Architecture

"I am not the inventor of any of those stoves or grates, that have been offered to the public for sale, under my name."

"And in the choice of a grate, as in every thing else, beauty and elegance may easily be united with the most perfect simplicity.—Indeed they are incompatible with every thing else."

"1. Fire... throws out light, heat, and smoke (or fume.) The [first] two... move in right lines, and with great swiftness; the latter is but just separated from the fuel, and then moves only as it is carried by the stream of rarefied air; and without a continual accession and recession of air, to carry off the smoky fumes, they would remain crowded about the fire, and stifle it."

"It seems that those who have hitherto built or caused chimneys to be erected, have only taken care to contrive in the chambers certain places where wood may be burnt, without making a due reflection that the wood in burning ought to warm those chambers, and the persons who are in them; at least, it is certain that but a very little heat is felt of the fire made in the ordinary chimneys, and that they might be ordered so as to send forth a great deal more, only by changing the disposition of their jambs and wings."

"In modern built houses where the doors and windows are... made to close with such accuracy that no crevice is left for the passage of the air from without... When there is a fire burning... as the air necessary to supply the current up the Chimney where the fire burns cannot be had in sufficient quantities... through the very small crevices of the doors and windows, the air in the room becomes rarefied, not by heat, but by subtraction of that portion of air which is employed in keeping up the fire, or supporting the combustion of the fuel, and in consequence of this rarefaction, its elasticity is diminished, and being at last overcome by the pressure of the external air of the atmosphere, this external air rushes into the room by the only passage left for it... by the open Chimney."

"Till more effectual methods can take place, it would be of great service, to oblige all those Trades who make use of large Fires, to carry their Chimnies much higher into the air than they are at present..."

"But Chimnies so circumstanced may very frequently be prevented from smoking even without opening any new passage for the external air, merely by diminishing the draught... up the Chimnies... by altering both Fire-places upon the principles recommended... in the foregoing..."

"The most obvious remedy... is to provide for the supply of fresh air necessary for keeping up the fires by opening a passage for the external air into the room by a shorter road than down one of the Chimnies..."

"Whilst these are belching it forth their sooty jaws, the City of London resembles the face rather of Mount Ætna, the Court of Vulcan, , or the Suburbs of Hell, than an Assembly of Rational Creatures... For when in all other places the Aer is most Serene and Pure, it is here Ecclipsed with such a Cloud of Sulphure, as the Sun itself... is hardly able to penetrate... and the weary Traveller, at many Miles distance, sooner smells, than sees the City to which he repairs."

"[N]ear half the children that are born and bred in London die under two years of age. ...[T]he constant and unremitting Poison is communicated by the foul Air, which, as the Town still grows larger, has made regular and steady advances in its fatal influence. ...[W]e are accustomed to read with great composure of the deaths of thosands of infants, suffocated every Year by Smoke and Stenches which good policy might in a great measure remove."

"The enormous waste of fuel in London may be estimated by the vast dark cloud which continually hangs over this great metropolis, and frequently overshadows the whole country, far and wide; for this dense cloud is certainly composed almost entirely of unconsumed coal, which having stolen wings from the innumerable fires of this great city has escaped by the Chimnies, and continues to sail about in the air, till having lost the heat which gave it volatility, it falls in a dry shower of extremely fine black dust to the ground, obscuring the atmosphere in its descent, and frequently changing the brightest day into more than Egyptian darkness."

"In lighting a coal fire more wood should be employed than is commonly used, and fewer coals; and as soon as the fire burns bright, and the coals are well lighted, and not before, more coals should be added to increase the fire to its proper size."

"Though the saving of fuel which will result from the improvements to the forms of Chimney Fire-places here recommended will be very considerable, yet I hope to be able to show in a future Essay, that still greater savings may be made, and more important advantages derived from the introduction of improvements I shall propose in Kitchen Fire-places."

"[N]ot from the Culinary fires, which for being weak, and lesse often fed below, is with such ease dispelled and scattered above, as it is hardly at all discernible, but from some few particular Tunnells and Issues, belonging only to Brewers, Diers, Lime-burners, Salt, and Sope-boylers, and some other private Trades, One of whose Spiracles alone, does manifestly infest the Aer, more than all the Chimnies of London put together besides."

"And what is all this, but that Hellish and dismall Cloud of SEA-COALE? which is not onely perpetually imminent over her head... so universally mixed with the otherwise wholsome and excellent Aer, that her Inhabitants breathe nothing but an impure and thick Mist, accompanied with a fuliginous and filthy vapour, which renders them obnoxious to a thousand inconveniences, corrupting the Lungs, and disordering the entire habit of their Bodies; so that Catharrs, Phthisicks, Coughs and Consumptions, rage more in this one City, than in the whole Earth besides."

"I hope likewise to be able to show in an Essay on Cottage Fire-places, which I am now preparing for publication, that three quarters, at least, of the fuel which cottagers now consume in cooking their victuals, and in warming their dwellings, may with great ease, and without any expensive apparatus, be saved."

"All these people come to see the White House and they see practically nothing that dates back before 1948. Every boy who comes here should see things that develop his sense of history. For the girls, the house should look beautiful and lived-in. They should see what a fire in the fireplace and pretty flowers can do for a house; the White House rooms should give them a sense of all that. Everything in the White House must have a reason for being there. It would be sacrilege merely to "redecorate" it—a word I hate. It must be restored—and that has nothing to do with decoration. That is a question of scholarship."

"A good night for the fireplace to be crackling with flames - or so he figured, Crumpling the papers he could only see As testimonials to long plateaus of emptiness."

"A woman who taught at Berkeley dropped in on me once and saw a book burning in the fireplace. She pointed at it in terror, and I explained that it was a crummy ghostwritten life of a movie star and that it was an act of sanitation to burn it rather than sending it out into the world which was already clogged with too many copies of it. But she said, "You shouldn’t burn books" and began to cry."

"And I live with the dead – my mother, my sister, my grandfather, my father... .Every day is the same – my friends have stopped coming – their laughter disturbs me, tortures me.. ..my daily walk round the old castle becomes shorter and shorter, it tires me more and more to take walks. The fire in the fireplace is my only friend – the time I spend sitting in front of the fireplace gets longer and longer.. ..at its worst I lean my head against the fireplace overwhelmed by the sudden urge – Kill yourself and then it’s all over. Why live? I light the candle – my huge shadow springs across half the wall, clear up to the ceiling and in the mirror over the fireplace I see the face of my own ghost."

"Lele liilii ka lehu o kapuahi (He is scattering the ashes of the fireplace)."

"The prisoner was no longer fastened to the bed save by one leg. Before the seven men had had time to recover themselves and spring upon him, he had bent over to the fireplace, reached his hand towards the furnace, then rose up, and now Thenardier, the Thenardiess, and the bandits, thrown by the shock into the back part of the room, beheld him with stupefaction, holding above his head the glowing chisel, from which fell an ominous light, almost free and in a formidable attitude."

"It happened because one day I was sitting one side of the fireplace, and my wife was sitting on the other, and I suddenly said to her, "Wouldn’t it be a good idea to write a story about some boys on an island, showing how they would really behave, being boys and not little saints as they usually are in children’s books.” And she said, "That’s a first-class idea! You write it!" So I went ahead and wrote it."

"The grate had been removed from the wide overwhelming fireplace, to make way for a fire of wood, in the midst of which was an enormous log glowing and blazing, and sending forth a vast volume of light and heat; this I understood was the Yule-log, which the Squire was particular in having brought in and illumined on a Christmas eve, according to ancient custom."

"Our society, it turns out, can use modern art. A restaurant, today, will order a mural by Míro in as easy and matter-of-fact a spirit as, twenty-five years ago, it would have ordered one by Maxfield Parrish. The president of a paint factory goes home, sits down by his fireplace — it looks like a chromium aquarium set into the wall by a wall-safe company that has branched out into interior decorating, but there is a log burning in it, he calls it a fireplace, let’s call it a fireplace too — the president sits down, folds his hands on his stomach, and stares at two paintings by Jackson Pollock that he has hung on the wall opposite him. He feels at home with them; in fact, as he looks at them he not only feels at home, he feels as if he were back at the paint factory."

"Here's a list of Dutch paintings intended for the Salon: - Israëls, ...https://philamuseum.org/collection/object/102868 Old Friends (Silent Conversation) an old man sits in a hut by the fireplace in which a small piece of peat barely glows in the twilight. For it's a dark hut... His dog, who's grown old with him, sits beside him–those two old creatures look at each other, they look each other in the eye, the dog and the old man. ...Nothing else – the twilight, the quiet, the loneliness of those two old creatures, man and dog... that old man thinking... that face – a melancholy, satisfied, submissive expression.. .I definitely know of no other painting than this Israëls that can stand up to Millet's 'Death and the Woodcutter'... on the other hand I know of no other painting that could stand up to this Israëls than Millet's Death and the woodcutter... Moreover, I feel in my mind an irresistible desire to bring together that painting by Israëls and that other by Millet and make them complement each other.."

"Gwell eo beroù war an oaled / Eget e ti marc'h rous ar pried (Better skewers on the fireplace than in the spouse's russet horse shed.)"

"In another moment Alice was through the glass, and had jumped lightly down into the Looking-glass room. The very first thing she did was to look whether there was a fire in the fireplace, and she was quite pleased to find that there was a real one, blazing away as brightly as the one she had left behind. "So I shall be as warm here as I was in the old room," thought Alice: "warmer, in fact, because there'll be no one here to scold me away from the fire. Oh, what fun it'll be, when they see me through the glass in here, and can't get at me!""

"I interrupted the old man in midsentence and stood straight up from the rocker. It felt as if a pulse of energy ran up my spine, compressing my lungs, electrifying my skin, bringing the hairs on the back of my neck to full alert. I moved closer to the fireplace, unable to absorb its heat. "Are you saying what I think you're saying?" My brain was taking on too much knowledge. There was overflow and I needed to shake off the excess. The old man looked at nothing and said, "We are God's debris.""

"In the winter on a Sunday afternoon, I can spend six hours in front of the fireplace, just looking at the flames and thinking. In the evening, I’m drunk with beautiful thoughts. My wife says to me, ‘What are you looking at?’ I say, ‘The fire.’ We have to take a step backward."

"There is nothing of greater interest connected with the Durham furnace than the manufacture of iron stove plates and their artistic embellishments. ...[T]he manufacture of iron stoves, for heating of buildings, was begun at the furnace about 1741, when controlled by George Taylor, James Logan and James Morgan, father of General , iron master. These were called the "Adam and Eve" stoves from the figures, cast on them. ...In 1745, the furnace began casting the famous "Franklin Stove," or fire-place, and continued until it blew out, 1793. They were favorably received and with minor improvements, extensively manufactured. It was the first stove made that could be utilized for baking and cooking, having an extra door above the fuel door, a plate the whole length of the stove and a descending flue the same as the Prince Rupert stove, 1678, cast in England. It was improved, 1754, by a door on one side. This was known as the Philadelphia pattern, though smaller in size. The Franklin sold at £4. 6s, each at the furnace, and at Philadelphia £18 per ton, the price varying with the metal. About 1775, a stove pattern, artistically decorated with a bony skeleton inscribed on the center of the side plates, grasping a bone in one hand in the act of striking a man, near the end of the plate, while another figure on rear end of plate is standing in a frightened attitude looking on the unequal battle. Beneath the figures is the following inscription:HIR. FEIT. MIT. MIR. DER. BITER. TOTER. BRINCT. MICH.INTOTS. NO.A free translation of this Swedish-German is "Here (man) presumes to fight with me, bitter death, but he cannot overcome death.""

""Do not repine, my friends," said Mr. Pecksniff, tenderly. "Do not weep for me. It is chronic." And with these words, after making a futile attempt to pull off his shoes, he fell into the fireplace."

"Announced by all the trumpets of the sky, Arrives the snow, and, driving o'er the fields, Seems nowhere to alight: the whited air Hides hills and woods, the river, and the heaven, And veils the farmhouse at the garden's end. The sled and traveller stopped, the courier's feet Delayed, all friends shut out, the housemates sit Around the radiant fireplace, enclosed In a tumultuous privacy of storm."

"The foamed concrete used in this investigation was a 500- to 880-kg/m3 (31-to 55-lb/ft3) mixture that did not contain aggregate. Admixture materials, dispersing agents, chopped synthetic fiber, and s were added to the foamed concrete to improve the strength and toughness and produce a more uniform material. The particular type of foamed concrete prepared for this research program would be classed as a neat-cement cellular concrete modified with admixtures (Legatski 1994)."

"To minimize shrinkage... [water] ratio[s] should be kept as low as possible."

"This CPAR project was undertaken to test, demonstrate, and commercialize a new construction system... [which] employs stay-in-place forms made from fiberglass-reinforced cement boards."

"Foamed concrete is a desirable material... because of its durability, thermal-insulating, and fire-retarding properties. The low density of foamed concretes produces a substantial reduction in the dead weight of the structures in which it is used."

"Foamed concrete is also referred to as aerated or cellular concrete. Foamed concretes are lightweight concretes [typically... with densities ranging from 320 to 1,920 kg/m3 (20 to 120 lb/ft3)] that are prepared by adding air cells... typically... from 0.1 to 1 mm (0.004 to 0.04 in.) in diameter (Aldrich and Mitchell 1976)."

"Usually... cement content lie[s] between 300 to 500 kg/m3. ...[G]ain in strength is small above... 500 kg/m3."

"Fly ash is added... up to 100% of the [ordinary Portland cement] OPC content, to enhance workability and increase long-term strength... Because of greater surface area... [these] mixes have a greater water demand... [F]ly ash... leads to a more uniform bubble structure... which... improve[s] some... engineering properties..."

"Determine the amount of air (kg/m3) in the mix from... the target density of the foam."

"Fly ash can be used as a total replacement for sand to produce... a dry density of up to 1400 kg/m3."

"If [used,] ... dosage should not be more than 0.2[% by weight of cement] bwc."

"[T]rial mixes should be done... to determine workability... plastic density... [and compressive strength.] Specimens shall be cast and tested for... compliance of required specifications."

"Foamed-concrete panels are... an economical component in construction because they are not subject to attack by insects or fungi. Foamed concrete will not degrade or depolymerize because of oxidation or photolytic reactions. In the event of fire, foamed concrete will slow the spread of the fire and will not emit smoke or toxic fumes (Short and Kinniburgh 1981, 1978)."

"Ignore the amount of water... in the foam in the mix design calculation."

"Fire rating of foamed concrete is far superior to... brick work or dense concrete."

"[D]ry ingredients like cement, sand, sand + fly ash or fly ash alone shall be... thoroughly mixed to ensure even distribution... [B]locks may be de-moulded after 24 hours"

"Foamed light weight concrete... bricks, blocks or poured in-situ is used for over flat roofs... cold storage walls or... s for low-rise buildings."

"[F]oam... shall be added in measured amount to the slurry of cement, sand, fly ash and water in the batch mixer... mixing to get uniform consistency... of desired wet unit weight..."