American Woman's Home: Or, Principles of Domestic Science Part 5

If a flue has more than one opening, in some cases it is impossible to secure a good draught. Sometimes it will work well and sometimes it will not. The only safe rule is to have a separate flue to each fire.

Another cause of poor draughts is too tight a room, so that the cold air from without can not enter to press the warm air up the chimney.

The remedy is to admit a small current of air from without.

Another cause is two chimneys in one room, or in rooms opening together, in which the draught in one is much stronger than in the other. In this case, the stronger draught will draw away from the weaker. The remedy is, for each room to have a proper supply of outside air; or, in a single room, to stop one of the chimneys.

Another cause is the too close vicinity of a hill or buildings higher than the top of the chimney, and the remedy for this is to raise the chimney.

Another cause is the descent, into unused fireplaces, of smoke from other chimneys near. The remedy is to close the throat of the unused chimney.

Another cause is a door opening toward the fireplace, on the same side of the room, so that its draught pa.s.ses along the wall and makes a current that draws out the smoke. The remedy is to change the hanging of the door so as to open another way.

Another cause is strong winds. The remedy is a turn-cap on top of the chimney.

Another cause is the roughness of the inside of a chimney, or projections which impede the pa.s.sage of the smoke. Every chimney should be built of equal dimensions from bottom to top, with no projections into it, with as few bends as possible, and with the surface of the inside as smooth as possible.

Another cause of poor draughts is openings into the chimney of chambers for stove-pipes. The remedy is to close them, or insert stove-pipes that are in use.

Another cause is the falling out of brick in some part of the chimney so that outer air is admitted. The remedy is to close the opening.

The draught of a stove may be affected by most of these causes. It also demands that the fireplace have a tight fire-board, or that the throat he carefully filled. For neglecting this, many a good stove has been thrown aside and a poor one taken in its place.

If all young women had committed to memory these causes of evil and their remedies, many a badly-built chimney might have been cured, and many smoke-drawn tears, sighs, ill-tempers, and irritating words avoided.

But there are dangers in this direction which demand special attention.

Where one flue has two stoves or fireplaces, in rooms one above the other, in certain states of the atmosphere, the lower room, being the warmer, the colder air and carbonic acid in the room above will pa.s.s down into the lower room through the opening for the stove or the fireplace.

This occurred not long since in a boarding-school, when the gas in a room above flowed into a lower one, and suffocated several to death.

This room had no mode of ventilation, and several persons slept in it, and were thus stifled. Professor Brewer states a similar case in the family of a relative. An anthracite stove was used in the upper room; and on one still, close night, the gas from this stove descended through the flue and the opening into a room below, and stifled two persons to insensibility, though, by proper efforts, their lives were saved.

Many such cases have occurred where rooms have been thus filled with poisonous gases, and servants and children destroyed, or their const.i.tutions injured, simply because housekeepers are not properly instructed in this important branch of their profession.

FURNACES.

There is no improved mechanism in the economy of domestic life requiring more intelligent management than furnaces. Let us then consider some of the principles involved.

The earth is heated by radiation from the sun. The air is not warmed by the pa.s.sage of the sun's heat through it, but by convection from the earth, in the same way that it is warmed by the surfaces of stoves.

The lower stratum of air is warmed by the earth and by objects which have been warmed by radiated heat from the sun. The particles of air thus heated expand, become lighter, and rise, being replaced by the descent of the cooler and heavier particles from above, which, on being warmed also rise, and give place to others. Owing to this process, the air is warmest nearest the earth, and grows cooler as height increases.

The air has a strong attraction for water, and always holds a certain quant.i.ty as invisible vapor. The warmer the air, the more moisture it demands, and it will draw it from all objects within reach. The air holds water according to its temperature. Thus, at fifty-two degrees, Fahrenheit's thermometer, it holds half the moisture it can sustain; but at thirty-six degrees, it will hold only one eighty-sixth part.

The earth and all plants and trees are constantly sending out moisture; and when the air has received all it can hold, without depositing it as dew, it is said to be _saturated_, and the point of temperature at which dew begins to form, by condensation, upon the surface of the earth and its vegetation, is called the _dew-point_. When air, at a given temperature, has only forty per cent of the moisture it requires for saturation, it is said to be dry. In a hot summer day, the air will hold far more moisture than in cool days. In summer, out-door air rarely holds less than half its volume of water. In 1838, at Cambridge, Ma.s.sachusetts, and New-Haven, Connecticut, at seventy degrees, Fahrenheit, the air held eighty per cent of moisture.

In New Orleans, the air often retains ninety per cent of the moisture it is capable of holding; and in cool days at the North, in foggy weather, the air is sometimes wholly saturated.

When air holds all the moisture it can, without depositing dew, its moisture is called 100. When it holds three fourths of this, it is said to be at seventy-five per cent. When it holds only one half, it is at fifty per cent. When it holds only one fourth, it is at twenty-five per cent, etc.

Sanitary observers teach that the proper amount of moisture in the air ranges from forty to seventy per cent of saturation.

Now, furnaces, which are of course used only in winter, receive outside air at a low temperature, holding little moisture; This it sucks up, like a sponge, from the walls and furniture of a house. If it is taken into the human lungs, it draws much of its required moisture from the body, often causing dryness of lips and throat, and painfully affecting the lungs. Prof. Brewer, of the Scientific School of New-Haven, who has experimented extensively on this subject, states that, while forty per cent of moisture is needed in air to make it healthful, most stoves and furnaces do not, by any contrivances, supply one half of this, or not twenty per cent. He says most furnace-heated air is dryer than is ever breathed in the hottest deserts of Sahara.

Thus, for want of proper instruction, most American housekeepers not only poison their families with carbonic acid and starve them for want of oxygen, but also diminish health and comfort for want of a due supply of moisture in the air. And often when a remedy is sought, by evaporating water in the furnace, it is without knowing that the amount evaporated depends, not on the quant.i.ty of water in the vessel, but on the extent of evaporating surface exposed to the air. A quart of water in a wide shallow pan will give more moisture than two gallons with a small surface exposed to heat.

There is also no little wise economy in expense attained by keeping a proper supply of moisture in the air. For it is found that the body radiates its heat less in moist than in dry air, so that a person feels as warm at a lower temperature when the air has a proper supply of moisture, as in a much higher temperature of dry air. Of course, less fuel is needed to warm a house when water is evaporated in stove and furnace-heated rooms. It is said by those who have experimented, that the saving in fuel is twenty per cent when the air is duly supplied with moisture.

There is a very ingenious instrument, called the hygrodeik, which indicates the exact amount of moisture in the air. It consists of two thermometers side by side, one of which has its bulb surrounded by floss-silk wrapping, which is kept constantly wet by communication with a cup of water near it. The water around the bulb evaporates just in proportion to the heat of the air around it. The changing of water to vapor draws heat from the nearest object, and this being the bulb of the thermometer, the mercury is cooled and sinks. Then the difference between the two thermometers shows the amount of moisture in the air by a pointer on a dial-plate constructed by simple mechanism for this purpose.

There is one very important matter in regard to the use of furnaces, which is thus stated by Professor Brewer:

"I think it is a well-established fact that carbonic oxide will pa.s.s through iron. It is always formed in great abundance in any _anthracite_ fire, but especially in anthracite stoves and furnaces.

Moreover, furnaces _always_ leak, more or less; how much they leak depending on the care and skill with which they are managed. Carbonic oxide is much more poisonous than carbonic acid. Doubtless some carbonic oxide finds its way into all furnace-heated houses, especially where anthracite is used; the amount varying with the kind of furnace and its management. As to how much escapes into a room, and its specific effect upon the health of its occupants, we have no accurate data, no a.n.a.lysis to show the quant.i.ty, and no observations to show the relation between the quant.i.ty inhaled and the health of those exposed; all is mere conjecture upon this point; but the inference is very strong that it has a very injurious effect, producing headaches, weariness, and other similar symptoms.

"Recent pamphlets lay the blame of all the bad effects of anthracite furnaces and stoves to the carbonic oxide mingled in the air. I think these pamphlets have a bad influence. _Excessive dryness_ also has bad effects. So also the excessive heat in the evenings and coolness in the mornings has a share in these evils. But how much in addition is owing to carbonic oxide, we can not know, until we know something of the actual amount of this gas in rooms, and as yet we know absolutely nothing definite. In fact, it will be a difficult thing to _prove_."

There are other difficulties connected with furnaces which should be considered. It is necessary to perfect health that an equal circulation of the blood be preserved. The greatest impediment to this is keeping the head warmer than the feet. This is especially to be avoided in a nation where the brain is by constant activity drawing the blood from the extremities. And nowhere is this more important than in schools, churches, colleges, lecture and recitation-rooms, where the brain is called into active exercise. And yet, furnace-heated rooms always keep the feet in the coldest air, on cool floors, while the head is in the warmest air.

Another difficulty is the fact that all bodies tend to radiate their heat to each other, till an equal temperature exists. Thus, the human body is constantly radiating its heat to the walls, floors, and cooler bodies around. At the same time, a thermometer is affected in the same way, radiating its heat to cooler bodies around, so that it always marks a lower degree of heat than actually exists in the warm air around it. Owing to these facts, the injected air of a furnace is always warmer than is good for the lungs, and much warmer than is ever needed in rooms warmed by radiation from fires or heated surfaces. The cooler the air we inspire, the more oxygen is received, the faster the blood circulates, and the greater is the vigor imparted to brain, nerves, and muscles.

Scientific men have been contriving various modes of meeting these difficulties, and at the close of this volume some results will be given to aid a woman in selecting and managing the most healthful and economical furnace, or in providing some better method of warming a house. Some account will also be given of the danger involved in gas-stoves, and some other recent inventions for cooking and heating.

VI.

HOME DECORATION.

Having duly arranged for the physical necessities of a healthful and comfortable home, we next approach the important subject of _beauty_ in reference to the decoration of houses. For while the aesthetic element must be subordinate to the requirements of physical existence, and, as a matter of expense, should be held of inferior consequence to means of higher moral growth; it yet holds a place of great significance among the influences which make home happy and attractive, which give it a constant and wholesome power over the young, and contributes much to the education of the entire household in refinement, intellectual development, and moral sensibility.

Here we are met by those who tell us that of course they want their houses handsome, and that, when they get money enough, they intend to have them so, but at present they are too poor, and because they are poor they dismiss the subject altogether, and live without any regard to it.

We have often seen people who said that they could not afford to make their houses beautiful, who had spent upon them, outside or in, an amount of money which did not produce either beauty or comfort, and which, if judiciously applied, might have made the house quite charming.

For example, a man, in building his house, takes a plan of an architect.

This plan includes, on the outside, a number of what Andrew Fairservice called "curlywurlies" and "whigmaliries," which make the house neither prettier nor more comfortable, and which take up a good deal of money.

We would venture to say that we could buy the chromo of Bierstadt's "Sunset in the Yosemite Valley," and four others like it, for half the sum that we have sometimes seen laid out on a very ugly, narrow, awkward porch on the outside of a house. The only use of this porch was to cost money, and to cause every body who looked at it to exclaim as they went by, "What ever induced that man to put a thing like that on the outside of his house?"

Then, again, in the inside of houses, we have seen a dwelling looking very bald and bare, when a sufficient sum of money had been expended on one article to have made the whole very pretty: and it has come about in this way.

We will suppose the couple who own the house to be in the condition in which people generally are after they have built a house--having spent more than they could afford on the building itself, and yet feeling themselves under the necessity of getting some furniture.

"Now," says the housewife, "I must at least have a parlor-carpet. We must get that to begin with, and other things as we go on." She goes to a store to look at carpets. The clerks are smiling and obliging, and sweetly complacent. The storekeeper, perhaps, is a neighbor or a friend, and after exhibiting various patterns, he tells her of a Brussels carpet he is selling wonderfully cheap--actually a dollar and a quarter less a yard than the usual price of Brussels, and the reason is that it is an unfashionable pattern, and he has a good deal of it, and wishes to close it off.

She looks at it and thinks it is not at all the kind of carpet she meant to buy, but then it is Brussels, and so cheap! And as she hesitates, her friend tells her that she will find it "cheapest in the end--that one Brussels carpet will outlast three or four ingrains,"

etc., etc.

The result of all this is, that she buys the Brussels carpet, which, with all its reduction in price, is one third dearer than the ingrain would have been, and not half so pretty. When she comes home, she will find that she has spent, we will say eighty dollars, for a very homely carpet whose greatest merit it is an affliction to remember--namely, that it will outlast three ordinary carpets. And because she has bought this carpet she can not afford to paper the walls or put up any window-curtains, and can not even begin to think of buying any pictures.

Now let us see what eighty dollars could have done for that room. We will suppose, in the first place, she invests in thirteen rolls of wall-paper of a lovely shade of buff, which will make the room look sunshiny in the day-time, and light up brilliantly in the evening.