Overheating

“ Tell one of the idolaters that his household god is wasteful and extravagant, that five-sixths of the heat from his coal goes up the chimney, and he replies, “I don’t care if it does; I can afford to pay for it. I like to see the fire, and have the right to waste what is my own.” Tell him that healthful ventilation is impossible while the lower part of a room opens widely into a heated shaft, that forces currents of cold air through doors and window leakages, which unite to form a perpetual chilbrain stratum on the floor, and leaves all above the mantel-piece comparatively stagnant. ”

“ There are a number of methods available for adoption in the heating of buildings, but it is a matter of considerable difficulty to suit the method of warming to the class of building to be warmed. Heating may be effected by one of the following systems, or installations may be so arranged as to combine the advantages of more than one method: open fires, closed stoves, hot-air apparatus, hot water circulating in pipes at low or at high pressure, or steam at high or low pressure. ”

“ The ordinary hot-air furnace of cities has many objections, but it is not so bad as steam heat from a radiator in the room. A gas stove is even worse than this, and should never be used, except, perhaps, for a few minutes during the morning bath. ”

“ Now, to apply these principles to every-day life, to the heating and ventilation of our houses, taking the open fire first, we find that it acts like the sun, heating exclusively by direct radiation. The rays of heat fall upon the sides of the room, the floor and ceiling, and the solid substances in the room, which thus become partially heated, and in their turn become secondary radiators. This radiant heat from the fire does not heat the air in the room at all, but the air becomes partially warmed by coming in immediate contact with the sides of the room, the furniture, &c. ”

“ But as you heat it you enlarge its volume again, and it sucks up the moisture just as this sponge does, and if you do not supply this moisture in other ways it will suck the natural moisture from your skin and your lungs, creating that dry, parched, feverish condition so noticeable in our furnace and other stove-heated rooms. Few persons realize the great amount of water necessary to be evaporated to produce the natural condition of moisture corresponding with the increased temperature given the air in many of our rooms in winter. ”

“ This comprises about the whole system of arrangements in the construction for warming the house with heat radiated from the floors and interior walls.
Its mode of operation simply consists in the body of warmed air passing from the heating-chamber upward, through the walls and under the floors, and in its passage giving up its surplus heat to the surfaces of these flues. As the air becomes reduced in temperature, it naturally descends through the pipe and trunk passage-ways provided for its return to the heating-chamber, where it is again recharged with heat. ”

“ Furnaces where air is heated in the furnace-chamber by coils of steam or by hot water, though costing more at first, require much less fuel, and do not involve the evils of warming by hot iron.
The safest and pleasantest way of warming a dwelling is by steam-coils, provided there are fire-places or hot-air flues to carry off bad air. Without these, this is the most unhealthful mode of all, as there is no fresh air brought in, and what is heated is breathed over and over, till it is poisonous. ”

“ Now furnaces receive cold air containing little invisible moisture, and by heating it a demand is created for much more. This is sucked up, as by a sponge, from walls and furniture, and especially from the lungs and capillaries of our bodies, thus causing dryness and sometimes inflammation of lips, nose, eyes, throat, and lungs. Experiments prove that while 40 per cent. of moisture is needed for health, furnace-heated air rarely has as much as 20 per cent., even when a few quarts of water are evaporated in the furnace chamber. ”

“ Hot and Cold Applications
Hot applications are used to relieve pain, to supply heat, and to bring down temperature. Both moist and dry heat are used. Hot water bags, metal heaters, electric pads, hot flannels are the commonest forms of dry heat. Fomentations, poultices, and baths are the simplest forms of moist heat.
In applying heat, one should be ever on the watch to avoid burning a patient. The skin of babies, children, old people, and of those who have been ill a long time, is very easily burned. Again, the same heat that is easily tolerated by one person, may burn another. ”

“ The temperature of the bedroom at night should not be allowed to fall below 50° F. Every room in the house should be furnished with a thermometer.
The Injurious Effects of Overheated Air.—A rise of temperature in the surrounding air diminishes the amount of oxygen consumed and the amount of carbon dioxid discharged; a fall of temperature has the opposite effect. In addition, this overheated air forms a hot jacket about the body, which prevents the radiation of heat necessary to keep the body in a healthy condition. ”

“ But the most common mode of warming is by heated air introduced from a furnace. The chief objection to this is the loss of all radiated heat, and the consequent necessity of breathing air which is debilitating both from its heat and also from being usually deprived of the requisite moisture provided by the Creator in all out-door air. Another objection is the fact that it is important to health to preserve an equal circulation of the blood, and the greatest impediment to this is a mode of heating which keeps the head in warmer air than the feet. ”

“ The best combined heating and ventilating arrangement at present seems to be that which warms [Pg 19] the fresh air by means of a soapstone furnace or steam-coils, and removes the foul air through a fireplace. In milder weather, gas may be burned in the chimney at a slight expense. According to Morin, seven cubic feet of gas burned in a flue eleven inches square and sixty-six feet high, will draw thirteen thousand three hundred cubic feet of air per hour from a room. ”

“ Heating.—Houses in the country are often heated by open fires, stoves or hot-air furnaces, all of which make use of heated currents of air to warm the rooms. But in the city apartments, usually pipes conduct steam or hot water from a central plant to our rooms. ”

“ The simplest mode of warming a house and cooking food is by radiated heat from fires; but this is the most wasteful method, as respects time, labor, and expense. The most convenient, economical, and labor-saving mode of employing heat is by convection, as applied in stoves and furnaces. But for want of proper care and scientific knowledge this method has proved very destructive to health. When warming and cooking were done by open fires, houses were well supplied with pure air, as is rarely the case in rooms heated by stoves. ”

“ Heating once or twice a week during the cold and damp season is sufficient to keep the apartments fairly dry.”
“Do you not think the heat of the hot-air apparatus injurious to health?”
“The warm air issuing from the heating apparatus is unwholesome, because in becoming warm it has lost a part of its oxygen, and because oxygen is as necessary to us in supporting life as it is to fuel in supporting combustion. We can avoid some of the injurious results to the animal economy arising from the deoxidized air by making it pass over basins filled with water on leaving the heat receiver ”

“ The plan of warming apartments by means of stoves, in its passage through which the air becomes highly heated before it mixes with and raises the general temperature of the air in the chamber, is liable to this inconvenience,—that the portion so introduced, having its vital property impaired by the burning heat through which it has passed, injures, proportionably, the respirable quality of the whole atmosphere ”

“ Cold retards perspiration, and the heat is retained within. The principle of evaporation is illustrated in the manufacture of artificial ice. Men who labor in glass works, iron and steel foundries, and in the engine rooms of large steam vessels are exposed to great heat, yet enjoy as good health as those who are engaged in other occupations. Persons have been known to remain several minutes in an atmosphere heated above the boiling point, without materially increasing the temperature of their own bodies. ”

“ Heating by warmed air, one of the oldest methods in use, has been much improved by attention to the construction of the apparatus, and if properly installed will give as good effects as it is possible to obtain. The system is especially suitable for churches, assembly halls and Warm air. large rooms. A stove of special design is placed in a chamber in the basement or cellar, and cold fresh air is passed through it, and led by means of flues to the various apartments for distribution by means of easily regulated inlet valves. ”

“ The application of these remarks would be, putting in the furnace as soon as possible, and keeping it steadily at work drying sap from the wood and water from the plastering till it enters upon its legitimate mission of warming the house.
When you have read all this about heating and ventilating two or three times over, these conclusions will begin to crystallize in your mind:—
Open fires give the surest ventilation and the best cheer.
If stoves are used for economy, fresh air must be systematically admitted. ”

“ The imperfect character of most boiler and furnace arrangements, and the large quantity of fuel which passes into the ‘ash-pit’ unconsumed, together with the irregular ‘draught,’ and the amount of heat absorbed by excess of cold air, result practically in an enormous loss of heating power, even under the most careful management. ”

“ A furnace sends fresh warm air into your house; the only trouble is that it takes out all the moisture, and some authorities say that this is bad for the lungs and throat. I do not know whether this is true, but all furnaces are supposed to have a water chamber to supply moisture to the air, and you should keep a pan of water on every stove or radiator in your house. ”

“ The most obvious defect we discovered in our house was that it was very cold—a universal English drawback—and the inadequate open fires seem to accentuate the chill.
Would that my feeble voice could do justice to the much-calumniated American methods of heating! It does pay to be less prejudiced and more comfortable! Possibly the furnace and steam heat may be a little overdone, but not with moderate care. No one can make me believe that it is healthy to sit shivering all over, or roasting on one side and freezing on the other. ”

“ Ventilation and Heating.—The subject of the heating of our rooms and houses is very closely allied to that of ventilation, not only because both are a special necessity at the same time of the year, but also because we cannot heat a room without at the same time having to ventilate it by providing an egress for the products of combustion and introducing fresh air to replace the vitiated. ”

“ Hot air stoves have been so generally condemned and discarded as a means of heating glass structures, that we shall not discuss their faults or merits, but confine ourselves to heating by flues, steam, and hot water in pipes and tanks. ”

“ Hot-air Warming.—In small houses the warming of the various rooms and halls can be accomplished by placing the stove or furnace in the cellar, heating a large quantity of air and conveying it through proper tubes to the rooms and places to be warmed. ”

“ Fireplaces are good, though not perfect, ventilators. Then there are the preventive measures, such as burning the gas or lamp low at night, avoiding oil- and gas-stoves, etc.; the latter are the worst possible means of heating rooms, for not only do they draw oxygen for burning from the air, but they give out the polluting carbonic acid and other products of combustion, which in a coal- or wood-stove go up the chimney. ”

“ In the case of houses heated by furnaces, some moisture is furnished by the water-pans of the furnace; but in the case of heating by hot air and steam pipes, there is less circulation of air, the air is very much drier, and generally of a very much higher temperature. ”

“ Heat and Weakness.—We have over and over again shown in these papers how heat passes into vital action, and gives strength to failing organs and nerves. But the heat supplied to these organs must be at a certain temperature. All experience goes to show that gentle heating will do all that is required. Moreover, too hot a fomentation, especially if a large one, will weaken the patient, and defeat its own ends. In such a case it is folly to throw up the treatment, and say that heat weakens, when all that is needed is to apply heat at a lower temperature. ”

“ From the earliest times in the latitudes of northern Europe and North America, some form of heating in cold weather has been a necessity for all buildings, whether caves or palaces, but even as late as the latter part of the nineteenth century such a thing as a uniform temperature in heated rooms in severe weather was never expected, while ventilation was invariably secured only by such means as would be accomplished by the circulation of air through doors and other openings. ”

“ For the deficiency of heat, or the failure of some of the hot-air pipes of hot-air furnaces in certain winds and weathers in large houses or specially exposed rooms, the best addendum is an open fire-grate. With this provision in northerly rooms, to be used occasionally, hot-air furnaces may be made to produce all the advantages of steam heat in even the largest dwelling-houses. ”