Rural Homes; Or, Sketches of Houses Suited to American Country Life, with Original Plans, Designs, &C (Paperback)

Purchase of this book includes free trial access to www.million-books.com where you can read more than a million books for free. This is an OCR edition with typos. Excerpt from book: CHAPTER IV. HBALT1I IN A HOME; AS DEPENDENT UPON VENTILATION, AND ON MEANS OF OBTAINING ARTIFICIAL HEAT. A Comfortable home must be both a warm and a sweet one. Its warmth is dependent in winter upon its provisions for artificial heating; its sweetness, at all seasons, upon its ventilation; its thorough comfort, upon both. Dickens's Household Demon, an air-tight stove, will afford the one, so far as certain degrees of the thermometer are any indication, and an open door and window, when its hot breath has become a little too searching, will, according to generally received country practice, supply the other. The cold air thus admitted is soon weakened by its battling with the stifling heat, and another reinforcement from without becomes necessary; and so, in severe weather, the temperature is constantly jumping from extremely hot to extremely cold. AAer a while, the decomposed air gathers upon the ground, where its weight has taken it, and heaps itself up, layer upon layer, until it reaches the mouth and nostrils of those sitting in the room, who, in every eighteen respirations, inhale in the course of a minute, a gallon of stuff so foul, as, could it be madesensible to sight in the form of a refreshing draught, would fill them with loathing and dismay. With an -open fire, the evil is somewhat lessened, but not removed; with a furnace, it is changed. What is to be done ? Would you cut off all means of artificially warming ? Certainly not; but, in warming?purify The simple principle upon which this purification must be effected is this: Provide a means for withdrawing the debris of every gallon of warm air you admit, and you may do so in the Allowing manner: ? Bay yon are sitting in a room eighteen feet wide by twentv- Bix feet long, and that the f...