Dr. Arnott describes various other plans of effecting the self-regulation of the combus tion.
A. drawer inserted into the heated chamber of the stove would serve for cooking meat, and a pot for boiling might be placed upon the fire box; it is, therefore, as the inventor remarks, peculiarly the poor man's stove. Or, by making the space between the two casings water-tight, a water-stove is produced, which, besides securing a regulated heat, offers many other conveniences.
In Russia, many parts of Germany, and other northern countries of Europe, the stoves are usually built of brick, covered with porcelain. They are of the size of a large and very high chest of drawers, and usually stand in a corner of the room. The fire is burned iu a furnace near the bottom, and the heated smoke is made repeatedly to traverse the structure from side to side, along a winding passage, before it reaches the top, where a pipe conveys it, now comparatively cold, into a flue in the wall. The heated mass Of brick continues to warm the room long after the fuel is burned. It is generally sufficient to warm the stove once a day. The same quantity of wood burned in an open grate would be consumed in an hour, and would hardly be felt.
Open-fire Stoves.—As a specimen of the numerous plans for combining the advantages of the stove and the open fire, we may take Sylvester's stove or grate, which is thus described in Ronalds and Richardson's Technology: " The fuel is placed upon a grate, the bars of which are even with the floor of the room. The sides and top of these stoves are constructed of double casings of iron, and in the sides a series of vertical plates, par allel with the front facing, are included in the interior, which collect, by conduction, a great portion of the heat generated from the fire—the mass of metal of which these are composed being so proportioned to the fuel consumed that the whole can never rise above the temperature of 212° Fahr. under any circumstances. The sides and top of the stove are thus converted into a hot chamber, offering an extensive surface of heated metal; at the bottom, by an opening in the ornamental part, the air is allowed to enter, and rises as it becomes warmed, traversing in its ascent the different compartments formed by the hot parallel plates, and is allowed to escape at the top by some similar opening into the room." The Sylvester stove can either be placed in an ordinary chimney
recess or be made to stand ornamentally forward into the room. The feeding-draught may be either taken directly from the apartment or brought by flues from the outside of the building.
The idea of having an air-chamber behind and around the fire-place, from which warm air would issue into the room, thus saving part at least of the vast amount of heat that is lost by passing through the wall, is not new, having been put in practice by the cardinal Polignac in the beginning of last century. But the way to carry the prin ,ciple out to the full would be to have the open fire-place in a pier of masonry standing isolated from the wall, like a German porcelain stove. A very small fire would keep the whole mass mildly heated. The pier could receive any shape, so as to give it archi tectural effect; and it might either terminate in the room—the smoke, after parting with most of its heat, being conducted by a pipe into the wall—or it might be cominued into the story above, where its heat would still be sufficient to warm a bedroom. An Arnott smokeless grate, set in the pedestal of an ornamental column, which might either stand in front of the wall or in a niche in its depth, might be made the beau-ideal of comfort, economy, and elegance.
Warming by Gas.—A prejudice arose against gas as a medium of heat, from the first attempts to employ it being made in an unskillful way. But when care is taken to carry off the products of combustion by a pipe, and to prevent overheating, gas-stoves will be found economical and pleasant, and capable of being used in situations where a common stove is inadmissible.