Engineering

"There is, however, in Chimney Fire-places... one essential part, the grate, which cannot well be made of any thing else but iron..."

"[A]s it is the radiant heat alone which can be employed in heating a room, it becomes an object of much importance to determine how the greatest quantity of it may be generated... and how the greatest proportion possible of that generated may be brought into the room."

"[T]he quantity of radiant heat thrown into the room is diminished;—and it is easy to show that almost the whole of that absorbed by the metal is ultimately carried up the Chimney by the air, which, coming into contact with this hot metal, is heated and rarefied by it, and... goes off with the smoke; and as no current of air ever sets from any part of the opening of a Fire-place into the room, it is impossible to conceive how the heat existing in the metal composing any part of the apparatus of the Fire-place, and situated within its cavity, can come, or be brought into the room."

"The bringing forward of the fire into the room, or rather bringing it nearer to the front of the opening of the Fire-place;—and the diminishing of the throat of the Chimney, being two objects principally had in view in the alterations... here recommended... both... may be attained merely by bringing forward the back of the chimney."

"Register-stoves have often been found to be of use, but because the great fault of all Fire-places constructed upon the common principles being the enormous dimensions of the throat of the Chimney, this fault has been in some measure corrected by them; but I will venture to affirm, that there never was a Fire-place so corrected that would not have been much more improved, and with infinitely less expence by the alterations here recommended..."

"In the course of my numerous experiments upon Chimnies I have taken much pains to determine the width proper to be given to this passage, and I have found that, when the back of the Fire-place is of the proper width, the best width for the throat of the Chimney, when the Chimney and the Fire-place are of the usual form and size, is four inches. Three inches might sometime answer, especially where the Fire-place is very small, and the Chimney good, and well situated; but as it is... of much importance to prevent those accidents... putting too many coals at once upon the fire... when the throats of Chimnies were... very narrow..."

"The width of the throat of Chimney... is taken from the breast of the Chimney to the back, and its length is taken at right angles to its width, or in a line parallel to the mantle..."

"When bricks are used they should be covered with a thin coating of plaster, which, when it is become perfectly dry, should be white-washed. The fire-stone should likewise be white-washed... and every part of the fire-place, which is not exposed to being foiled and made black by the smoke, should be kept as white and clean as possible. As white reflects more heat, as well as more light than any other colour, it ought always to be preferred for the inside of a Chimney Fire-place; and black, which reflects neither light nor heat, should be most avoided."

"As the two walls which form the new covings... are not parallel... but inclined, presenting an oblique surface towards the front of the Chimney, and as they are built perfectly upright, and quite flat, from the hearth to the top of the throat, where they end... an horizontal section of the throat will not be an oblong square; but its deviation from that form is a matter of no consequence; and no attempts should ever be made, by twisting the covings above, where they approach the breast of the Chimney, to bring it to that form."

"It will frequently happen that the back of a Chimney must be made wider than... the rule here given... This may be, either to accommodate the Fire-place to a stove... already on hand... or for other reasons... with no considerable inconvenience.—It will always be best however to conform to it as far as circumstances will allow."

"Lyndon's gone and dragged Nasser away from the fireplace and onto the balcony again. Once you get him out there, it's a helluva job to get him back to the fireplace again."

"Chimnies so often smoke when too large a quantity of fresh coals is put upon the fire. So many coals should never be put on the fire at once as to prevent the free passage of the flame between them. In short, a fire should never be smothered; and when proper attention is paid to the quantity of coals put on, there will be very little use for the poker; and this circumstance will contribute very much to cleanliness, and to the preservation of furniture."

"By the throat of a Chimney, I mean the lower extremity of its canal, where it unites with the upper part of its open Fire-place.—This throat is commonly found about a foot above the level of the lower part of the mantle, and it is sometimes contracted to a smaller size than the rest of the canal of the Chimney, and sometimes not."

"Now as the rays which are thrown off from burning fuel have this property in common with light, that they generate heat only when and where they are stopped or absorbed, and also in being capable of being reflected without generating heat at the surfaces of various bodies, the knowledge of these properties will enable us to take measures, with the utmost certainty, for producing the effect required... bringing as much radiant heat as possible into the room. This must be done, first, by causing as many as possible of the rays, as they are sent off from the fire in straight lines, to come directly into the room; which can only be effected by bringing the fire as far forward as possible, and leaving the opening of the Fire-place as wide and as high as can be done without inconvenience; and secondly, by making the sides and back of the fire-place of such form, and constructing them of such materials, as to cause the direct rays from the fire, which strike against them, to be sent into the room by reflection in the greatest abundance."

"All twists, bends, prominences, excavations, and other irregularities of form, in the covings... never fail to produce eddies in the current of air which is continually passing into, and through an open Fire-place in which a fire is burning;—and all such eddies disturb, either the fire, or the ascending current of smoke, or both; and not unfrequently cause the smoke to be thrown back into the room.—Hence... the covings... should never be made circular, or in the form of any other curve; but always quite flat."

"It is really astonishing how little attention is paid to events which happen frequently, however interesting they may be as objects of curious investigation, or however they may be connected with the comforts and enjoyments of life."

"It is likewise very important to "round off the breast of the chimney;" though this... is very often intirely neglected... by workmen..."

"[T]he best form for the vertical sides of a Fire-place, or the covings... is that of an upright plane, making an angle with the plane of the back of the Fire-place, of about 135 degrees.—According to the present construction of Chimnies this angle is 90 degrees... a right angle; but as... the two sides or covings of the Fire-place are parallel to each other, it is evident that they are very ill contrived for throwing into the room by reflection the rays..."

"The breast of a Chimney is that part of it which is immediately behind the mantle.—It is the wall which forms the entrance from below into the throat of the Chimney in front, or towards the room. — It is opposite to the upper extremity of the back of the open Fire-place, and parallel to it;—in short it may be said to be the back part of the mantle itself."

"All Chimney Fire-places, without exception... and even those which do not smoke, as well as those which do, may be greatly improved by making the alterations... here recommended; for it is by no means merely to prevent Chimnies from smoking that these improvements are recommended, but it is also to make them better in all respects... and when the alterations proposed are properly executed, which may very easily be done with the assistance of the following plain and simple directions, the Chimnies will never fail to answer... even beyond expectation. The room will be heated much more equally and more pleasantly with less than half the fuel used before, the fire will be more cheerful and more agreeable; and the general appearance of the Fire-place more neat and elegant, and the Chimney will never smoke."

"The best materials... are fire-stone, and common bricks and mortar. Both... are, fortunately, very cheap..."

"As the object... is to bring radiant heat into the room... that material is best for the construction of a Fire-place which reflects the most, or which absorbs the least of it; for that heat which is absorbed cannot be reflected. ...[W]e have only to find out ...what bodies acquire least heat when exposed to the direct rays of a clear fire ...And hence it appears that iron, and ...metals off all kinds, which ...grow very hot when exposed to the rays ...are to be reckoned among the very worst materials ...to employ in the construction of Fire-places."

"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."

"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."

"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."

"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."

"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."

"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.."

"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."

""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."

"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.""

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

"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.""

"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!""

"Air content is... reduced by the process of compaction, on account of the movement of air bubbles to the surface... [A]s much as 50 per cent of the entrained air may be lost after vibration for 2 1/2 minutes and as much as 80 per cent may be lost by vibration for 9 minutes."

"[A]dmixtures used in conjunction with air entraining agents will... significantly affect the amount of air entrained. The use of in concrete will reduce the amount of air entrained. Similarly, the use of calcium chloride also has the tendency to reduce and limit air entrainment."

"The constituents of the cement especially the alkali content plays an important part in the entrainment of air in concrete. Similarly, the fineness of cement is also a factor."

"The grading of aggregate has shown good influence on the quantity of air entrainment. It was established that the quantity of air increased from the lowest of sand to a peak at about F.M. of 2.5, and, thereafter, decreased sharply. The sand fraction of 300 and 150 microns showed a significant effect on the quantity of air entrainment. The higher quantity of these fractions resulted in more air entrainment."

"The amount of air entrainment is found to increase with the mixing time up to a certain time and thereafter with prolonged mixing the air entrainment gets reduced."

"The temperature of concrete at the time of mixing was found to have a significant effect on the amount of air entrainment. The amount of air entrainment decreases as the temperature of concrete increases."

"The Use of Preformed Foam... [A]lmost any desired density of concrete can be produced... dependent almost entirely on the amount of foam added. About two per cent by volume of a foaming agent is added to the water and mixed with compressed air in a mixing tube. ...The foam is delivered ... direct into the mixer in which the cement or cement sand mortar has previously been prepared. The product can be cast in situ or used for making precast blocks."

"The effects of the incorporation of each of nine different air-entraining admixtures in concrete were investigated by the making of a large number of batches of concrete under carefully controlled laboratory conditions. The results of tests on the plastic and hardened concrete specimens from batches made in parallel with and without each admixture are presented and discussed."

"Different air entraining agents produce different amounts of air entrainment, depending upon the elasticity of the film of the bubble produced, and the extent to which the surface tension is reduced. Similarly, different quantities of air entraining agents will result in different amounts of air entrainment."

"The Use of Air Entraining Agents... The normal density produced from this system ranges from 60 to 100 lb per cu ft and the proportion of air entraining agent may be about 0.25 per cent of the mix. The quantity of air entraining agent, the cement/sand ratio, the speed of the mixer and the time of mixing are the chief factors..."

"Water/cement ratio is one of the important factors affecting the quantity of air. At very low water/cement ratio, water films on the cement will be insufficient to produce adequate foaming action. At intermediate water/cement ratio (viz. 0.4 to 0.6) abundant air bubbles will be produced. But at a higher water/cement ratio although to start with, a large amount of air entrainment is produced, a large proportion of the bubbles will be lost progressively with time."