HOW TO DO IT.

MY DEAR ARCHITECT: I'm in a hurry. Let me ask you a few square questions. Give
me square answers if you can; if not, say so. What kind of a furnace shall I get? I've
interviewed about a dozen; each one is warranted to give more heat, burn less coal, leak
less gas, give less trouble and more satisfaction, than all the others put together. I suppose
you object to cast-iron, because it's liable to be heated red-hot and burn the air.
Is wrought-iron any better?
Shall I put the registers in the floors or in the partitions?
What do you say to steam?
How shall I ventilate?
Will it answer to have the ventilating flues in the outer walls?
There seems to be no doubt that the foul air should be drawn from the bottom of a
room; but if it's cold, how am I to get it to the ventilator on the top of the house? If a room
is as tight as a fruit-can, a chimney might draw like a yoke of oxen without doing any
good, and Nebuchadnezzar's furnace wouldn't drive air into it unless, in both cases, the
inlets and outlets were about equal! When I go to sleep in such a room I want to be sure
the dampers won't get accidentally shut.
Give me your opinion on these points, but don't make a long story or a tough one. If a
house is to be kept warm from turret to foundation-stone, I don't see that shutting up the
spaces between the timbers would amount to much, except to stop sounds from echoing


through them; but when the attic is as cold as out-doors, it's plain that the cold air will
be always crawling down next the inside plastering of every room in the house if it finds a
chance.
Yours,
JOHN.


LETTER XL.
From the Architect.