Chap. III. VENTILATION OF BUILDINGS.

741
the gai^cs given oiF from the receptacles mentioned, enable the foul air to rise vertically
with greater ease than to spread laterally. In a room, the carbonic acid emitted by tlia
lights and by the brea'h of its occupants being of greater specific gravity than atmospheiic
air, would, at the ordinary temperature of the air, tend to accumulate in its lower strata
;
but the temperature of the products of respiration and of combustion is usu illy so much
in excess of that of the air, that they are enabled to r se through it, and to accumulate in
the upper portions of the enclosed room nutil some change in their tempeniture takes
place. The foul state of the air in the lower portions of a pub.ic building on the day
follo-wini; a crowded meeting may be due to the change of temperature during the night,
and the retention, by closed doors and windows, of the air so rendered impure. In 18G5
General Morin read a pnpsr to the Paris Academy of Sciences, again urging as a funda-
mental principle the exploded practice of drawing off vitiated air from the stratum nearest
the floor, pure air being admitted near to the ceiling.
2278/. Our limited space will not permit us to do more than very briefly rotire tha
chief principal methods of ventiLition ; the application of any one of them must be left to
the ingenuity of the architect. He will fird that all public buildings, and even all private
houses, from the highest to the lowest t lass, must be spontaneously ventilated, for if any
trouble be entailed, it will bo neglected. The means for ventilation must be cheap, easily
procurable, always in place, self-acting, and not liable to get out of order. Such an inven-
tion is the Arnott ventilator, when placed as cL'se to the ceiling as practicable, forming a
direct communication between the room and the chimney. The chimney has been made
the means of securing a ventilation by a separate and rarified air channel. Thus, besides a
mere channel left in the wall adjoining a flue, Doulton's patent combined smoke and
air flues, of terra-cotta, for 12, 10, and 8-inch chimneys, are effective. Boyd's patent flue
plates are similarin principle. Chowne's patent air-syphon, consisting of an inverted syphon
tube, acts upon the principle of the air moving up the longer leg, and of entering and de-
scending in the shorter leg, without the necessity for the application of artificial heat to the
longer leg. This, however, does not appear to be always proved in practice, for whether
the current in the longer leg be ascending or descending, depends chiefly upon differences
of temperature within and without a building; but as the brickwork of chimneys often
gets heated by the vicinity of the kitchen flue, or even by the sun shining upon it during
the day, an ascending current is more likely to be sustained than a descending one, since
brickwork will retain its heat, for some hours.
2278f/. The system adopted by Dr. Eeid, at the House of Commons, was that of admit-
ting air into a chamber underground, where it was (and is still) purified by being washed
while passing through a stream of water, and then through canvas, whereby other im-
purities are extracted. It then rises to the floor of the apartment, which is pierced with
many thousand holes, and passing through them is then further distributed by means of a
hair-cloth, ascending towards the ceiling at about the rate of one foot per minute. This
nir is, in cold weather, warmed below ;
and in warm weather it is cooled with ice. Tre
object is to keep the air in all seasons at a uniform temperature of 64. The air is often
cooler in the House than that outside it. From the ceiling it is carried rapidly away along
a tunnel to feed the great furnace which creates this current of ventilation. The com-
plaint is made that it carries with it from the floor the fine dust brought in by the
members' ffct, which, being inhaled, sometimes aifects those in the House. The method,
adopted by Dr. Reid to warm and ventilate St. George's Hall, at Liverpool, is detailed in
the Civil Engineer for 1864, page 136. The system employed from 1736 to about 1817 at
the old House of Commons, which was effectively ventilated, was by a fan placed over it
for extracting the heated air, its rate of working being dependent upon an attendant, who
received his directions from a person within the House. The common revolving wind-
guard placed at the top of a chimney to induce a suction, whereby the smoke may be
drawn out, is of the same system ; as is also Howarth's patent revolving Archimedean
screw ventilator. One of the latest systems of effecting the regularity of working such
fans or screws is by the aid of the high service water supply
;
a flow of water impinging
upon the blades of a wheel turns the extracling fan, and the water is conveyed to a lower
reservoir, to be used for domestic or other purposes.
2278A. The opposite system, that of air being forced into apartments by mechanical
means, such as the fan driven by steam power, is practised with great success at the
Ilefurm Club House, the General Post Office, and many other buildings, public and
Tirivate, and especially in factories. The fan is regulated to a velocity of between 80 and
100 feet per second. Dr. Van Hecke's system of warming and ventilating, as arranged
at the new French hospitals, is effected by means of a
3^
horse-power engine, working a
fan, which drives the external air through long subterraneous channels into four warming
apparatuses, whence it ascends into flues, which conduct it into all the wards, passing
through regulating air gratings in the walls. In each ward are two or more escape flues
carrying the vitiated air above the roofs.
2278. The Blackmail air propeller, for ventilating, cooling, and drying, has given good