Читать книгу Mechanics of the Household - E. S. Keene - Страница 56

—In very cold weather, when the house should be kept warm all night, clean the grate well at a late hour—the last thing. Clear the bottom of the fire pot of all ashes and clinkers so that the grate is covered with clear-burning, red-hot coals, then fill the pot full of fuel. If possible, leave some of the flame exposed to burn the gases. Leave the drafts on long enough to burn off some of the gas, then check the heater for the night. Thus there is plenty of coal to burn during the night and some on which to commence early in the morning. Some drafts do not make it necessary to leave the dampers on to burn off the gas after feeding.

With the ash-pit draft damper closed and the cold-air check damper open at night, but part of the coal is burned and there is much of it not burned in the morning. So, by reversing the dampers in the early morning the fire starts up quickly and often the house may be well warmed before any coal is put into the fire pot.

Some boilers are run the other way—a very poor way. If the grate is cleared off in very cold weather and coal added at five or six o’clock in the afternoon, by eleven o’clock at night nearly one-half of the coal is burned and the grate is covered over with a mass of ashes and clinkers. With little coal remaining, to shake the grate will quite likely put out the remaining fire; to put fresh coal on a low fire reduces further its declining temperature. The result is a cold house that will grow colder until a new fire is started.

Often in cold weather with this poor way of night firing, it takes one or more hours of forced firing to warm the house in the morning, and all the coal saved the night before is more than used to get the house or building “heated up”—while the people who should be comfortable have to get up, bathe and take breakfast in chilly rooms. At no time in the day is heat more wanted than about the time of getting up and starting the day. A fire well cared for late in the evening makes a warm house all night. And so it follows that it is much easier to add a little more heat in the morning. And surely less coal is burned, for the forcing of a fire part of the time often overheats, and wastes coal.