1847, 
THE CULTIVATOR. 
75 
■with a few a foot long to break joints, &c. There are 
two modes of loosening the bricks from the mould. 
One is to have a sliding bottom; the other, and perhaps 
the best, is to have a narrow slit or opening at each 
end of the bottom, which admit air, so that when in¬ 
verted the brick readily falls out from its own weight. 
The side pieces should project beyond the ends, to re¬ 
ceive cross rods for handles. Two men will make three 
hundred in a day. They soon become dry enough to be 
set on edge, then on end, and lastly in piles one above 
another, the asperities of the surface admitting freely 
the circulation of the air between them. In a few weeks, 
if in summer, they will be hard, tough, and dry enough 
to lay in the wall. The mortar is made of the same 
material as the brick, and cements the wall firmly to¬ 
gether. The building may be very expeditiously per¬ 
formed. 
The walls must in all cases be laid on stone or hard 
brick underpinning or cellar wall, and should commence 
two feet above the surface of the ground. The parti¬ 
tion walls may be made of unburnt brick, six or eight 
inches thick, but if a cellar is beneath, or otherwise, 
partition walls of stone or hard brick, must invariably 
form the foundation. A fine house- in Chicago, where 
a cellar could not be dug, had all the partitions of the 
same material, so that neither rats and mice, nor fire, 
could pass from one room to another except through the 
doors. A cellar adjoining was built on the surface of 
the ground, three feet lower than the main floor, and in 
addition to the exterior wall a foot thick, it had another 
within, six inches thick, enclosing an intermediate space 
of air. It never froze in winter, and formed an admira¬ 
ble cellar. 
The wood work is connected with the walls accord¬ 
ing to the usual mode in brick and stone houses, and the 
unburnt bricks receive and hold firmly all nails driven 
into them. 
The plastering on the inside, which is applied direct¬ 
ly to the walls, must be quickly finished, as it dries with 
great rapidity. After the building has stood one year 
or more, a coat of plastering, similar to that given to 
other brick and stone houses, is applied outside, which, 
if well done, and of good material, forms a handsome 
finish. 
According to the article in the Prairie Farmer, the 
cost of the wall itself, compared with that of a common 
brick wall of equal thickness, is as 5 or to 14 or 15; 
or but little more than one third. As lathing the inte¬ 
rior is obviated, the cost of the inner plastering is re¬ 
duced to one-half. And a handsome outside cement is 
about two-thirds as expensive as three coats of white 
paint, and needing no subsequent renewing, is less than 
half as costly in a series of years. An acquaintance 
who lately erected a house of this kind with accurate 
bills of outlay, estimates its total cost at two-thirds that 
of a common wood frame hause, and one-half that of a 
common brick house, while he considers it superior in 
excellence to either.* He drew the brick one mile to 
the place of building. Where suitable clay cannot be 
had within several miles, the increased distance would 
very slightly augment the expense. T. 
WARMING HOUSES. 
The fire place has very generally gone out of use, 
wherever fuel has become costly, and stoves of various 
kinds have taken its place. 
Though the old brick fire-place, with its wide throat, 
consumed large quantities of wood, and sent a large 
proportion of the heat generated in its combustion up 
. * also stated that during the two years that elapsed from the 
time the house was built, to the period when the outside plaster¬ 
ing was applied, only about one-tenth c f an inch of the surface of 
uie brick was beaten off by storms and rain. 
chimney by the powerful draft—it certainly, by that 
very process, ventilated the apartment in great perfec¬ 
tion. The open Franklin stove, was also a good venti¬ 
lator, and by having its plates exposed on all sides to 
the air in the room, it saved fuel. 
The close stove is defective as a ventilator. All 
close stoves are upon the same principle, and the mo¬ 
dern “ air-tight” is only a common close stove well put 
together. Combustion is slow, and but a very small 
quantity of air is required to support it. The process 
is to make wood into charcoal, and use the heat thus 
generated in warming the room—and then consuming the 
charcoal and diffusing the heat given off in its consump¬ 
tion. This is economy of heat, and is the most perfect 
mode of making every particle of it available; and if the 
pipe of the stove is long enough to allow the small quan¬ 
tity of air that is necessary to support combustion, to be¬ 
come as cold as is consistent with its moving at all 
through the pipe, it may be considered equal to any¬ 
thing now in use for the purpose of saving heat. It is 
manifest that such a stove does not ventilate the apart¬ 
ment sufficiently to render the atmosphere wholesome, 
and unless other means are resorted to in order to in¬ 
troduce fresh air, it becomes so impure that headaches 
follow. The only way is to procure a supply of fresh 
air, and by appertures near the ceiling let out the im¬ 
pure heated air. This fresh air thus introduced, is cold, 
and to heat it will cost fuel—and thus if pure air is 
enjoyed, the great economy of the “ air-tight ” stove is 
in a measure counterbalanced, by the necessity of ven¬ 
tilating with cold air. 
Thus it is shown that the most common modes of 
warming buildings are objectionable. One is expensive, 
the other is destructive of health. The advantages of 
both may be secured, and their disadvantages avoided 
by warming and ventillating the house with heated air 
I have a furnace in the cellar of my house that ac¬ 
complishes both these ends—a drawing of a section of 
which I send you. [See Jig. 22.] 
An air chamber made of brick, the walls eight inches 
thick, and arched over at the top—five feet four inches 
long, and three feet wide on the inside, and high enough 
to allow a stove B, with drums, C, C, to stand on it 
under the arch. The front end of the stove is even with 
the outside of the wall, that wood may be introduced, 
and in the door is a sliding damper, to control the 
draft. The cold air is introduced into the air cham¬ 
ber at the front end of the stove in such a manner as 
will bring it directly in contact with the heated surface 
of the stove. Tin pipes, JD. D, ten inches in diame¬ 
ter, convey the air after it is heated through the floor 
into the rooms above. At the ends of the pipes in the 
floors are registers, to regulate the quantity of air ad¬ 
mitted into the rooms. The smoke pipe E, passes 
through the top of the arch, surrounded by a pipe, up 
to the floor, where a sheet of iron, having holes through 
it, controls the amount of air allowed to enter the room 
through which the smoke pipe passes. But two air 
pipes are shown in the drawing, but there are. in fact, 
six rooms that have hot air introduced into them, be¬ 
sides the hall which is warmed by the smoke pipe. The 
cold air is brought from the outside of the cellar wall 
by a brick pipe, A, a foot square, passing under the 
cellar floor. This cold air pipe is so situated that th® 
supply can be regulated by partially closing the outer 
end. The drums, C, C, have small doors at F. F. 
through which a scraper can be introduced to clear out 
the ashes and soot, by sending them down through the 
pipes, H, H. into the stove. There is in the brick wall 
at I, an iron door opening on the back side of the air- 
chamber, through which a man can enter. 
The operation of this furnace is this: The fire being 
started in the stove. B. and basing it. and the drums, 
the surrounding air is heated and expanded, and by a 
