An example of careful planning in the location of a register 
in a Hot Air system 
RsassaR 
It is possible often to conceal the radiators of Steam or Hot 
Water systems under a seat 
The Available Heating Systems 
THE GREAT PROBLEM OF KEEPING WARM AND HOW IT MAY BE SOLVED—THE COST 
OF THE VARIOUS AVAILABLE SYSTEMS BOTH FOR INSTALLATION AND MAINTENANCE 
by Jared Stuyvesant 
N O matter how carefully you have thought out the complex 
matters of architectural style, no matter how deeply 
you have gone into the subject of building materials, no matter 
with what care you have selected your furnishings and interior 
decorations, your house may be the keenest sort of a disappoint¬ 
ment if it is not comfortably warmed in the winter time. 
It is astonishing how very little people know about the various 
methods of heating the home. Of course it is a technical matter 
associated in many minds with such intricate details as the 
proper strength of beams for a certain span, or the laying out of 
a plumbing system. As a matter of fact, this matter of heating 
is not so complex as it seems—that is, the fundamental principles 
are easily understood and one may readily learn to know the 
essentials of each system in common use. 
Of course, if you do not want to take the time for this, the 
thing to do is to leave the matter to your architect or go to a 
heating engineer and commission him to instal whatever system 
he considers best, and if you do this you will doubtless have a 
comfortable home at a not very much greater cost than if you 
make your own investigations. 
For some reason, however, the majority of home builders have 
an almost insatiable desire to “see the wheels go around” them¬ 
selves—to know the why and wherefore of the whole matter. 
If you are one of these, let me outline briefly the fundamental 
principles of each of the common systems used in heating homes 
and add a word or two as to their respective costs of installation 
and of maintenance. 
In the first place there is a system known as Hot Air and it is, 
perhaps, the system that is in most general use at the present 
time in houses of moderate cost. It is the cheapest system to 
instal. It does away with bulky radiators which so often, if not 
carefully disposed, disfigure the rooms. It has the advantage of 
bringing into the house a continuous supply of fresh air — the 
feature which recommends the system very strongly over the 
use of Steam or Hot Water, which latter two systems heat over 
and over again the air that has remained in each room since it 
was last ventilated. So much for the good qualities of Hot Air. 
On the other side of the case there is the objection that the inflow 
of air brings with it a great deal of dust—a fault that is not inher¬ 
ent in Steam or Hot Water. The cost of maintenance is higher 
than either of the other two systems. This is because you 
naturally have to burn more coal in heating a steady supply of 
fresh cold air. On one side is the cost and on the other side the 
advantage of having fresh air. 
To get down to actual figures, which, however, can be only 
approximate, a hot air furnace will burn, say, thirteen tons of coal 
a year in a house which would be heated by a steam heater burn¬ 
ing ten tons or by a hot water heater burning nine. 
Hot Air heating has been very much improved within the 
last few years. The older form of furnace was merely a red hot 
stove in a box. The air from the outside was drawn into the 
bottom of the box, passed over the red hot iron and was forced 
into the rooms, usually at a very high temperature, and devitalized 
through the loss of oxygen, or “burned” as it was commonly 
known. Nowadays the better qualities of furnafces have much 
larger radiating surfaces and they warm a much greater volume 
of air in a given time but to a lower temperature. 
One of the common objections offered to the use of a hot air 
furnace is that it cannot be made to heat one or two faraway rooms 
against the wind. This is to a certain extent true, and it is 
unquestionably better to use Steam or Hot Water where a house is 
large and not compactly planned, approximating a square. 
The best types of hot air furnaces provide for this off-quoted 
difficulty in two ways. One type of furnace has vertical ser- 
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