Architecture

"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..."

"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 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."

"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."

"Take a look at the simplest of objects. Let's take, for example, an old chair. It seems like nothing. But think of the universe comprised within it: the sweaty hands cutting the wood that used to be a robust tree, full of energy, in the middle of a luxuriant forest by some high mountains. The loving work that built it, the joyful anticipation of the one who bought it, the tired bodies it has helped, the pains and the joys it must have endured, whether in fancy halls or in a humble dining room in your neighbourhood. Everything, everything shares life and has its importance! Even the most worn down of chair carries inside the initial force of the sap climbing from the earth, out there in the forest, and will still be useful the day when, broken into kindling, it burns in some fireplace."

"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..."

"In an edition of the author's writings on electrical and philosophical subjects, published in London in the year 1769, the following note is appended to this tract. "Soon after the foregoing piece was published, some persons in England, in imitation of Mr. Franklin's invention, made what they call Pennsylvanian Fire-places, with improvements; the principal of which pretended improvements is, a contraction of the passages in the air-box, originally designed for admitting a quantity of fresh air, and warming it as it entered the room. The contracting [of] these passages gains indeed more room for the grate, but in a great measure defeats their intention. For, if the passages in the air-box do not greatly exceed in dimensions the amount of all the crevices by which cold air can enter the room, they will not considerably prevent, as they were intended, the entry of cold air through the crevices.""

"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."

"[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."

"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."

"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."

"Both these defects may be entirely remedied by diminishing the width of the back of the Fire-place.—The width which, in most cases, it will be best to give it, is one third of the width of the opening of the Fire-place in front."

"[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."

"It may... appear extraordinary... that Fire-places of such different sizes should all require the throat of the Chimney to be of the same width; but... the capacity of the throat of a Chimney does not depend on its width alone, but on its width and length taken together; and that in large Fire-places, the width of the back, and consequently the length of the throat of the Chimney, is greater than in those which are smaller..."

"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."

"To be able to kindle a fire speedily, and make it, if you please, flame continually, whatever wood is burning, without the use of bellows; to give heat to a spacious room, and even to another adjoining, with a little fire; to warm one's self at the same time on all sides, be the weather ever so cold, without scorching; to breathe a pure air always fresh, and to such a degree of warmth as is thought fit; to be never annoyed with smoke in one's apartment, nor have any moisture therein; to quench by one's self, and in an instant, any fire that may catch in the tunnel of a chimney; all these are but a few of the effects and properties of these wonderful machines, not withstanding their apparent simplicity. Since I used this sort of chimney, I have not been troubled one moment with smoke, in a lodging which it rendered before untenable as soon as a fire was lighted; I have always inhaled, even during the sharpest seasons, a fresh air like that of the spring. In 1709, water that froze hard everywhere else very near the hearth, did not congeal at night in my chamber, though the fire was put out before midnight; and all that was brought thither in the day soon thawed; neither did I ever perceive the least moisture in winter, not even during thaws."

"...for chimnies that are apt to smoke, the covings should be placed less obliquely in respect to the back, than in others that have not that fault. But most... workmen... paid little attention to these distinctions and... frequently... and sometimes in fire-places that have been remarkably shallow... the covings have been placed at an angle even more oblique than that above-mentioned."

"Another cause... in bringing dust and smoke into rooms... is the great nicety with which the doors and windows are fitted in their frames, which prevents a sufficient quantity of fresh air from coming into the room, to supply a brisk current up the chimney. ...[A]ll the alterations in fire-places on the common construction, that have been recommended in order to improve them, must tend directly and very powerfully to lessen this evil; but nothing will so completely remedy it as lowering the mantle, and diminishing the width of the fire-place."

"A plate of iron or copper bowed or bended after such a manner as is not at all disagreeable to the sight; a void behind, divided by certain small iron bands or partition plates, forming several spaces that have a communication one with another; a little vent hole in the middle of the hearth, a register plate in the upper part of the funnel; and for some shafts, a capital on the top, make up the whole construction and workmanship of our modern chimney. Now, can there be anything more simple or plain, or more easy to execute?"

"If in constructing or altering chimney fire-places, the rules laid down in my Essay on that subject are stricty adhered to, chimnies so fitted up will very seldom be found either to smoke, or to throw out dust into the room; and should they be found to have either of these faults, there is a remedy for the evil, as effectual, as it is simple and obvious: Bring down the mantle, and the throat of the chimney lower; and if it should be found necessary, reduce the width of opening of the fire-place in fronts and diminish the obliquity of the covings."

"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 building a house an air canal, about twelve or fifteen inches square, in the clear, and open at both ends, may be constructed, in, or near the center of each stack of chimneys; and two branches from this air canal, both furnished with registers, may open... one... into the fire-place, just under the grate, and the other over the fire-place, and near the top of the room, or just under the ceiling... The bottom of this air tube should reach to the ground, where it should communicate freely with the open air of the atmosphere..."

"1. Air is rarefied by heat, and condensed by cold, that is, the same quantity of air takes up more space when warm than when cold. This may be shown... Take any clear glass bottle (a stript of the straw is best), place it before the fire, and, as the air within is warmed and rarefied, part of it will be driven out of the bottle; turn it up, place its mouth in a vessel of water, and remove it from the fire; then, as the air within cools and contracts, you will see the water rise in the neck of the bottle, supplying the place of just so much air as was driven out. Hold a large hot coal near the side of the bottle, and, as the air within feels the heat, it will again distend and force out the water. Or, fill a bladder not quite full of air, tie the neck tight, and lay it before a fire as near as may be without scorching the bladder; as the air within heats, you will perceive it to swell and fill the bladder, till it becomes tight, as if full blown; remove it to a cool place, and you will see it fall gradually, till it becomes as lank as at first."

"2. Heat may be separated from the smoke as well as from the light, by means of a plate of iron, which will suffer heat to pass through it without the others."

"A chimney may not only be defective by having the mantle too high, or by being too wide from side to side, but also by being too deep between the fore-side and the back, as is often the case in very old houses. In this case, the distance between the fire and the mantle is so great, that much air passes up without being sufficiently rarefied... This fault may be sometimes cured, by bringing the grate a little forward, which, by making the fire act more powerfully upon the mantle, rarefies the air more in its passage."

"Things near us, and which are familiar to us, are seldom objects of our meditations."

"[T]hough one or more expressions of ancient authors may appear to allude to a chimney, if the ancients were acquainted with the art of constructing, in mason-work, elevated funnels for conveying away the smoke, it must be allowed, when we consider the many proofs... to the contrary, that they were... extremely rare."

"It is not known at what time chimneys began to be used. The writers of the 14th century seem either to have been unacquainted with chimneys, or to have considered them as the newest invention of luxury."

"The oldest certain account of chimneys, is in the year 1347. An inscription at Venice, records... a great many chimneys (molti comini) were thrown down by an earthquake."

"The first chimney-sweepers in Germany came from , , and the neighbouring territories; and these for a long time were the only countries where the cleaning of chimneys was followed as a trade. Hence it is conjectured, that chimneys were invented in Italy."

"2. Air rarefied and distended by heat is specifically lighter than it was before, and will rise in other air of greater density. As wood, oil, or any other matter specifically lighter than water, if placed at the bottom of a vessel of water will rise till it comes to the top; so rarefied air will rise in common air, till it either comes to air of equal weight, or is by cold reduced to its former density."

"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."

"An ironmonger in London, however, assuming a good deal of my pamphlet, and working it up into his own, making some small changes in the machine, which rather hurt its operation, got a patent for it there, and made, as I was told, a little fortune by it. And this is not the only instance of patents taken out of my inventions by others, though not always with the same success; which I never contested, as having no desire of profiting by patents myself, and hating disputes."

"The use of these fire places in very many houses, both here in Pennsylvania, and the neighbouring states, has been, and is, a great saving of wood to the inhabitants."

"If the room be so tight as that all the crevices together will not supply so much air as is continually carried off, then, in a little time, the current up the funnel must flag, and the smoke, being no longer driven up, must come into the room."

"Vitruvius... thus describes the construction of the or stove for heating the or sweating room of a bath. The floor is made inclining, so that a ball placed on any part of it would roll towards the fireplace, by which means the heat is more equally diffused in the sweating-chamber. The floor is paved with tiles... and on these are built brick pillars... two feet high, and cemented with clay and hair mixed together. The pillars are placed at such a distance, as will allow tiles to be laid on them to form the ceiling of the hypocaust, and support the pavement of the caldarium. The air to the caldarium, or room over the hypocaust, is admitted through an aperture in the centre of its roof, from which a brazen shield is suspended by chains. By raising and lowering this shield, which opens or shuts the aperture, the heat of the caldarium is regulated. For heating the water to supply the baths, there are to be three caldrons... the arched cavities in which they stand are to be heated by one fire. After such minute instructions how to form the stove in which large quantities of wood were to be consumed, it is singular that he should omit to notice in what way the smoke produced was to be conveyed into the atmosphere. From this silence, it has been inferred that he was ignorant of what Anderson calls "the elegant and commodious tube now known by the name of a chimney.""

"[I]n any chimney, the air over the fire is rarefied by the heat, becomes lighter, and therefore immediately rises in the funnel, and goes out; the other air in the room (flowing towards the chimney) supplies its place, is rarefied in its turn, and rises likewise; the place of the air thus carried out of the room, is supplied by fresh air coming in through doors and windows, or, if they be shut, through every crevice with violence, as may be seen by holding a candle to a key-hole."

"The strong hold of Conway is further remarkable for exhibiting another domestic refinement, not found, except at , in any contemporary building. A hearth is recessed into the wall, and has a rising from it for the passage of the smoke into the air. It is true, that after this period, flued fireplaces were sometimes made in rooms that had been erected without them, but the chimney in Conway Castle, and a similar one at Kenilworth [Castle], appear as if they had formed part of the original edifices."

"1. The first of these methods has generally the conveniency of two warm seats, one in each corner; but they are sometimes too hot to abide in, and, at other times, incommoded with the smoke; there is likewise good room for the cook to move, to hang on pots, &c. Their inconveniences are, that they almost always smoke, if the door be not left open; that they require a large funnel, and a large funnel carries off a great quantity of air, which occasions what is called a strong draft to the chimney, without which strong draft the smoke would come out of some part or other of so large an opening, so that the door can seldom be shut; and the cold air so nips the backs and heels of those that sit before the fire, that they have no comfort till either screens or settles are provided (at a considerable expense) to keep it off, which both cumber the room, and darken the fire-side. A moderate quantity of wood on the fire, in so large a hearth, seems but little; and, in so strong and cold a draft, warms but little; so that people are continually laying on more. In short, it is next to impossible to warm a room with such a fire place; and I suppose our ancestors never thought of warming rooms to sit in; all they purposed was, to have a place to make a fire in, by which they might warm themselves when cold."

"[M]any of the diseases proceeding from colds, as fevers, pleurisies, &c., fatal to very great numbers of people, may be ascribed to strong-drawing chimneys, whereby, in severe weather, a man is scorched before, while he is froze behind."

"He saw the evils of large chimneys, and the necessity for a due supply of air to the fire. The fire should be proportioned to the size of the chimney, and vice versâ, and smoke may often be prevented by lowering the mantel."

"[Savot] also points out how the chimney may be too long for the fire, or how one large chimney may draw upon another smaller one; and he recommends that the flue be smooth on the inside, to diminish friction."

"[C]onsider the fire-places heretofore in use, viz. 1. The large open fire-places used in the days of our fathers, and still generally in the country, and in kitchens. 2. The newer-fashioned fire-places, with low breasts and narrow hearths. 3. Fire-places with hollow backs, hearths and jambs of iron, (described by M. Gauger, in his tract entitled La Méchanique de Feu,) for warming the air as it comes into the room. 4. The Holland stoves, with iron doors opening into the room. 5. The German stoves, which have no opening in the room where they are used, but the fire is put in from some other room, or from without. 6. Iron pots, with open charcoal fires, placed in the middle of a room."

"But, where the fire-place could not be conveniently altered, Savot perforated with small holes a plate of iron, the width and length of which were nearly equal to the hearth, and this was fixed 3 inches above the tiles of the common hearth. On this perforated plate he placed & grill de fer of the same length as the billets to be burned, and raised 9 inches above the plate; the wood was placed on the grate, the charcoal on the perforated plate, and the hearth received the ashes; the air, rising through the small holes, made the charcoal burn briskly, and this so much assisted the burning of the wood, that a rapid draught up the chimney was established, and smoke prevented."

"3. Fire sends out its rays of heat, as well as rays of light, equally every way; but the greatest sensible heat is over the fire, where there is, besides the rays of heat shot upwards, a continual rising stream of hot air, heated by the rays shot round on every side."

"The hearth was a thick iron plate placed above the old hearth, with an interval, n, of 3 inches between them. The two sides, or covings of the fire-place, were also formed of thick iron plates, placed 3 inches from the jambs. The space, n, at the back, and the spaces at the sides, communicated with the space, n, under the hearth ; two pipes, or channels, i, communicating with these hollow spaces, opened into the room at c, as shown by the dotted line in the section; these spaces could be closed at pleasure. When the fire was burning, the iron hearth, and the plates which formed the sides or covings, and the back, became very hot. The cold air at the floor, entering by the openings at a, into the space, n, was heated by the hearth, and rising into the spaces at the back and sides, had its temperature further increased; it then entered the channels, i, and escaped at c, thus diffusing an agreeable warmth over the whole room."

"2. Most of these old-fashioned chimneys in towns and cities have been, of late years, reduced to the second sort mentioned, by building jambs within them, narrowing the hearth, and making a low arch or breast. It is strange, methinks, that though chimneys have been so long in use, their construction should be so little understood till lately, that no workman pretended to make one which should always carry off all smoke, but a chimney-cloth was looked upon as essential to a chimney. This improvement, however, by small openings and low breasts, has been made in our days; and success in the first experiments has brought it into general use in cities, so that almost all new chimneys are now made of that sort, and much fewer bricks will make a stack of chimneys now than formerly. An improvement so lately made may give us room to believe, that still farther improvements may be found to remedy the inconveniences yet remaining. For these new chimneys, though they keep rooms generally free from smoke, and, the opening being contracted, will allow the [house] door to be shut, yet, the funnel still requiring a considerable quantity of air, it rushes in at every crevice so strongly, as to make a continual whistling or howling; and it is very uncomfortable, as well as dangerous, to sit against any such crevice. Many colds are caught from this cause only, it being safer to sit in the open street; for then the pores do all close together, and the air does not strike so sharply against any particular part of the body."

"It is remarkable that, while the open fireplace was one of the earliest contrivances invented to contribute to the health and comfort of man, the upright flue for carrying off the injurious products of combustion should have remained one of the latest."

"For this reason the throat of the chimney should be contracted until it is no larger than is sufficient to carry off the products of combustion. A similar contraction throughout the entire length of the flue would be desirable, were it not that an allowance must be made for clogging up by soot, and for the resistance by friction to the passage of the air offered by the rough walls of the flue."

"As the immoderate size of the throats of Chimnies is the great fault of their construction, it is this fault which ought always to be first attended to in every attempt which is made to improve them; for... if the opening left for the passage of the smoke is larger than is necessary for that purpose, nothing can prevent the warm air of the room from escaping through it; and whenever this happens, there is not only an unnecessary loss of heat, but the warm air which leaves the room to go up the Chimney being replaced by cold air from without, the draughts of cold air... cannot fail to be produced in the room..."