint, 

 fingers hammered up^in fact a week 

 or two of a miserable time. 



It would be useless to speak of the 

 disadvantages of the large cast iron 

 pipes. Just one feature, an alteration 

 or addition to the piping, was a dread- 

 ful affair. The general use now, at 

 least among the commercial men, of 

 the wrought iron pipe has made that 

 important part of greenhouse con- 

 struction an easy job, in fact a pleas- 

 ure. . Two years ago I remember as- 

 sisting at piping a violet house 125 ft. 

 long and 20 ft. wide. At each side 

 hung on the posts we put three 2-inch 

 pipes. The pipes had been resting un- 

 der an apple tree for several weeks and 

 when the man hollered out that the 

 brackets for holding the pipe were on 

 the posts it was perhaps two hours' 

 work for one man. Four of us lifted 

 the pipes, put them in place and 

 screwed them together in just two 

 hours. Of course there was work left 

 around the heater and a few small fit- 

 tings at the end, but fancy the differ- 

 ence between putting up those six 

 runs of 2-inch pipe and say four runs 

 of cast iron 4-inch, with brick piers, 

 etc. And how could you have got the 

 4 7 inch cast iron pipes a foot above the 

 violets, the best place for them? I 

 will give it up, as it would be a conun- 

 drum of which a solution is not a ne- 

 cessity. 



A 4-inch pipe holds 16 times as much 

 water as a 1-inch, but its radiating 

 surface is only four times as much. So 

 you have to heat four times as much 

 water in a 4-inch pipe as in a 1-inch 

 pipe, for the same amount of radia- 

 tion. That is on the face of it over- 

 whelming evidence in favor of the 

 smaller pipe, but there may be some 

 slight influences that bring these 

 great advantages a trifle low- 

 er than odds of four to one. 

 Friction retarding circulation, you 

 will be told, is an objec- 

 tion to small pipe. I don't attach 

 much importance to it, if the pipes are 



laid to a true grade. Then, they will 

 tell you that smaller pipe radiates so 

 fast that the heat goes out of the wat- 

 er too quickly. So it does, but in ra- 

 diating you get the heat into the 

 house, which is just what you are af- 

 ter, and with much diminished volume 

 of water you can make it hotter with 

 less fire. 



Supposing we acknowledge that 

 there is some truth about the greater 

 friction and the rapid cooling. If 

 there were not, you have a superior 

 system over the large 4-inch as four 

 is to one. We will take off one-fourth 

 and still the smaller pipe has a su- 

 periority of three to one. Tremendous 

 odds. To illustrate the difference I 

 have taken 1-inch pipe, but that is 

 rather small. The smallest we use is 

 1 1-4-inch, and 150 feet is as far from 

 the boiler as you should expect these 

 small pipes to do good service. 



One more comparison. I have sev- 

 eral carnation houses which are heat- 

 ed with wrought iron pipe. Take one 

 19 ft. wide. On each side on the post 

 a few inches under the plate there is a 

 2-inch flow running to the farther end 

 and returning with five 1 1-4-inch 

 pipes. They are attached to a very 

 competent heater, and during the 

 worst weather that house has not been 

 below 45 degrees. It would take at 

 least three 4-inch pipes on each side 

 to keep that house at 45 degrees on 

 the coldest nights. Let us see the 

 comparative water and radiation be- 

 tween the large and small pipes. In 

 the large pipes, in round figures, I 

 have about 72 inches of radiation, or 

 864 inches to every lineal foot of pip- 

 ing. While in the smaller I have 

 about 720 ft. of radiation for every 

 lineal foot. Not quite so much, you 

 see. But against that I have to heat 

 in the big pipes about 720 cubic inches 

 of water to every foot of piping and in 

 the smaller pipes less than 250 cubic 

 inches. 



Now, don't you think that with less 

 fuel I can heat that much smaller body 

 of water to a far greater heat? I am 

 sure I can, and do do it, and if the 

 water comes back cooled it accelerates 

 circulation. I will assert that by this 

 system the pipes at 125 feet from the 

 boiler are just about as hot as steam; 

 perhaps it is within a degree or two. 

 There has been a most terrible lot of 

 rubbish and theories ventilated about 

 hot water heating within twenty 

 years, mostly by men who never saw 

 a good system put up or ever studied 

 the law by which hot water circulates. 

 Telling people that you can place a 

 hot water heater on the surface of 

 the ground and get good results is 

 wild talk, and the overhead heating 

 craze would have been laughable if 

 it had not misled some people. One 

 scientist said overhead heating was 

 right because our natural heat came 

 from above. On that theory the gen- 

 tleman should have taken when chilly 

 a seat on Pike's Peak with an icicle 

 for a cushion, for he would have been 

 nearer the source of heat. 



Some forty-five years ago, perhaps 



before, there was published in London 

 by Hood a volume on hot water. 

 There has never been a better work on 

 the same subject since. We may have 

 found out better and cheaper modes 

 of applying it than prevailed in his 

 day, but all the laws of circulation 

 which he demonstrates so finely are 

 just the same today and always will 

 be, for they are natural laws, and can 

 never be altered. Hood says that the 

 circulation of hot water was well 

 known by the Romans, and used for 

 heating their baths, so this wonder- 

 fully useful method of warming our 

 houses did not originate in London, 

 New York or Kalamazoo. 



Why the hot water goes out of the 

 flow pipe and the cold water enters is 

 illustrated by Hood by two vessels, 

 each holding a few gallons of water, 

 say two 6-inch pipes, each three feet 

 high, with a 1-inch pipe and valve 

 connecting them at the bottom. Fill 

 one of the pipes with water the tem- 

 perature of 50 degrees and the other 

 at a temperature of 150 degrees, filling 

 both to exactly the same level. Open 

 the valve and the hot water will im- 

 mediately rise to a higher level than 

 the cold, because the cold is of greater 

 specific gravity than the hot, and has 

 forced it to a higher level. 



Now this illustrates the motive pow- 

 er that first starts the circulation of 

 hot water. It is the difference be- 

 tween the weight of the water in the 

 return pipe and that in the boiler. 

 The water in the boiler being made 

 lighter by the fire, the colder and 

 heavier water forces it up and is re- 

 placed with cold water, so it must fol- 

 low that the higher, and consequently 

 heavier, the column of water in the 

 return pipe the faster will be your 

 circulation. And it follows again that 

 the faster the circulation the hotter 

 will your pipes be, for the water re- 

 turning quickly to the fire has not 

 time to get cool. When your return 

 pipe near the boiler is nearly as hot 

 as the flow where it leaves the boiler 

 your circulation is perfect. All of 

 which goes to prove that the lower 

 the boiler the better the apparatus 

 will work. 



Reserve all your drop till you get 

 near the boiler and then drop per- 

 pendicularly down. This talk about 

 giving the pipes a rise of a foot in one 

 hundred, or the same drop, is all bosh. 

 If the pipes were a dead level in the 

 house it would be perfect, but it is 

 better to have a rise or fall of two 

 inches in a hundred feet because you 

 want when emptying the pipes to have 

 a drain out. Providing your boiler is 

 well down, and that is the very es- 

 sence of the whole job, it makes no 

 difference whether you have a slight 

 rise in the flow pipes in the house or a 

 slight fall. But for several reasons, 

 matters of simplicity and convenience, 

 I prefer after having at once raised to 

 the highest point over the boiler that 

 from there on there shall be a con- 

 tinual fall. Don't forget that one inch 

 in a hundred feet, if truly laid, is far 

 better than two feet, because you re- 

 serve all your drop till you get to the 



