638 
Economy of Fuel in House Fires . [November, 
also with gas ; incandescent gas-fires with supplementary 
warm-air apparatus to utilise the waste heat, and incan- 
descent gas-fires utilising the radiant heat only. The round 
has been a pretty long one, and it has settled at the indis- 
putable fa< 5 t that radiant heat, and radiant heat alone, with 
the freest ventilation, is the only really comfortable and 
desirable way to heat a room used as a sitting-room and 
library. 
This brings the question down to a choice of an ordinary 
open fire and an incandescent gas-fire, and the latter has 
been selected on account of the ease with which it is con- 
trolled, its instant readiness, and its total freedom from dirt. 
Although a complete year’s work with this has not been 
gone through, it is evident that a room 15 x 20 feet can be 
comfortably and pleasantly heated with an incandescent 
gas-fire for about £ 6 per annum, with coal-gas at 3s. per 
1000 feet, all the warm air being sent up a freely open 
chimney, the cost being about three times that of a coal- 
fire, against which may be placed saving of labour and dirt. 
In the passages and bed-rooms a purely radiant heat is an 
expensive luxury which is not by any means necessary, or 
even desirable ; and here we may adopt two systems : — hot- 
water pipes for the passages, which for economy may be 
heated by boilers, with a coke fire, like an ordinary green- 
house arrangement ; and for the bed-rooms warm-air stoves 
heated by gas, which have the special advantage of being 
under immediate control. Why a warm-air stove should be 
preferred in a bed-room appears to admit of a simple expla- 
nation, i.e ., that the temperature of the lower strata of air 
and of the floor is a matter of little importance to persons 
in a recumbent position, the objection to this being only felt 
by those who are quietly sitting in a room with a low floor 
temperature. 
I do not find that any person who has a choice between 
sitting in a room heated by purely radiant heat and one 
heated by warm air will, under any circumstances, choose 
the latter, even if the room itself is in other respects far 
more convenient and comfortable ; and so long as a coal or 
incandescent gas-fire can be obtained at a reasonable cost, 
it does not appear at all likely that any stove will be adopted 
in ordinary sitting-rooms, whatever its apparent advantages 
may be. 
