IMPROVEMENTS IN FLUES AND REFUSE APPLIANCES FOR HIGH DWELLINGS
Year: 1883

page_text: LETTERS PATENT to Robert Evans of No 68 Coleman Street in the City of
London for an Invention of IMPROVEMENTS IN FLUES AND REFUSE APPLIANCES
FOR HIGH DWELLINGS
(Void by reason of the Patentes having neglected to file a Specification in
pursuance of the conditions of the Letters Patent.)
PROVISIONAL SPECIFICATION .left by the said Robert Evans at the Office
of the Commissioners of Patents on the 24th November 1883.
ROBERT EVANS of N° 68 Coleman Street in the City of London “IMPROVEMENTS
IN FLUES AND REFUSE APPLIANCES FOR HIGH DWELLINGS
"
In towns and cities, where ground space is limited, it is necessary to have
recourse to high buildings, particularly such as may be suitable for accommodation
of the humbler classes at moderate rents. In constructing buildings of many floors
in height, the number of ascending chimnies that have to be provided side by side
increases upwards, and it is therefore necessary to build, from the foundation,
chimney breasts or piers of sufficient size and strength to support the wide breasts
above. In such buildings also, it is difficult for the occupants, especially those of
the upper floors, to dispose of their dust and refuse, and consequently, they cannot
maintain the cleanliness that is desirable in their abodes. My invention relates to
an arrangement and construction of flues with smoke and refuse appliances suitable
for such dwellings, the object which I have in view being to cheapen their structure
and provide for cleanliness and ventilation, as I will now explain. Instead of
providing flues for upward draught in the usual way, I arrange them for downward
draught, all those of one building or block of buildings descending to a channel
below, which is in communication with an upcast shaft. Thus, the chimney breast,
made sufficiently wide below to accommodate a number of flues side by side,
becomes narrower and narrower as it ascends, and terminates at the level of the
uppermost floor. On each floor there is a stove or fire place discharging its
products of combustion into the flue appropriated to it, wherein they descend.
Below the stove, or in its ashpit, there is a door opening into the flue in which is

page_text: fixed a grating. Dust and refuse thrown in the ashpit can from time to time be
pushed along with the ashes through the door on to the grating, where its
combustible ingredients are consumed by the hot products of combustion passing
through the grating; the ash and dust descend the flue to the channel below,
whence they are from time to time removed. The flue of each floor may have a
pipe or channel ascending from it to near the ceiling, so that the draught of the
flue ventilates the apartment, or each apartment may have an opening near its
ceiling into the flue from the floor above. In constructing the flues, instead of
building them of brickwork, in the ordinary way, I build them of square or
rectangular brick or ceramic blocks superposed on one another, each block having
through it a round or oval hole, or when several flues are to be accommodated side
by side, having several holes, one forming part of each flue. These holes may have
their interior glazed, so that, when the blocks are superposed with suitable mortar
or cement to unite them, they provide a continuous circular or oval flue internally
glazed and extending from the uppermost block to the bottom of the building.
The flue holes, without being themselves internally glazed, may be made of diameter
sufficiently increased to receive within them lengths of glazed earthenware pipes,
which are made of such lengths and inserted in such order as to break joint with
the brick blocks.