VENTILATING STOVES.
The season has again come which drives people into their houses to pass a large portion of their time in closed apartments where they can keep warm. But the house so tight as to exclude the cold excludes also the air, so that good warmth is apt to involve bad breathing. There will be renewed complaints of deficient ventilation, and plenty of grounds for them. And as people suffer they will exclaim against the backwardness of the art of ventilating, and wonder that science does not bring forward some satisfactory system of furnishing fresh air and plenty of it to those who are shut up in houses during the cold season. Yet the inventors and constructors are ahead of the people, and already furnish many excellent devices which are not appreciated or used. It is perfectly well known, not only that fresh air ought to be furnished to inhabited apartments, but how much should be furnished in given conditions, and how it may be effectually introduced. The problem was in fact practically solved more than a hundred years ago with the invention of the Polignac fireplace, which not only warmed the room where it was set up, but provided for ventilation by bringing in a stream of air from without through suitable ducts, warming it and then throwing it into the apartment. Various modifications of this contrivance have appeared in the shape of ventilating grates which furnish warm fresh air to occupied rooms. But grates are constantly put into houses now which have no more reference to ventilating arrangements than as if nothing of the kind had ever been thought of. Steam and hot-water apparatus, and furnaces to warm large quantities of air for distribution through buildings, have come into extensive use, by which heat and adequate ventilation are well secured; but, after all, these engines are employed by but a small part of the population. A large proportion of the inhabitants of towns, and the great majority of country people, use stoves for warmth in cold weather. But here, again, we see the same neglect in providing fresh air to breathe that is observable in the current use of grates. Stoves are economical and efficient means of warming, and their use for this purpose must long continue. But they are generally non-ventilating, and give us the worst effects of bad air. They draw off from apartments only the air required for combustion, and which is replaced by more air from without to be used for the same purpose. Then there is complaint again, and with abundant reason, of bad ventilation. It seems to be forgotten that there are such things as ventilating stoves. But they have long been in use. The Franklin stove as originally constructed had a provision for ventilation. Ruttan's "Air Warmer" is a double box-stove, which heats by radiation, and also by air which is brought from without, warmed by passing between the inner and outer plates, and delivered into the apartment. The inventor, however, was so intent upon a "system of ventilation" which implied the adaptation of the house to it, that he failed to make his stoves readily available for ordinary use.
The best contrivance we have seen of this kind is the ventilating stove or fireplace known as the "Fire on the Hearth." This combines the advantages of a stove within the room to warm by radiation, a grate giving an open fire, which is prized by many, and a passage or chamber open below and above through which warm air ascends into the room. An opening in the floor with a duct leading to the outside of the house brings in a supply of fresh air which is passed through the stove, warmed, and streams into the apartment. We have tried this stove, and found it satisfactory, both as a heater
