The most stubborn of all errors are those which have been acquired by a sort of inheritance, which have passed dogmatically from father to son, or, still worse, from mother to daughter. They may become superstitions without any theological character. The idea that the weather changes with the moon, that wind “keeps off the rain,” are physical superstitions in all cases where they are blindly accepted and promulgated without any examination of evidence.

The idea that our open fireplaces are necessary for ventilation is one of these physical superstitions, which is producing an incalculable amount of physical mischief throughout Britain. A little rational reflection on the natural and necessary movements of our household atmospheres demonstrates at once that this dogma is not only baseless, but actually expresses the opposite of the truth. I think I shall be able to show in what follows, 1st, that they do no useful ventilation; and, 2d, that they render systematic and really effective ventilation practically impossible.

Everybody knows that when air is heated it expands largely, becomes lighter, bulk for bulk, than other air of lower temperature; and therefore, if two portions of air of unequal temperatures, and free to move, are in contact with each other, the colder will flow under the warmer, and push it upwards. The latter postulate must be kept distinctly in view, for the rising of warm air is too commonly regarded as due to some direct uprising activity or skyward affinity of its own, instead of being understood as an indirect result of gravitation. It is the downfalling of the cooler air that causes the uprising of the warmer.

Now, let us see what, in accordance with the above-stated simple laws, must happen in an ordinary English apartment that is fitted, as usual, with one or more windows more or less leaky, and one or more doors in like condition, and a hole in the wall in which coal is burning in an iron cage immediately beneath a shaft that rises to the top of the house, the fire-hole itself having an extreme height of only 24 to 30 inches above the floor, all the chimney above this height being entirely closed. (I find by measurement that 24 inches is the usual height of the upper edge of the chimney opening of an ordinary “register” stove. Old farm-house fireplaces are open to the mantlepiece.)

Now, what happens when a heap of coal is burning in this hole? Some of the heat—from 10 to 20 per cent, according to the construction of the grate—is radiated into the room, the rest is conveyed by an ascending current of air up the chimney. As this ascending current is rendered visible by the smoke entangled with it, no further demonstration of its existence is needed.

But how is it pushed up the chimney? Evidently by cooler air, that flows into the room from somewhere, and which cooler air must get under it in order to lift it. In ordinary rooms this supply of air is entirely dependent upon their defective construction—bad joinery; it enters only by the crevices surrounding the ill-fitting windows and doors, no specially designed opening being made for it. Usually the chief inlet is the space under the door, through which pours a rivulet of cold air, that spreads out as a lake upon the floor. This may easily be proved by holding a lighted taper in front of the bottom door-chink when the window and other door—if any—are closed, and the fire is burning briskly. At the same time more or less of cold air is poured in at the top and the side spaces of the door and through the window-chinks. The proportion of air entering by these depends upon the capacity of the bottom door-chink. If this is large enough it will do nearly all the work, otherwise every other possible leakage, including the key-hole, contributes.

But what is the path of the air which enters by these higher level openings? The answer to this is supplied at once by the fact that such air being colder than that of the room, it must fall immediately it enters. The rivulet under the door is thus supplemented by cascades pouring down from the top and sides of the door and the top and sides of the windows, all being tributaries to the lake of cold air covering the floor.

The next question to be considered is, what is the depth of this lake? In this, as in every other such accumulation of either air or water, the level of the upper surface of the lake is determined by that of its outlet. The outlet in this case is the chimney hole, through which all the overflow pours upwards; and, therefore, the surface of the flowing stratum of cold air corresponds with the upper part of the chimney hole, or of the register, where register stoves are used.

Below this level there is abundant ventilation, above it there is none. The cat that sits on the hearth-rug has an abundant supply of fresh air, and if we had tracheal breathing apertures all down the sides of our bodies, as caterpillars have, those on our lower extremities might enjoy the ventilation. If we squatted on the ground like savages something might be said for the fire-hole ventilator. But as we are addicted to sitting on chairs that raise our breathing apparatus considerably above the level of the top of the register, the maximum efficiency of the flow of cold air in the lake below is expressed by the prevalence of chilblains and rheumatism.31

The atmosphere in which our heads are immersed is practically stagnant; the radiations from the fire, plus the animal heat from our bodies, just warm it sufficiently to enable the cool entering air to push it upwards above the chimney outlet and the surface of the lower moving stratum, and to keep it there in a condition of stagnation.

If anybody doubts the correctness of this description, he has only to sit in an ordinary English room where a good fire is burning—the doors and windows closed, as usual—and then to blow a cloud by means of pipe, cigar, or by burning brown paper or otherwise, when the movements below and the stagnation above, which I have described, will be rendered visible. If there is nobody moving about to stir the air, and the experiment is fairly made, the level of the cool lake below will be distinctly shown by the clearing away of the smoke up to the level of the top of the register opening, towards which it may be seen to sweep.

Above this the smoke-wreaths will remain merely waving about, with slight movements due to the small inequalities of temperature caused by the fraction of heat radiated into the room from the front of the fire. These movements are chiefly developed near the door and windows, where the above-mentioned cascades are falling, and against the walls and furniture, where feeble convection currents are rising, due to the radiant heat absorbed by their surfaces. The stagnation is the most complete about the middle of the room, where there is the greatest bulk of vacant airspace.

When the inlet under the door is of considerable dimensions, there may be some escape of warmer upper air at the top of the windows, if their fitting is correspondingly defective. These, however, are mere accidents; they are not a part of the vaunted chimney-hole ventilation, but interferences with it.

There is another experiment that illustrates the absence of ventilation in such rooms where gas is burning. It is that of suspending a canary in a cage near the roof. But this is cruel; it kills the bird. It would be a more satisfactory experiment to substitute for the canary-bird any wingless biped who, after reading the above, still maintains that our fire-holes are effective ventilators.

Not only are the fire-holes worthless and mischievous ventilators themselves, but they render efficient ventilation by any other means practically impossible. The “Arnott’s ventilator” that we sometimes see applied to the upper part of chimneys is marred in its action by the greedy “draught” below.

The tall chimney-shaft, with a fire burning immediately below it, dominates all the atmospheric movement in the house, unless another and more powerful upcast shaft be somewhere else in communication with the apartments. But in this case the original or ordinary chimney would be converted into a downcast shaft pouring air downwards into the room, instead of carrying it away upwards. I need not describe the sort of ventilation thus obtainable while the fire is burning and smoking.

Effective sanitary ventilation should supply gentle and uniformly-diffused currents of air of moderate and equal temperature throughout the house. We talk a great deal about the climate here and the climate there; and when we grow old, and can afford it, we move to Bournemouth, Torquay, Mentone, Nice, Algiers, etc., for better climates, forgetting all the while that the climate in which we practically live is not that out-of-doors, but the indoor climate of our dwellings, the which, in a properly constructed house, may be regulated to correspond to that of any latitude we may choose. I maintain that the very first step towards the best attainable approximation to this in our existing houses is to brick up, cement up, or otherwise completely stop up, all our existing fire-holes, and abolish all our existing fires.

But what next? The reply to this will be found in the next chapter.