Page:An Encyclopædia of Cottage, Farm, and Villa Architecture and Furniture.djvu/1048

 lO'^l COTTAGE, FAHM, AND VILLA ARCHITECTUKE. 2045. 77(6 Advantages of this Arrangement over that of Mr. Hicks, which you have described, § 1515, appear to me to be, a much greater economy iii fuel (as the waste heat from the upper re- flector may be collected and conveyed away in a tube, and applied for the purposes of heating water, &c. ) ; per- fect combustion at a greatly increased temperature (viz., one sufficient to melt wrought iron), without any smoke ; the means of a more perfect regulation, application, and adapt- ation of the heat to any given sub- stance ; a better form for the refloc- 1828 tors, and less escape of heated air by them ; the application of copper funnels to the burners, by which a continuous current of hot air is urged against the article being roasted; and the capability of adapting the cordon of burners to an irregular mass, at equal distances every where. 2046. 2%e Expense of this Apparatus is far greater than that of ]VIr. Hicks ; but fewer sets of apparatus will answer by this than by that mode ; for the common circle will only suit things of nearly the same size, while my apparatus may be applied to any thing that can be admitted within it. 2047. The Current of Air may he produced by means of fanners, such as are occasionally used for producing a blast on a large scale, in iron founderies. These are to be worked either by a common jack, a smoke jack, or any other power at hand. The fanners are simply a few vanes of sheet iron, revolving with great rapidity (1500 times per minute) in a cylindrical case with a lateral aperture for the emission, and two others at the axis for the admission of air, as in fig. 1829. The vanes are set tangentially to the axis, and so revolve, that, by communicating a centrifugal force to the air in the cylinder, it is expelled at a, and fresh air drawn in at b, to be, in its turn, expelled likewise. Mr. Daniell proposed to heat the air in a red-hot tube for the purpose of this blowpipe, which would certainly be an im- provement, and could readily be done by insert- ing a tube in the kitchen fire. 2048. Blowpipe Flames for boiling or stewing may be made on the same principles ; and those described, only placed vertically, will do : all that is necessary is, that several concentric alternate tubes of gas and air may be burnt. But I do not conceive cooking generally by gas, in the present state of the gas manufacture, and consequent high price of gas, economical ; I, however, esteein it admirably appli- cable to cooking wildfowl, and similar exquisite morceavx of gourmanderie. When gas is publicly made from the decomposition of water, and I think the time is not far distant when that will be the case, it will be a cheap fuel for many purposes." 2049. Remarks. The foregoing very complete Design for a kitchen, and its appen- dages, and machinery, is on too expensive a scale to be generally adopted ; but, once imderstood, it will be easy for the Architect to reduce all its parts to a minimum ; or to reduce the essential parts, and omit altogether such as may be totally unnecessary for a villa on a very small scale. We do not offer an opinion on Mr. Mallet's plan for cook ing by ga^, as compared with that of Mr. Hicks ; but the more we see and hear on the subject generally, the more we are convinced that the time is not far distant when cook- ing by gas will become common in all towns where lighting by gas is employed. Our correspondent, Mr. Robison, informs us that Messrs. Steele, brothers, ironmongers, in Edinburgh, are about to erect a kitchen for a gentleman in the neighbourhood of that city, on the plan given in p. 714 of this work, but substituting gas stoves for the coke fires, and adding a roasting and a baking oven, both heated by gas. A canopy is to be put up over the cooking hearth, like the sounding-board of a pulpit, and its apex is to be connected with a flue in the kitchen wall, by which means all the smells produced by cooking will be carried away as fast as generated. Mr. Milne, an eminent brassfounder in Edinburgh, who has had great experience in fitting up gas apparatus both in England and in Scotland, is of opinion that, in the city just mentioned, gas, in the better classes of houses, will soon take the place of coal fires, not only for cooking, but also for heating. We have lately seen not only roasting, but boiling and stewing, performed at Mr. Hicks's, and earthenware cones and radiating discs substituted for metallic ones, in a similar manner to that suggested by Mr. IMallet. For broiling, a disc is substituted for a cone.