252 
JOURNAL OF HORTICULTURE AND COTTAGE GARDENER. 
March 21,18»5. 
MODERN GRAPE GROWING. 
Heating, 
I DO not know that I can suggest any better arrangement of the 
pipes than that in the Longleat vinery, where there are ten rows placed 
thus :—One nearly close to the side wall, two side by side about a yard 
from this, and two others 3 feet from the centre of the house forming 
the boundary to the path. The other side is a repetition of this 
arrangement, and each side in every compartment can be worked 
separately. It is of great importance to have good valves at suitable 
places both on flows and returns, not only such as will regulate or stop 
the circulation of heat, but that will also when necessary prevent the 
passage of water, for in these times we must all be economical, and 
when a particular vinery is not wanted during the winter for storing 
tender plants it will do no harm, but rather the reverse, to let the frost 
in till such time as the Vines require to be started. I am in the habit 
of doing this, and of course it is necessary to draw the water out of those 
pipes that are exposed. 
It is advisable to so arrange the pipes that there shall be no dips. I 
have never yet had a case where a dip was necessary, though possibly 
there may be such. I have in times past arranged some compartments 
to be heated with flows only and others with returns only, and it is 
astonishing how accommodating hot water is if you arrange it without 
dips. By dips, of course, I mean where the pipes dip down and rise 
again. Let them rise a little here and there, or better still all the way, 
till they begin to return, and generally make the circuits as short as 
possible, so as to get the water back to the boiler quickly. I know of 
one establishment where the reverse of this prevails. In one house 
particularly there are eight rows of pipes altogether near the front in 
four pairs, one above another, and incredible as it may appear, the 
water actually travels the length of the house eight times before it can 
get back to the main. Supposing the house to be 40 feet long the water 
has to travel 320 feet, whereas if the pipes were properly arranged 
it would only travel a little over 80 feet. If my readers can believe 
such a thing to exist they will not be surprised to learn that all the 
arrangements are faulty ; and although there are only about 3000 feet 
of pipes to be heated, nearly 1000 feet are underground, and there are 
three large Trentham boilers fixed to do the work. Of course, one of 
these boilers would be sufiScient if the arrangement was right, but as 
it is the circulation is not to be depended on when all three are going. 
There should never be as many as eight pipes together, and the water 
should never go round the house a second time. If there are five 
pipes two should be flows and three returns, or vice versa, and the 
flows should be in the coldest places. When mains are outside it is 
important that they be kept clear of the masonry which surrounds 
them, otherwise much of the heat will be lost. Ours are covered with 
an asbestos mixture which effectually prevents any loss. 
In the matter of boilers we have been unfortunate. Two were fixed 
side by side, and leading into one main, to which something over 
3000 feet of 4-inch pipe is attached. They were welded upright boilers, 
having a drum outside and a circle of tubes inside, these tabes being 
so bent at the lower end as to form elbows, which were constantly in 
the fire, and this proved to be the weak point. One of them sprang a 
leak during what should have been a summer month, and all the tubes 
were found to be nearly burned through at the lower part, although 
they were perfectly clear of sediment. This boiler was replaced by 
another of the same pattern, but before the fire was lighted the second 
one gave way, and then it was determined to try sometWng different. 
We have tried something different, and now I believe we shall have 
cause to rejoice that the old ones did go the way of all boilers. What 
we now have may be called a tubular top-feeding saddle, with water 
bars. I do not know how much of its power is due to the plan of 
fixing, for this is something new to me. It is fixed in a slanting 
position, being 4 inches higher at back than at front. It is less than 
4 feet in length, but it is considerably more powerful than the other 
two were together, and takes no more fuel than one. It is an adaptation 
of the boiler that won the gold medal in the contest at Liverpool in 
1886. Most boilers, and probably all of them, have their faults. 
The ordinary saddle boiler, if large enough to heat 1000 feet, is too 
slow. It may be all right if kept going constantly, but if you have to 
light a fire suddenly you are apt to have the frost in the house before 
the heat gets round. A boiler that will not alter the temperature of the 
flow pipe in ten minutes after lighting the fire is not good enough, 
neither is one that will not respond quickly to the stoker on a cold frosty 
morning. What gardener has not found the want of a quick boiler on 
a morning when frost has been extra severe, and perhaps has come on 
suddenly ? His stoker on his first visit has found temperatures too low. 
He rouses up the fire, puts on full draught, and uses the poker freely ; 
he burns an enormous quantity of fuel, most of which goes to form 
clinkers, yet the temperatures still go down rather than up, and he 
cannot get his pipes hot till just as the sun shows itself ; then they get 
very hot, and all his efforts to check the fire seem to make them hotter 
still. It is well known to old practical stokers that the big roaring fire 
got up quickly not only wastes fuel, burns out boilers, bars, firebricks, 
and all the surroundings, but that most of the heat goes up the chimney, 
and that when the inexperienced stoker shuts nearly all the draught off 
a large fire, red-hot through, with the idea of checking it, he just creates 
the conditions most favourable to rapid heating of the water. 
Perhaps a bright day follows with a cold east wind, and then we 
know what happens. Instead of being able to bottle up the sunshine 
and keep the east wind outside, some of the latter has to be admitted 
and the former is rendered comparatively useless. There is often a 
difficulty when heat has to be turned on to extra houses during evening 
simply to keep out the frost. Many a time I have had to keep pipes 
slightly warm during a bright day to ensure their working right at 
night, for if you have one or more houses which require to be kept con¬ 
stantly hot, and you are short of boiler power or have a slow boiler, the 
water returning from the heated houses will make the return main pipe 
comparatively hot, and there will be a difficulty in getting the cold water 
from another house into the return at all. Where everything works 
easily and there is abundance of power this difficulty is not often a 
formidable one. To be satisfactory, we must have a boiler that will 
respond quickly to the stoker, that will be economical, that will heat a 
small or large quantity of pipes at will, that will make few ashes and no 
clinkers, and that will keep a tolerably even heat during the night. 
I do not say the boiler we now have is perfect, but it comes nearer 
what a boiler should be than any I have had to do with before. The 
inside of the furnace is sufllciently wide to hold enough fuel for the 
night, even when coke is used, without placing it much more than a 
foot in thickness, so that the fire is never smothered. It has tubes 
running through the centre, splitting up the fire and entirely preventing 
the formation of large clinkers. There is no poker required. All that 
is wanted is a light iron rod turned up at the end to be used underneath 
the bars when the fire is required to go sharper to dislodge the dust that 
accumulates there. We take out all, some, or none of this dust, accord¬ 
ing to the amount of heat required. I have been looking over some of 
Hood’s tables concerning heating, and have come to the conclusion that 
they are either useless or my understanding is very dull indeed. In the 
first place he calculates on the assumption that the pipes will be heated 
throughout to 200°. Now we know this never happens with the low 
pressure system when there is a considerable length of pipes to be heated 
—say over 1000 feet, and only for very short intervals in shorter lengths, 
when the water must be actually boiling. 
I find in the Liverpool contest with 600 feet that the premier appa¬ 
ratus, after fise hours’ hard firing, did actually exceed that temperature 
but none of the others came anywhere near it ; but in the morning 
after the fires had been banked up for twelve hours, the average tempe¬ 
rature of the pipes was just 100° on the winning apparatus, 86° on the 
second, and 73° on the third. In the 2000 feet contest the highest tem¬ 
perature reached at the point where the thermometer was placed on the 
flow pipe was 168° after four hours’ firing, and it declined to 110° after 
twelve hours’ banking. That of the second competitor declined to 104°, 
and the third to 88°. True, these contests were in the open air; but 
they took place just after Midsummer Day, and it would be easier to 
heat pipes in the open air at that time than it would be to heat them in 
a house during sharp wintry weather. 
I think, then, these figures prove that 200° is much too high a figure 
to calculate upon; in fact, I believe 100° is too high. Then when we 
come to calculate according to Hood’s tables as to the quantity of pipes 
necessary for heating each house we find they are faulty in an opposite 
direction. In Mr. Barron’s excellent treatise on “ Vines and Vine 
Culture ” he gives a plan of a span-roofed house, which I take to be 
about 40 by 20 feet. Say its average height is 6 feet, this would give 
4800 cubic feet of air space to be heated. If we take the external tem¬ 
perature at 32°, and require a minimum of 70° in the house (the figures 
given by Mr. Barron), it would take 787 feet of 4-inch pipes heated to 
200° according to Hood to secure that temperature, but Mr. Barron only 
shows eight rows, say 350 feet, and few people would think of having a 
greater number. 
Our Muscat house is 60 by 30 by 9 feet— i.e., 16,200 cubic feet—and 
would require according to the same reckoning 1814 feet of 4-inch pipes 
to produce a temperature of 60°, but we have only 790 feet in twelve 
rows, besides ends, and find it ample. There is no doubt that large 
houses when well glazed take comparatively less piping than smaller 
ones. It is a good plan to have plenty of piping, but not more than 
enough ; fifty to sixty feet of 4-inch pipes, if the glazing is fairly good, 
is sufficient for each 1000 cubic feet of air. We do not expect to be 
firing away all the time, as if competing for a gold medal. Hard firing 
cannot be carried on without waste of fuel and injury to the plants and 
apparatus. And after all, the best of apparatuses will be of little avail 
if we lack that rara avis —a good stoker.— Wm, Tayloe. 
SUMMER ROOT-PRUNING. 
I nAYB never seen a better example of the good effects of this 
practice than the following. In 1893 a merchant requested my opinion 
as to the cause of some of his standard Pear trees never having borne 
fruit. They were growing luxuriantly, and I found had since being 
planted been branch-pruned only. I advised him to cut a trench half 
round each tree at 3 feet from the stem. This was in midsummer. He 
put the advice into practice, and last autumn the trees for the first time 
were laden with fruit. The results of cutting back half the roots was 
not only a check to growth, but mainly it was a rapid and certain 
means of producing fibrous roots that immediately in turn re-acted on 
the rankly grown shoots, causing them to ripen and bristle with fruit 
buds. No doubt the same results would have followed had the operation 
been delayed until November, but a year would have been lost, and 
instead of having Pears in 1894 it would have been the present year 
before the benefit would have been seen. 
I have a number of Apple trees to remove next autumn. One-half 
the roots are being cut back now, and in summer the other half will be 
