Lectures on Ventilation Part 5

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 a.s.sist 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 pa.s.sage--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.

[Ill.u.s.tration: Fig. 8.]

For ill.u.s.trating this, I have here some gla.s.s tubes about two feet long and two inches diameter. This one (Fig. 8) has been lying on the table some time, and I suppose is very nearly the temperature of the air in the room. I have here a little tin box, which answers for a connecting tube, and over one of the openings I stand this tube, and by the smoke from this taper, first held at the top, you see there is no current down the tube. And again, by holding the taper at the lower opening, you see there is no current pa.s.sing up the flue. But I will remove that, and place one (Fig. 9) over the same opening that is warmer, and now you can see how strongly the smoke is drawn down through this lower opening, and see it flowing up this warm flue, and out at the top.

We will now subst.i.tute a cold flue (Fig. 10). This condenses the air, and it falls rapidly. This action often occurs in the spring and early part of summer, especially in the morning, as the external air becomes heated, and the solid mason-work of the chimney remains cold, causing a descending current, which is often noticeable by the smell of soot in the room. We will now add this tube, of the same temperature as the room (Fig. 11), to see if the additional height will not make an ascending current. But you see the smoke is still drawn down, the height of the flue adds a little to its power, but the difference in its temperature is the controlling force.

[Ill.u.s.tration: Fig. 9.]

[Ill.u.s.tration: Fig. 10.]

[Ill.u.s.tration: Fig. 11.]

[Ill.u.s.tration: Fig. 12.]

We will now place another tube over the lower opening (Fig. 12). Just see what a wonderful effect that has! Here is the air rushing down this short flue and up the two cold ones. We called those two first pipes cold, but our ideas of heat and cold are simply _comparative_; everything is warm, or has heat in it. Perhaps some of us think there is not much heat in the air when it comes whistling around our ears 15 or 20 below zero; but the cold rigid chemist will still extract many degrees of heat from that. We must, therefore, remember that absolute temperature has nothing to do with the air pa.s.sing up or down a flue--it is simply _comparative_ temperature.

[Ill.u.s.tration: Fig. 13.]

Let me show you one more experiment. Here are two tubes we have had heated; as you see, the smoke rushes up them rapidly. But now we will add this third one (Fig. 13), which reverses the current at once. The two first are hot, taking the _temperature of the room as the standard_, but the third one is still _hotter_.

[Ill.u.s.tration: Fig. 14.]

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 a tube just one foot square and two feet long, and one foot from the bottom there is what we will suppose to be an air-tight piston that can be moved without friction. Now, suppose we heat that air 490 (for the sake of easy remembering, say 500); this would just double its volume--it would then be two cubic feet in size instead of one.

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 gla.s.s 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 ill.u.s.tration, 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 s.e.xton, 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?

Everyone 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 cla.s.s-meeting, and would be glad to go oftener, but it was held in the bas.e.m.e.nt 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 bas.e.m.e.nt room when the cla.s.s-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 s.p.a.ce 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 wardmaster 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 ta.s.sels, 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.