Page:Popular Science Monthly Volume 3.djvu/211

Rh of some of the heat which is passing into the chimney to warm the air which feeds the fire. Theoretical considerations show that an advantage of from six to nine per cent, might be obtained from this source, and the experiments which I have made bear out this result.

But, after we have designed the most effective arrangements for economizing the fuel which warms our dwellings, if that object is to be fully secured, we must arrange to retain the heat in our houses. The architect should devote to these considerations the same care which he now is frequently satisfied with bestowing upon the beauty of the design for a building. The arrangements of the plan should be adapted to the retention of heat. All portions of houses exposed to the air should be formed of materials which are found to be the slowest conductors of heat. Whatever may have been the mistakes of the manufacturers of fire-grates or kitchen-ranges, the nation has latterly very much disregarded the means of retaining heat in the house. The uniform model house of the speculating builder is constructed with thin walls, thin glass windows, ill-fitting casements, and a roof of slates, with nothing under them. The old half-timbered house was warm, because it had an air space between the inner and outer skin; the brick-built, stone-faced house is warm because it has, so to say, a double wall. In modern houses it has long been shown that, without much increased expense, the use of walls built hollow will keep the rooms effectually warm and dry, and yet this mode of building is the exception rather than the rule, possibly because it gives the architect or the builder a little additional trouble. A slated roof, if ill-constructed, is a material agent in allowing of the escape of heat, because there is necessarily an inlet for air where the slates overlap. The old thatched roof, although most dangerous in cases of fire, was a great preserver of heat. In well-built modern houses the slates are laid on felt, which is laid on close boarding, and this arrangement keeps the house warm in winter and cool in summer. As regards the windows, glass ranks high as a non-conductor of heat, and the effect of using thick glass, instead of the very thin glass so often seen, is very largely to economize the heat. Evidence of the cooling effect on the air of a room of a window of thin glass is afforded by the cold draught which any one perceives when sitting on a cold day near a closed window of thin glass. Proposals have been often made to glaze a window with double panes, and no doubt such a plan is a good means of retaining heat in the room, but the inside of the glass between the panes will in time become dirty, and then it can only be cleansed by removing one of the panes. A more convenient, but more expensive, plan is to adopt the system, which prevails universally in the northern parts of Europe, of a double casement.

It is not, however, my object here to give a treatise on building. The conclusion which I would draw from these various considerations is, that, if we desire to economize to the utmost the daily expenditure