253 
THE COTTAGE GARDENER AND COUNTRY GENTLEMAN, January 29, 1861. 
great man to whom expense is no object, as they will say. 
There never was a greater fallacy in the world. Why, 
it is in these high places of the earth, in this country 
and kingdom, that cheapness, good management, and 
economy, if there is any difference in these terms, are to 
be seen and learnt to their full extent and meaning ; for I 
have been there and elsewhere, and can speak to the 
point with perfect ease and confidence. If I were to hear 
of a thing which I wanted for myself, to have been in irse 
at the Lord-Lieutenant’s of my native county, I should 
have a great deal more confidence in it than if it were 
recommended by the approval of any lower standard in 
the place : therefore, the very reason which might deter 
my neighbour from trying his luck against the frost 
with this mode of heating, would be the most potent in 
my case to stir me up, in the night season, to the point 
of determining on doing the thing on the morrow. The 
reason is this: Great country gentlemen have so many 
more departments in their establishments than rich city 
men; and each department requires a head so much dif¬ 
ferent from the heads of the rest of the staff, that city 
life in departments cannot come in for comparison with 
it: therefore, every head of every department in a great 
country establishment is resting on its own bottom, has 
a separate authority and a separate responsibility ; and 
that, although it may not suggest to any one of the 
heads the mere saving of money, it will stimulate every 
one of them, if they were put right on the shoulders, to 
make every shilling shine—and to make every bit o’ sillar 
shine is the root and secret of all economy, and he who 
cannot do that in these days will not be able to hold the 
head of a responsible charge longer than the fact takes 
to prove itself. Hence the reason and the stimulant 
why country affairs on a large scale are so much more 
economically conducted than those on more moderate 
scales ; and hence, too, the reason why I should like to 
see or to hear how a nobleman’s house is heated before 
heating my own. 
Next, let us examine the models upon which we may 
with reasonable safety rely for the greater use and ex¬ 
tension of this hot-air system of heating. Here there is 
room for as many heads of the subject as were in the 
sermons of Kettledrummie of Castle Tillietudlem in the 
* Tales of My Landlord,” which were generally fifteen, 
the practical applications “forby.” 
In the first place, all the heat that is now applied by 
the flue system might be more economically given with¬ 
out a flue at all; if a roomy hot-air chamber were built 
round the fireplace to the flue, and the neck of the flue 
itself included, the heat from the same quantity of coals 
would serve to keep two greenhouses of the same size at 
the required temperature, and with less hurt to the plants 
from sulphurous exhalations. In the second place, hot 
air, if necessary, will pass in lower channels than the 
source of heat—that is, lower than the furnace and ash¬ 
pit, which hot water will not do. In some situations this, 
of itself, is of great practical advantage, and obviates the 
difficulties of getting under pathways, or other obstruc¬ 
tions to the flow of hot water on the level. In the third 
place, all the bottom heat which we now obtain by closed 
tanks—made waterproof for the circulation of hot water, 
or merely for pipes to pass through a body of water—may 
be more easily had by a hot-air chamber under the bed 
instead of a tank ; and there would be no necessity for 
that precision or tightness in the joints, or cement to 
avoid leakage, which is the all-in-all of the tank system. 
In the fourth place, heat which is hermetically sealed, 
as in a close iron pipe, or in a tank secured by a close 
covering, is just of the same safety for plants, whether it 
be obtained from hot water or burning sulphur, because 
the smell of the burning cannot escape. In the next 
place, the heat from a hot-water pipe, or from the sides 
and top of a closed tank, is just as dry as that from the 
surface of the old flue ; the advantages of the hot-water 
system are that the heat is free from that sulphurous 
smell which the flue imparts more or less, and that the 
heat is uniform throughout the whole length, instead of 
being hottest at one end, as in the flue system. But the 
heat from the circulation of hot air is even more uniform 
than that of hot water itself, as is perfectly proved these 
two last severe winters in the conservatory at the Stud 
House by Mr. Kidd. All the heat for that house is 
admitted through two openings in the path at one end or 
the house, and the farthest end of the house has been all 
along just as warm and just as soon warmed as the end 
at which the hot air is admitted: therefore, there is no 
doubt upon that head of the subject. 
There were no complaints against the diffusion or 
distribution of heat by the Polmaise system as far as I 
recollect. The great stumblingblock in the Polmaise 
was the iron plates, which either cracked and allowed the 
contamination of the air from the burning fuel, or, if the 
plates stood proof against the heat, they were soon so 
overheated that they burned all the goodness, as it were, 
out of the air passing over them, and so destroyed it for 
the use of man or beast, and more so for the use of plants. 
And the next cause of failure with that system was the 
difficulty of getting the cold-air currents from the houses 
so heated to act properly, and often against back draughts 
or currents. All these sources of failure and of disad¬ 
vantage are got rid of entirely and for ever by the 
Kiddean mode, which he vouches for as being so simple 
that a child may understand and manage it. 
There are many more heads to the subject which will 
occur to heads of other capacities, and for such heads I 
leave them for the present, and take to some of the appli¬ 
cations. The foundation and the marrow of success with 
the Kiddean system of heating I take to be the con¬ 
struction, the capacity, and the materials of the air- 
chamber. A very little practice will teach the manage¬ 
ment of the fire, and of the damper or dampers, or 
registers, for the admission of fresh air into the air- 
chamber and to the fireplace, and for checking the hot¬ 
air current and the draught in the chimney. A day’s 
practice before the fire is a better way of getting at the 
command of this thing than a volume of details. The 
way I shall build my furnace is this : The ash-pit and 
fireplace will be completed first; three courses of bricks 
will be the depth of the ash-pit, and three courses of fire¬ 
bricks will be the height of the sides of the fireplace; 
the top of the fireplace will be arched over with fire-bricks, 
which will give a greater capacity for fire and a better 
play to the flame or heat than a flat top. That will give 
six courses of bricks in height, without counting the 
height of the arch. Then, six inches from the foundation 
of the fireplace, a wall, nine courses of bricks in height, 
will be built square on the side and ends, making it flush 
or even with the fireplace in front. This will also be 
arched over with hard-burnt bricks, and being a foot 
wider than the opening of the fireplace, the second arch 
will be higher than the first; but the space will not be 
too high, or of too much capacity for a hot-air chamber 
to a common greenhouse. 
The cheapest and best mortar that I know of for 
resisting fire is made of fresh slaked lime, so much 
slaked at a time, just as if making cement, and the dust 
ashes from a smith’s forge : this kind of mortar soon sets 
like cement, but not if the lime is not hot from the slak¬ 
ing at the time of mixing. I have used the blue sticky 
fireclay of Stourbridge against this kind of mortar, and 
to this day I know not which is the best of the two : they 
are both best, but the blue clay is prodigious and most 
awful to work without reducing it too much for the job 
with water. Over the centre of the fireplace I shall have 
a flue-door into the air-chamber, and a ventilator on each 
side of the fireplace near the bottom, with a small 
opening at the farthest end of the ash-pit—say two inches 
wide and the depth of a brick. This air-hole will be 
always open ; and as long as there is a particle of heat 
in ali this brickwork, there will be as regular a flow of 
