Page:The Building News and Engineering Journal, Volume 22, 1872.djvu/176

 160 THE BUILDING NEWS. Fras. 23, 1872. Hae errr nn eee een sss... and the order generally were like. Once housed in the British Museum, they will furnish materials out of which, not, perhaps, a complete restoration of the temple, but anew chapter in the history of Greek architecture can be constructed, just as out of the fossil bones of the Megatherium an Owen reconstructs lost types in the animal kingdom. The stones were very heavy, the mud of [Ephesus tenacious, and the weather variable; but the Cale- donia’s blue-jackets have done their work with an alacrity and good humour characteristic of blue- jackets in these expeditions, and by the end of the week the ship will leave this port with her precious argo, bound for Malta. - ————_>———_ RULES TO BE OBSERVED IN PLANNING AND FITTING UP OF SCHOOLS. HE following rules for planning schools have been issued by the Committee of Council on Educa- tion :— (a.) In planning a schoolroom, it must be borne in mind that the capacity of the room, and the number of children it can accommodate, depends not merely on its area, but on its area, its shape, and the positions of the doors and fireplaces. (b.) The best width for a schoolroom intended to accommodate any number of children between 48 and 144 is from 16ft. to 20ft. This gives sufficient space for each group of benches and desks to be ranged three rows deep along one wall, for the teachers to stand at a proper distance from their classes, and for the classes to be drawn out, when necessary, in front of the desks around the master or pupil teachers. (No additional accommodation being gained by greater width in the room, the cost of such an increase in the dimensions is thrown away.) (c.) Aschool not receiving infants should generally be divided into at least four classes. (The varying capacities of children between seven and thirteen years old will be found to require at least thus much subdivision.) (d.) Benches and desks, graduated according to the ages of the children, should be provided for all the scholars in actual attendance, and therefore a schoolroom should contain at least four groups. (e.) An allowance of 18in. on each desk and bench will suffice tor the junior classes, but not less than 22in. for the senior classes; otherwise they may be cramped in writing. The length, therefore, of each group should be some multiple of 18in. or 22in. respectively. Thus, at 18in. per child. A group 6ft. Oin. long will accommodate 4} ” Cas ” 5 ” 9 0 ” 6 a 7 7 | Children LOO 3 8 ina At 22in. per child, es row. A group 7ft. 4in. long will accommodate 4 ” 9 2 ” 5 Shay = 6 J In the annexed plans 18in. haye been taken as the allowance per child. The withdrawal of a child from each row of this dimension will practi- cally answer the purposes of the other dimensions. (f.) The desks should be either quite flat or very slightly inclined. The objections to the inclined desk are, that pencils, pens, &e., are constantly slipping from it, and that it cannot be conveniently used asatable. ‘The objection to the flat desk is, that it has a tendency to make the children stoop. A raised ledge in front of a desk interferes with the arm in writing. (g-) As a general rule no benches and desks should be more than 12ft. long; and no group should contain more than three rows of benches and desks (because in proportion as the depth is increased, the teacher must raise his voice to a higher pitch; and this becomes exhausting to himself, while at the same time it adds inconveniently to the general noise). (h.) Each group of desks should be separated from the contiguous group, either by an alley 1Sin. wide for the passage of the children, or by a space of 3in. sufficient for drawing and withdrawing the curtains. (i.) The curtains when drawn should not project more than 4in. in front of the foremost desk. An alley should never be placed in the centre of a group or gallery, and the groups should never be broken by the intervention of doors and fireplaces. (j-) Where the number of children to be accom- modated is too great for them to be arranged in five, or at most six, groups, an additional schoolroom should be built, and placed under the charge of an additional teacher, who may, however, be subordi- nate to the headmaster. @ 1. The walls of every school-room and class-room’ if ceiled at the level of the wall-plate, must be at least 12ft. high from the level of the floor to the ceiling ; and, if the area contain more than 360 superficial square feet, 13ft., and, if more than 600, then 14ft. 2. The walls of every schoolroom and class- room, if ceiled to the rafters and collar-beam, must be at least 11ft. high from the floor to the wall- plate, and at least 14ft. to the ceiling across the collar-beam. 3. The whole of the external walls of the school and residence, if of brick, must be at least one brick and a half in thickness; and, if of stone, at least 20in. in thickness. 4. The doors and fireplaces in schoolrooms for children above seven years of age must be so placed as to allow of the whole of one side of the school- room being left free for the groups of benches and desks. 5. There must be no opening wider than an ordi- nary doorway between an infant’s and any other school-room, as it is necessary to stop the sound of the infant teaching. 6. An infant-school should always be on the ground floor, and, if exceeding eighty children in number, should have two galleries of unequal size, and a small group of benches and desks for the oc- casional use of the elder infants. No infant gallery should hold more than eighty or ninety infants. 7. The width of a boys’ or girls’ schoolroom must not exceed 20ft. The width of an infant schoolroom need not be so restricted. 8. The class-rooms should never be passage-rooms from one part of the building to another, nor from the school-rooms to the play-ground or yard. 9. The class-rooms should be on the same level as the school-room. 10. The class-room should be fitted up with a gallery placed at right angles with the window. 11. Framed wood partitions are not allowed between school-rooms and class-rooms. They must be separated by lath and plaster partition or a wall. 12. Infants should never be taught in the same room with older children, as the noise and the train- ing of the infants disturb and injuriously affect the ; discipline and instruction of the older children. 13. The windows should be of glass set in wood or iron casements. Lead lights and diamond panes are not allowed. 14. The cills of the windows should be placed not less than 4ft. above the floor. 15. A large portion of each window should be made to open. 16, The doors and passages from the schoolroom to the privies must be separated for the two sexes. So must also be the privies themselves. If they cannot be constructed entirely apart from each other, there should be between them a dust-pin, or other sufficient obstacle to sound as well as sight. [ Water-closets can now be provided at a very reduced cost, and they may be introduced with advantage wherever there is a sufficient supply of water to cleanse them thoroughly. Great attention must be paid to the drainage of them. Earthen pipes, measuring 4in. or 6in. in diameter, cemented at the joints, glazed and trapped, are the best for this purpose. Earth-closets are also frequently used with suc- cess. | 17. The privies must be subdivided, having a door and light to each subdivision. 18. The children must not have to pass in front of the residence on their way to their offices. 19. The residence for the master or mistress should contain a parlour, a kitchen, a scullery, and three bedrooms ; and the smallest dimensions which their lordships can approve are— (a.) For the parlour, 12ft. by 12ft., of superficial area, 8ft. in height to wall-plate. (b.) For the kitchen, 12ft. by 10ft., of superfical area, 8ft. in height to wall-plate. (c.) For one of the bedrooms, 12ft. by 10ft., of superficial area, 8ft. if ceiled at wall-plate; or 7ft. to wall-plate, and 9ft. to ceiling. (d.) For two other bedrooms, 9ft. by 8ft., of superficial area, 8ft. if ceiled at wall-plate; or 7ft. to wall-plate, and 9ft. to ceiling. 20. The residence must be planned so that the stair- case should be immediately accessible from an entrance-lobby, and from the parlour, kitchen, and each bedroom without making a passage of any room. 21, Each bedroom must be on the upper story, and must have a fireplace. 22. The parlour must not open directly into the kitchen or scullery. 23. There must be no internal communication between the residence and the school. 24, There must be a separate and distinct yard, with offices for the residence. 25. The porch must be external to the school- room. 26. Iron or wooden buildings cannot be approved. 27. Aninfants’-room must haye a playground at- tached to it. ; 28. In the case of a mixed school there must be separate playgrounds for the boys and girls. 29. The playground should be properly levelled, drained, and enclosed. ———_s>—_—— ABSORPTION OF MOISTURE BY BRICK AND STONE*. N the construction of buildings in a climate like ours, it is of the utmost importance that the materials employed should absorb and retain as little water as possible, otherwise the buildings will be damp, and the presence of quantities of moisture in their walls will favour the formation of vegetable growths upon their surfaces, which will, together with the action of frost, aid materially in the process of disintegration. In a recent investigation of this subject, I selected the following materials, namely, brown stone and Nova Scotia stone of the best quality, fine red Philadelphia brick, and a very compact, hard burned white brick, stamped A, Hall & Sons, Perth, Amboy, N. J. Masses of equal size of each were placed in water for twenty hours to allow them to imbibe as much of the fluid as they could take up. They were then turned about on blotting paper as long as they dampened it. The external moisture being thus re- moved, the masses were weighed, and placed in an air bath at 212 deg. for 3 hours. On being removed from the bath, they were put under a glass bell jar, and being again weighed when cool, were found to have lost the following quantities of moisture: Taste I. Brown stone..... 10,000 parts, lost 260 of moisture” Nova Scotia st 4 260 a Red brick .. i 1,179 a White brick .. af 525 at The masses were then placed in the warm air bath again, and kept at 212 deg. for 4 hours. On being cooled with the same precautions as before, they showed the following losses: Taste IT. Brown stone....... vee 10,000 parts, lost 8 of moisture. Nova Scotia stone ... 7 8 ” Red brick .... ” 0 ” White brick. ” 0 ” The masses were then placed on an iron plate, which was heated to a dull red heat, and covered with a hood of tin to cut off currents of air. They were consequently exposed to a uniform temperature, which was sufficiently high to scorch paper when it was laid on their upper surfaces. The last traces of water were thus expelled, the quantities being as follows: Tastx III. Brown StOne......cesee 10,000 parts, lost 17 of moistura Nova Scotia stone ... 4 35 ” Red brick .. oy atrace ,, White bric Senee Es atrace ,, The conditions to which the substances were sub- mitted at the commencement of these experiments on drying, may be regarded as representing their state after a prolonged storm of rain in which they had been drenched and soaked with water for many hours, and Table I. demonstrates that while the brick absorbed more moisture than the stone, the white brick imbibed less than half that taken up by the Nova Scotia stone. Table II. in its turn shows that stone is far more retentive of its moisture than brick, for, while the former lost 8 parts, the latter lost none. In Table III. the same fact is still more conclusively demon- strated, for against an almost imperceptible loss on the part of the brick, the brown stone lost 17 parts, and the Nova stone 35. We are, therefore, justified in concluding that though brick absorbs a larger quantity of moisture than stone, it is to be preferred as a building material, since it parts with the imbibed water with greater facility; and, comparing the two kinds of brick together, the white hard burned brick is superior to the red, since it absorbs only half as much water. Passing from the consideration of the power of retention to that of absorption, I found that, on submitting the thoroughly dried masses of the last detailed experiment to the action of an atmosphere saturated with moisture at 70 deg. Fahr. for 6 days, the following results were obtained: eee sity Medical College, New York. From The American Railway Times.
 * By Joun C, Draper, Professor of Chemistry, Univer-