Home and Building, Volume 18 Number 1 (June 1955)

Making Your Home Winterproof — The Third Article in a Series — this Time Discussing Central Heating

Making Your Home Winterproof
The Third Article in a Series — this Time Discussing Central Heating

In this our third article on household heating let us suppose that you are quite determined not to abandon the charm and cheerfulness of your open fire. You say, and quite rightly that it forms a focal point in your living room in winter and that it is companionable and bright during the long winter evening. On these damp afternoons when the daylight disappears so soon, you put a match to your fire and the whole room brightens up. You say that when you have friends in for the evening

there certainly is something about an open fire that seems to stimulate conversation and gives a feeling of hospitality. In a large house, particularly the older type of house with high ceilings and large rooms some modern form of central heating is really necessary. This can give an even background wormth with an open fire for radiant heat and cheerfulness.

There is much more to this large subject than the purchase of boilers and radiators, it is absolutely essential to have the advice of a heating engineer. For the following information on central heating we are indebted to Mr. R. W. Talbot.

Central heating is the provision of a boiler or a warm air furnace in the basement or in a suitable room in a house or building and the distribution of the heat through pipes or ducts to the various rooms. The distribution with a system such as this has to be carefully designed by a Heating Engineer and the first step is to calculate the heat loss from each of the rooms. The plant is then designed so that the heating system will replace this heat loss in each of the rooms to maintain comfortable conditions. The types of central heating are numerous but we will refer briefly to each system as follows:

Warm Air Heating:

With this system of heating, the warm air is distributed through the building with a sheet metal ducting system and the air is delivered into the room through neat grilles or diffusers. Usually a portion of this air is returned to the heating plant and is filtered and re-circulated Where air conditioning is called for the warm air system is usually incorporated and the air is cleaned by filtration, heated or cooled as required, and moisture is added so that a constant set of conditions is maintained in the building. This of course provides the best possible conditions for comfort and human respiration. Air conditioning is of course a very expensive installation as so much equipment is required to condition the air before it is distributed.

There are several methods of providing warm air heating for domestic pur* poses without putting in a very extensive plant as described above, but these only provide the heating side of the business. The automatically oil fired furnaces are available for mounting under the floor or basement with one outlet into the house and a number of installations of this type are being made in N.Z. today.