Page:The Amateur's Greenhouse and Conservatory.djvu/32

20 fifty feet of four-inch pipe; it is encased in a wrought-iron jacket, which serves the purpose of a brick setting; the iron jacket, with escape pipe, renders it perfectly safe to use this boiler inside the house, as it is impossible for the fumes to affect the plants. The hot air escape pipe might be carried round the house, and it would be an advantage if it terminated in one of the chimnies of the dwelling-house.

A correspondent of the &lsquo;Floral World’ describes a gas-heating apparatus which any skilled workman could manufacture at a very small cost. He says:

&ldquo;The size of my house is twelve feet by nine feet, and it stands about thirty yards distant from the cellar, in which the gas-meter is fixed. I have a three-quarter-inch iron pipe running from the meter close to the front of the house. I thought it best to have rather a large size pipe to conduct the gas, as the water will sometimes condense in pipes in the winter time; and, of course, if the pipes are of small size, there is more danger of the gas going out. I have a small sheet-iron box, about fifteen inches square, which is fixed inside the house, close to where the gaspipe comes, and proceeding from the top of the box is some two-inch stove piping, to carry away the fumes of the gas through the roof into the open air. The box is made so that there can be no escape of the fumes into the house. Inside of the box there is a small saddle-shaped copper boiler, which holds just five pints, and, proceeding from the top of the boiler, and through the top of the box or cover, is a piece of one-inch lead pipe, which is carried straight for about two feet, and then bent down and attached to a one-inch iron pipe which runs round the house, and which returns again through the box into the boiler at the bottom. Under the boiler is fixed a small Bunsen burner gas stove (which any gasfitter will supply). To prevent the fumes of the gas getting into the house, I have a small door in front of the iron box, so that I can light it from the outside. The cistern is fixed just at the bend of the flow-pipe, the furthest point from the boiler, with a tap to turn the water on or off, although I always leave it on; and at the same point I have a bit of thin composition piping fixed in the iron pipe, and carried out into the open air as a kind of safety-valve. A small tap, which is fixed in the pipe at the highest point just over the boiler, must be turned on before the gas is lit, to allow the air to escape out of the pipes, or the water will not circulate. I