Lectures on Ventilation/Lecture III
LECTURE III.
In my first lecture, I endeavored to show how much we were suffering from the effects of foul air, and the advantages to be gained by supplying ourselves all the time with pure air. Because we must first feel that there is something to be gained before we will make any great effort towards obtaining a given result.
In my second lecture we considered the general principles governing the circulation of air, the courses of its movements, the manner of the action of heat upon different kinds of substances, which creates a constant, ceaseless motion of the air, in all places, from the minutest corked bottle to the vast currents that sweep over the face of the earth.
Now, having learned the necessity for pure, fresh air, and studied the general laws governing its circulation, let us apply these principles to every-day life. To every-day life ? I should say every-hour life—nay, every moment of our lives; for twenty times every minute of our entire life, from the cradle to the grave, do we breathe what ought to be pure air. Is it always pure?
If we breathe one single breath, in the entire day, of impure air, it will weaken us, deduct from our capacity to attend to our daily duties, and shorten our lives, in exact mathematical proportion to the amount of impurity in that one single breath. Now, we breathe twenty times every minute, twelve hundred times every hour, twenty-eight thousand times every day, and nothing but absolute and perfectly pure air answers the exact requirements of perfect health.
Well, you may ask, at first thought, if fresh air is such a panacea for all evils, and there is such an abundance of it out of doors, why not breathe it, and always enjoy perfect health?
Think one moment. I eat my breakfast in the morning, generally refreshed by a night of good sound sleep, (for I sleep with my windows open.) Immediately after breakfast, I enter the cars to come to the city. What a smell comes from the car as the door is opened! and unless I wish to incur the displeasure, or provoke the indignation, of almost every passenger, by opening a window, I am obliged to sit in that foul, offensive atmosphere, and breathe the poisonous exhalations from my own lungs, and that from dozens of others, some of them, it may be, badly diseased, (most persons lungs are diseased in this country, from breathing foul air, and many other diseases besides consumption are produced thereby.)
Thus, in one half hour, I have inhaled six hundred times of this foul and poisonous air, and the blood has carried it to every portion of my body, so that my entire system is completely saturated, poisoned, yes, thoroughly poisoned by it, from the crown of my head to the soles of my feet.
And thus is the day commenced. Your blood is thoroughly poisoned before your breakfast is digested; for your breakfast will no more digest without pure air than the coal in your stove will burn without it. You are subjected to headache, dyspepsia, and a half dozen other aches and pains, and are tired out long before night. And thus you are killed long before you would die if you breathed pure air only.
And am I relieved from the difficulty when I arrive in the city? Start to-morrow morning at the Delaware River, on Arch or Walnut Streets, or any other street, and go to the Schuylkill. Inquire of every individual, in office, store, dwelling or factory, if he knows whether he had pure air to breathe all day, or whether he can tell you, with any degree of accuracy, how pure the air was in the room he occupied for any hour of that day.
I fully believe there is not one in ten—no, not one in a hundred—of the most intelligent men in that entire street, doctor, lawyer, architect, or any other, that can give you an accurate account of the condition of the air breathed during any one hour of the day. That is not all. There is scarcely one in a hundred that can satisfy you, by an intelligent description, of the means used for providing it:
First—Assuming the air outside to be pure, that there was a constant, positive and sufficient supply of that outside air introduced.
Secondly—That that pure air was not deteriorated by overheating, or contaminated by being mixed with the poisonous gases of the burning coal.
Thirdly—That there was sufficient moisture added to it to compensate for its increased capacity for moisture, due to its expansion by the additional heat given to it, (which is a very important thing.)
Fourthly—That there was any accurate, positive means provided for insuring the fresh air to be brought within reach of the lungs of those for whom it was intended.
And, lastly—That there was a positive means provided for the removal of all the poisoned air thrown from the lungs, so that none could possibly be re-breathed.
No; you will find them in close, unventilated offices, in close factories, in almost air-tight dwellings. In the large stores they do better.
The air is very commonly overheated, it is often mixed with impurities, and very seldom supplied with a proper amount of additional moisture.
The air is often so dry, that in a few minutes conversation the linings of the air-passages to your lungs become parched and husky, producing irritation and a feverish condition of the system. And even in this room, to-night, do you see any opening at your feet, connected with a heated flue, for drawing the foul air from the floor as fast as thrown from your lungs? I believe there is not a square inch provided for that purpose.
Or, do you see any escape immediately above the gas-lights, for carrying off the burned air while hot enough to escape? Not one. There are two or three openings, I think, in the back part of the room, just at the ceiling, but for your breath to get there, it must rise and pass by the zone of respiration, and much of it be again re-breathed; and the products of combustion, as we have seen, would cool sufficiently to fall to the floor long before they reached that point.
I take the liberty of calling your attention to this with more freedom, because it does not indicate any special inattention on the part of the Managers. It is not an exceptional case, but it is the rule.
It is the popular opinion of the proper means of ventilation. Go with me, if you please, to that magnificent building, completed but a few years since, at a cost of half a million of dollars, and given by its noble and generous founder to the city of New York. You will notice, inscribed above the entrance, cut in the solid stone, "To the Arts and Sciences." Look in this reading-room—perhaps the most useful and most appreciated of any public reading-room in the United States. See the large numbers of honest, industrious mechanics, snatching an hour from their labors, to look over the current literature of the day. Here, certainly, we shall find the most perfect arrangement for heating and ventilation that our knowledge of the arts and sciences could suggest. Let us see the arrangements for bringing in the fresh air, for warming it in cold weather, and for removing the foul air.
What! no provision for a regular supply of fresh air? Not one foot, not one inch—neither are there any regular flues for the removal of the foul air. And this most remarkable condition of things is but repeated in the magnificent hotels, marble palaces used as offices, and in many of the new and splendid colleges; and, we might almost say, in all other buildings throughout the length and breadth of our land.
Thus you see how difficult it is for one to mingle freely in the society of his fellow-men, under existing circumstances, without being subjected to being poisoned by foul air. In going from here to my home, to-night, I shall have to ride in those cars, the air of which I dread more than I ever dreaded the small-pox or cholera. I have been in hospitals where I have seen much of both. They may slay their thousands, but foul air its tens of thousands. And it is only when I get to my room, where I shall probably sleep to-night with two windows well open, allowing the unobstructed breezes of half a mile of open country to sweep through my chamber, that I shall feel entirely secure from the contaminating influences of foul air, and enjoy to its full extent the greatest of God's temporal blessings to man—pure air.
I have no new patent idea to present to you, which shall secure to you at all times perfectly pure air, without any further trouble on your part. There are no two constitutions precisely alike, any more than there are two human faces, or two handwritings, and there are no two hours in our entire life in which all the physical conditions of our body are precisely the same. It would be just as absurd, therefore, to go to a ventilating establishment, and tell the proprietor to ventilate your house or office, and pay the bill when it came in, and content yourself by saying: "Well, I am glad this ventilating business is done with. I have got my house ventilated, and the bills paid, and I am glad I am through with that vexatious business." I say this would be just as absurd as it would be, in case you had some pain or ache, to go to your doctor and get some medicine, and therewith content yourself, and say: "Well, I am glad this doctoring business is over with; I have been dreading it all my life. I have been to the doctor's at last, have been doctored, and got my medicine and paid my bill, and so I am through with that vexatious business."
No—you must first feel that fresh air is worth taking some trouble to obtain. You must then make it a study how to obtain it without chilling or overheating your body, in winter and in summer, at night and in the day time, when you are lying down and when you are sitting up, before eating and after eating, before exercising, while exercising, and after exercising—when you are well and when you are sick, when you are alone and when you are in the crowded cars, or in a crowded room, in wet weather and in dry, and for the ever varying changes of the external atmosphere—all these conditions require separate and intelligent thought.
In summer we depend almost exclusively on the natural movements of the air. To cause the air to move is then the great matter. We must then remember that the great masses of air move horizontally, not perpendicularly. Of course, there are many little disturbing influences, but I mean the great mass of the air moves over the surface of the earth in horizontal strata. You can see this by the smoke of the locomotive on the prairie, which can be seen sometimes for twenty or thirty miles, stretching along just above the horizon. All flues, therefore, are of little account in summer. We must depend on open doors and windows. Suppose you wish to ventilate your room in the morning, the air outside having become a little warmer than the air inside, and the upper parts of the window only lowered: the warmer air would flow across the top of the room, leaving the air undisturbed in the lower and colder part. In this case, the window should be raised from the bottom, or a door opened that would afford an escape for the air.
But again, suppose this same room to want ventilating in the evening. The room has become warm through the day, and the outside evening air is cooler than the room, and then, if you raise the windows from the bottom only, the cooler air will flow across the bottom of the room, leaving the upper part undisturbed and foul.
No doubt you have all noticed, frequently, that in going into a room in the evening, when your heads were above the window opening, it would be quite hot, but if you stooped down below the line of the open window, it would be cool and pleasant. All windows should be made to lower from the top, to meet this special case. If you are boarding, or are so unfortunate as to be put in a room where the great blunder has been made of not having the windows to lower, go to the nearest carpenter shop next morning, before breakfast, and get a chisel, and cut six or eight inches off the little strip which supports the sash, and, with a gimlet, bore a hole directly through the sash, on both sides, and with a nail you can keep the sash up in its place, when necessary. I have had hundreds, yes, I suppose, thousands, made to lower this way in the hospitals.
Motion, motion is the great desideratum in summer. You have all noticed, no doubt, how pleasant it is to go into a cool room, like a parlor, that has been kept shut up on a hot summer's day ; but in a short time it begins to feel oppressive, and it is more comfortable to have the windows open, and a circulation of air, even if it should be a little hotter than the stagnant cool air.
Never sleep with closed windows in summer. It is in winter, however, that the greatest care is required in providing a constant supply of pure air. If we would but accustom our minds to comprehend, readily and quickly, that cold air falls and warm air rises, it would assist us in our conclusions. We all know that, of course, but we do not practice applying it readily and quickly on all occasions.
In summer, as I have said, the air moves horizontally, and then windows and doors are the great means of ventilation; but as cold weather approaches, we must keep the windows shut, excepting when in bed. In winter, therefore, we must resort to flues for the means of creating a circulation, and for conveying the air from one part to another. A flue is simply a passage—a communication—for air of different temperatures. A flue has no power to create a draught. If the air within is colder, it will have the power to fall ; if warmer, it will be driven up.
For illustrating this, I have here some glass tubes about two feet long and two inches diameter.
The form of a flue has but little to do with the draught; the height has a slight influence, but bear in mind constantly that the great moving power in all flues is the variation of temperature.
Now, let us make a practical application of this principle.
Wait a moment: just let us lay this one aside, but not forget it, as we shall want to refer to it in a few moments, and try another experiment which has some bearing upon the subject.
I have here
Now, suppose that, instead of letting this air expand, we should put a weight on it, so as to keep it in its place, how much do you think we should have to place on? Two thousand one hundred and sixty pounds, or about one ton. Now, what do we find these 2160 pounds to represent? It is the weight of a column of atmosphere with a base of one foot square, or fifteen pounds multiplied by 144 square inches—it is the weight that would rest upon the piston if all the air was taken out from under it. Therefore, if you add about 500° of heat to a cubic foot of air, it makes it two cubic feet of air; or, if you attempt to keep it from expanding, you must put a ton weight upon it.
Mark one thing, however, if it takes ten ounces of coal to heat that air to 490°, which we do by piling our ton weight upon it, it will take fourteen ounces of coal if we allow it to expand to two feet. In the former case, where the air remains stationary, it had done no work. It was ready to go to work, but it had not commenced. But in the case of its expansion, it had done a great work. What was it? Why it had lifted that ton of atmospheric air one foot in height, and that work was what used up the difference between ten parts and fourteen parts of coal (I don't trouble you with fractions).
You see, therefore, to make the air quit the earth and ascend into the upper regions, requires a positive power, the same as it does to drive some poor simple people away from the fire on a cold day.
We often say that, by heating air, we give it power to ascend; instead of which heating it destroys its power to maintain its position. It weakens—enervates it—so that its neighbors easily drive it out and take its place.
One cubic foot of air, diluted to two feet, would be driven about two miles and a half high before it found any body as weak as itself, for every 350 feet in height, in round numbers, the pressure diminishes by an amount equal to one degree, or forced under water thirty-four feet reduces it to one-half its bulk.
Now, let us go back and finish our syphon, or flue experiment.
Here we have our little glass house again. We will take the roof off and put a pretty large family in it—I mean large in numbers, if not in size. You may call it a school, or public meeting, or church, or whatever you please. Suppose, for illustration, we call it a church, and we will call this larger light in this end the minister speaking to the congregation. You see, the lights are a good deal agitated, and flare around a good deal.
There is a rush of air down at this end, and, as it becomes heated, it rises at the other. Let us cover about one-half of this up. Now see what a rush of air there is down these flues, instead of up them, as there ought to be. Here, you see, the main body of the building, though much shorter than the flues, forms the heated leg of the syphon; and you may thus recognize why many of the ventilating flues, put in the cold outside walls of many of our large buildings, persist in working the wrong way, and cold air blows down there, instead of the foul air going up.
But there seems to be too much draught. Let us put the roof on. Ah, that is better; but, then, what a draught there is down this chimney-flue. Call the sexton, and have that stopped up quickly, or those sitting near there will soon catch their death of cold, and will never come here again.
You see, however, they shine very brightly, notwithstanding all the draught, but there, now, it is all closed up as snugly as the most fashionable church in town. See how quiet and peacefully they burn now.
Ah, there is one just gone to sleep. You must excuse him, he probably was up most of the night with a sick child. And there goes another. I think he must have been very busy for the last week settling up his last year's accounts. Just see, they are going to sleep so fast, I don't think we can pretend to give excuses for them all.
And, now, is not that a brilliant congregation to be preaching to? Every one dead asleep excepting the preacher himself, and I suspect he feels stupid enough to go to sleep, but it would not look well; and he has to tax his energies so severely he will hardly get over it, so as to be good for anything for the balance of the week.
You may think this an exaggerated representation of the real facts. Do not deceive yourselves. A few months since I was requested by one of the congregation to visit a building within a few minutes' walk of this place, and see if there was not some defect in the ventilation. The gentleman stated to me that he sometimes attended the class-meeting, and would be glad to go oftener, but it was held in the basement story, and it was quite impossible for him to keep awake, as he had to get up and go out two or three times during the evening, to get a little fresh air, or he could not keep awake.
I examined it. The ceilings were low—only nine or ten feet;—then there were two old leaky portable furnaces, which were used as occasion required for heating the large room above, or the basement room when the class-meeting was held.
The only ventilation they had was to let off the surplus heat (if they had any, which was seldom) into the room above.
Now for fresh air. By a very careful and minute examination, I discovered a little pipe (I think it was about six inches in diameter) to each stove (both of which would not be over half as large as what I have to supply my own bedroom), for the supply of the fresh air for that whole congregation. Fresh air, did I say ? Well, let us see where this fresh air comes from. The janitor, after taking us down and showing where he kept the ashes, wood, old benches, and all sorts of rubbish, was about going up, but said I, "Where is the part where you get the fresh air to the furnaces?" "Oh," he said, "he could not get to that, it was such a rough place, and there was a sewer or gutter (from the adjoining graveyard I suppose) running right across it." And from that place, too rough to be got at, with an open sewer running through, and too foul to go into, was where they got the fresh air (!) from for the whole of that congregation to breathe.
And do you suppose this is an exception? Let me tell you. During the first year of the late war I was called upon by the Sanitary Commission to examine the hospitals in Washington City with reference to their ventilation. A large number of the churches in that city were used for hospital purposes, and many of them were heated by hot-air furnaces, and in not one single instance had they fresh air boxes to them, neither had they any means for carrying off the foul air. The furnaces were generally placed in a hole excavated under the main part of the building, and all the ground around them left exposed, and the air was sucked in from the fermenting, decaying vegetable mould under the building. And this place around the furnace was the place where all the filth and old rubbish was thrown to get it out of the way, and it was thoroughly out of the way too, for the surgeon in charge or any inspector never got there to see it. In some cases I found this space around the furnace used as the dead house!
Did I say there was no attempt in any of those buildings for systematic ventilation? I ought to have made one exception.
I called one morning about ten o'clock at one of the finest new churches, which was then being occupied as a hospital, and asked for the surgeon in charge. He had not arrived. (They did not often venture in before eleven o'clock, the wards became so foul during the night it took till that time, with the windows up, to get them fit for the surgeon in charge to venture in.) I inquired of the ward master how the building was ventilated. "Oh, very well—very well, indeed—they had good ventilation," pointing up to a large, splendid ventilator in the ceiling. "Do you keep that always open?" I asked. "Oh, certainly," he replied. But I always have a great suspicion of those ceiling ventilators, as they are generally shut. So I walked around the ward, and when under it asked him again if he thought that was open. A smile came over his face as he discovered, for the first time, it was a handsome fresco painting on the solid wall. And this was the only practical systematic attempt at any ventilation in any of the church buildings used as hospitals in all Washington.
I have not been in any of the public schools in this city for many years," but a gentleman told me the other day that he called at one of the fashionable schools up town to get his son and take him home under his umbrella, as it had commenced raining since morning, and as he opened the school room door he was perfectly shocked, as he staggered back from the gust of horrible foul air that came rushing out of that room.
I have examined most of the public schools in New York since I have those of Philadelphia.
They have a way of their own of doing public business over there. There has been a good deal said about ventilating public schools of late years, and as it was such a scientific and fashionable matter they must have their schools ventilated of course.
I was very unfortunate in my intercourse with the Directors of the Public Schools. I did not happen to meet with many of those high toned, liberal, scientific gentlemen that are on many of the committees, of course.
Those beautiful and ornamental gratings called registers are accepted as the external proof of good ventilation, suggesting as they do the flow of an abundance of pure fresh air. So registers were bought freely and put in all the rooms, top and bottom, with splendid red and green and blue tassels, altogether making a handsome show and doing the very able and scientific gentlemen on the School Boards great credit for their enterprise and great care for the welfare and interest of the pupils under their charge.
Now, let us examine the operation of these registers. Holding a handkerchief in front of them, there it remained perfectly motionless. It neither blew hot nor cold—it was perfectly lukewarm, motionless. Go to another— the same. And to another— the same. Well that is singular. Let us go on the roof and see what can be the matter. A careful search fails to discover any flues at all, but a mechanical examination shows that the coping-stone has been put on them, making all the flues as thoroughly air-tight as the solid wall—more perfectly capped than that chimney. There had been no attention paid to having the holes for the ventilating flues cut through the coping-stone.
Yes, I believe that to-day a large proportion of all those flues with the elegant ventilating registers at the top and bottom of the room, are capped and made as thoroughly air-tight as the solid wall, and are as perfect shams and as useless as the elegant frescoed ventilator on the solid wall of the church hospital in Washington.
I do not believe that Philadelphians have gone quite thus far in satisfying the public demand for ventilation in the public schools. They may not have done any more, but I believe they have not pretended to do quite as much.
Excuse me a few minutes; I must illustrate another very great deficiency. The simple illustration I will give you represents almost the universal condition of our hot-air furnaces.
Much complaint was made of the uncomfortable feeling in one of the large public schools, where they had some 1200 or 1500 scholars. I was called to examine it. I asked, as is my usual habit, if they evaporated plenty of water. "Oh, yes; they had given the janitor full directions about keeping the evaporating pans always full." I found the evaporating pans full, sure enough, rather to my surprise, but what do you think they were filled with? Several old brooms, half charred, and some old water buckets all fallen to pieces, and other rubbish thrown in there out of the way.
And now those of you who have been trusting to your servants to keep water in your furnaces, if you will take a candle when you go home and go down and examine your own furnaces, you will most likely find them dry, and if you go to the public schools in the morning you will see that they too are not an exception.
I wish I had time to explain the dreadful effect of this want of moisture in all our artificially heated rooms. The air in winter is very dry, the moisture is squeezed out as the water is squeezed out of this sponge. But as you heat it you enlarge its volume again, and it sucks up the moisture just as this sponge does, and if you do not supply this moisture in other ways it will suck the natural moisture from your skin and your lungs, creating that dry, parched, feverish condition so noticeable in our furnace and other stove-heated rooms. Few persons realize the great amount of water necessary to be evaporated to produce the natural condition of moisture corresponding with the increased temperature given the air in many of our rooms in winter.
I have copied a table expressing in grains troy the moisture contained in one cubic foot of air when saturated:
| Degrees Fahrenheit. |
Grains of vapor in cubic foot. | ||
| 10 | .......... .......... .......... .......... .......... | .8 | |
| 20 | .......... .......... .......... .......... .......... | 1 | .3 |
| 30 | .......... .......... .......... .......... .......... | 2 | . |
| 40 | .......... .......... .......... .......... .......... | 2 | .9 |
| 50 | .......... .......... .......... .......... .......... | 4 | . |
| 60 | .......... .......... .......... .......... .......... | 6 | . |
| 70 | .......... .......... .......... .......... .......... | 8 | . |
| 80 | .......... .......... .......... .......... .......... | 10 | . |
| 90 | .......... .......... .......... .......... .......... | 15 | . |
| 100 | .......... .......... .......... .......... .......... | 19 | . |
Thus you see, taking the air at 10° and heating up to 70°, the ordinary temperature of our rooms, requires about nine times the moistue contained in the original external atmosphere, and if heated to 100, as most of our hot-air furnaces heat the air, it would require about twenty-three times the amount in the external atmosphere.
This is a very interesting and important subject, but I am sorry I have not time for further explanation.
I see some kind friend has been around and opened the doors of our meeting-house and awakened the sleepers. And now you see the lights shine, and the cheeks glow as brightly as would those of our young ladies could they be persuaded to go skating, or take a five mile walk every day, rain or shine, and sleep with the windows open, and never ride in any of our cars, or go to parties or any other public gatherings unless the buildings where they are held are well ventilated.
But those dreadful drafts! People will not bear them. Let us see if we can accommodate them. Put on the roof, and here comes this dreadful current again down the ventilating flue. Well, ventilating flues have the name of being great humbugs. Let us shut them up. There are your poor consumptive patients—there they go, you see. One-half dead already, and the rest will soon follow if we cannot rescue them. Let us open the flue again. See how they brighten up as the fresh air comes in. There is no use of disputing about it, you must have a current of fresh air coming into the house or you will surely die.
Now let us change the programme. Let us build a fire in this fire-place in the lower story—that burns up brightly. Where does it get fresh air from now? There can be no current down the chimney. Let us search it out with this smoking taper. Ah, here it is coming down through the ventilator from the very top of the house. We will soon stop that by this cap. But see, it still burns as brightly as ever. Let us try again. Ah, do you see the smoke rushing down the second story chimney and across to the stairway, and down the stairs, and across the room again to this fire?
There is a valuable hint. Have you not noticed frequently gas in the room from the fire-place or stove, and especially at night? And do you see how easily it would be to account for it if the house were shut up tight at night, with a large fire in the kitchen or furnace in the cellar, and but a small fire in the second story? Don't you see how the whole products of combustion, all the poisonous gases, may be drawn out into the room? You often notice accounts of whole families being smothered to death in one night, but many seem to think if they are not smothered to death the first night, that it is not so very dangerous after all, and not knowing how to remedy it easily go on from day to day and sometimes escape the whole winter with a little of their lives left.
Now, let us put out the fire in the first story and make one in the second.
You must remember that this is not a fashionable double ceiled and plastered air-tight house. It is much more open, in proportion to its size, than any ordinary house. And now, as this lower flue has been so highly heated, it may take some time for the fire in the second story fire-place to become heated sufficiently in excess to cause the air to draw down the longest flue to the bottom of the house and up the stairs to the second story fire-place, but it will soon do it.
I wish you to notice one thing here particularly, and each one apply it to your own particular case. You know the lower part of the house is closed up tight to keep out the robbers, and if great care is not taken to give an abundant supply of fresh air to your chambers otherwise, it will be drawn up through the hall out of your kitchen and cellar, and as the cook has left the range lid off and shut the dampers, you will have a suffocating smell of gas all over the house. But the worst danger of all is the air that may be drawn in from an untrapped sewer or cesspool. This is a very common but great source of ill-health.
Sanitarians have given much attention to this subject lately, and Lave been astonished at the magnitude of the evil. I have long maintained that a family might go to the highest and most healthy location in the world, and by a little carelessness might accumulate sufficient filth around them, and by closing up the house at night and allowing the foul gases from untrapped sewers and cesspools to enter through the halls to their sleeping rooms, to thus make what would otherwise be a healthy place a very unhealthy one.
As a case in point, I would refer to a very interesting report of Doctors Palmer, Ford, and Earle, giving an account of their investigations of the causes of a severe epidemic that occurred in the summer of 1864 in a young ladies' seminary in Massachusetts, "The Maplewood Institute" is situated in Pittsfield, one of the most beautiful of those charming New England villages, which, to external appearances, are the very emblem of all that is pure and healthy. Yet even in this lovely place, from an ignorant or careless arrangement of the drains and cess-pools, much of the foul gas generated there found its way into the building,[1] making sixty-six out of seventy-four young ladies sick, fifty-seven of whom had the typhoid fever and thirteen died. Many similar cases are frequently occurring, some few of which, like this, are carefully investigated, and the causes removed. Many more, however, go unnoticed, and are accepted as special dispensations of Providence, when it is all due to our own negligence.
I want to show you an arrangement that ought to be in every house. We have seen the power of a fire to create a draft, and if you will think a little you will notice that the kitchen fire is the most considerable and most permanent power in ordinary dwellings, and this ought to be made use of to ventilate the kitchen, water-closet and bath-room in every house. But you must not make an opening directly into the kitchen flue; if you do you will interfere with the draft of the kitchen fire, and if you interfere with the kitchen fire you will soon wish yourself at anything but keeping house.
But we can easily get over that trouble. We will use this square glass box again to represent a flue. I don't mean this to represent the size—it ought to be twice that size. In the centre we will put a cold pipe, to show you that a pipe without any heat in it would only cause the foul air to tumble down into the room. Thus you see the smoke descending. We will substitute a pipe with a gas light to heat it. Now you see what a rapid current there is out of this large flue. See what a splendid arrangement this is for ventilating, and it may be extended so as to ventilate the whole house.
I had an opportunity, during the late war, of thoroughly testing this system of ventilation in the government hospitals.
Let me say here that a very common mistake in making ventilating flues is, that they are entirely too small to be of any value. One of these little Philadelphia flues, four by nine inches, made with rough bricks, and nearly or entirely choked up with mortar, as many of them are frequently found, is of no account. They are simply a deception, and a perfect provocation to a sensible man.
I commenced by making some in Washington, for single wards, thirty inches square, but in St. Louis, and Louisville, and Nashville, where buildings four or five stories high were used for hospitals, I made them much larger, some three feet square and some four feet by six feet. Some buildings, where the ventilation was so bad and the water-closets were so offensive that the government had to abandon them, I had ventilated by these immense shafts, heated by the kitchen and laundry fires, which proved thoroughly efficient and entirely satisfactory.
I had hoped to have time to discuss the subject of heating more fully in connection with ventilation, but cannot; but I will state, in the simplest manner, a few of the leading points first.
You must have fresh air all the time. In summer you can get it by opening the doors and windows. In winter it must be warmed before entering the room. It must not enter the room cold and flow across the floor to the other side before it reaches the heating apparatus. You can bear a large amount of fresh air if it strikes you in the face and evenly over the whole body, but never let a jet of cold air blow upon any small portion of your body.
To avoid these local currents sucking in at cracks, you must make provision for the introduction of an amount of air larger than the sum of all these cracks, and your exhaust flue besides. This air must be partially warmed before entering. If this is done by a hot-air furnace, it must have a large fresh air box, which should be from eighteen inches to two feet for a large house. It should have a large evaporating vessel, with a ball-cock to supply it. You cannot get the servants to attend to it, and you must never allow the air from your cellar to enter your furnace to be driven up stairs. Never allow the furnace to get red-hot.
A hot water furnace disturbs the natural conditions of the air the least, and, on that account, is a very healthy means of artificially heating air. But they are necessarily expensive, and so few persons really appreciate the value of pure air, that but few will go to the expense of introducing them. It is a mistake to suppose that they do not dry the air, so to speak. You cannot elevate the temperature without increasing the capacity for moisture. A hot water furnace, therefore, requires the artificial evaporation of water to give the warmed air its true hygrometric condition.
Heating the air by steam is the next most healthy means; as the surfaces used are heated a little hotter, less of it answers the same purpose. The first cost is therefore less. It is the most rapid and convenient means of conveying heat to any distant point of anything now in use. Under the pressure of an ordinary boiler it will travel seven miles in one minute. The time I hope is not far distant when the subject of heating and ventilation will receive an amount of attention due to its importance. I believe then we shall have steam pipes laid through our streets, the same as gas and water now are. The present system of each man keeping up separate fires all over his house is as crude, and extravagant, and unnecessary as it would be for every man to make his own gas or have his own well for water.
Where a steam furnace is used, two-thirds of the heating surface should be put below the floor and fresh air brought into it, and from there conducted to the rooms through large pipes. This warmed air should be let into the room at the floor, and an opening into an exhaust flue, two-thirds the size of the inlet, should be provided at the floor for the escape of the foul air. The remaining one-third of the heating surface should be exposed in the halls and some in the other parts of the house, to heat by direct radiation, but under no circumstances should a room or office be occupied heated exclusively by direct radiation from exposed steam pipes. It is one of the worst, most unhealthy, killing systems in existence.
Steam furnaces require the evaporation of an additional amount of moisture as well as any other system of heating. According to Dr. Wetheral's investigation, it would require the evaporation on some days of nearly forty pounds of water every minute in the Senate Chamber to maintain the proper hygrometric condition. Probably one of the very best arrangements is to have a good steam furnace, with a large fresh air box letting in an abundance of air moderately warmed, and overflowing the house with this, and some direct radiation in the halls, and a good, bright, cheerful open fire in the family sitting-room.
But if you cannot have a steam or hot water furnace, you can make a room very comfortable indeed with a stove, if you will but introduce all the fresh air required for the room directly against or on top of the stove. No stove ought to be put up without having a supply of fresh air from the outside, and a large evaporating vessel, kept constantly filled with water, with an opening in the heated flue near the floor for the escape of the foul air.
In conclusion, allow me to urge upon you to examine your furnace this evening or to-morrow morning, and if there is no fresh air box communicating with the external atmosphere, go to the nearest carpenter's shop before going to your business, and get him to come at the earliest possible moment and put in a good large one, and if he asks you where you want the damper in the cold air box, tell him you don't want any.
Dampers in cold air boxes are handy things to have in the house, when used properly, but, like fire-arms, are very dangerous if you do not understand them. Yes, dampers in cold air boxes and other contrivances for keeping the fresh air out of houses, have killed more persons than all the fire-arms ever made in this country or any other.
If you have no evaporating vessel in the furnace, stop at your furnace man's, and tell him to put in two good large evaporating vessels in such a position that they will evaporate two or three buckets of water a day in cold weather.
And if you have a stove at your office, stop on your way down and buy a good large earthen pan to set on the top of the stove, and keep it always full of water. Make a pipe for the inlet of fresh air to every stove over which you have any control, and never remain in a room one day without a good opening at the floor for the escape of foul air.
And from my own experience, and that of many others whom I know to have given much attention to this subject, I can assure you, with the fullest confidence, that you will be most amply rewarded for your care in this respect by increased health, strength and happiness, and by the reasonable prospect of a long life.
- ↑ In addition to which there appeared to be a deficiency in the arrangements for ventilation.