IMPROVED MODE OF CONSTRUCTING THE PARTITION WALLS, WARMING, SMOKE CONSUMING, PRODUCING AN AGREEABLE PHILOTHERMIC INFLUX, AS WELL AS A PERFECT EFFLUX VENTILATION, TOGETHER WITH MEANS FOR DISINFECTING DWELLINGS AND PUBLIC BUILDINGS
Year: 1879

page_text: PROVISIONAL SPECIFICATION left by Ancell Ball, at the Office of the
Commissioners of Patents on the 24th July 1879.
"AN
ANCELL BALL, of Spalding, in the County of Lincoln, Physician.
IMPROVED MODE OF CONSTRUCTING THE PARTITION WALLS, WARMING, SMOKE
CONSUMING, PRODUCING AN AGREEABLE PHILOTHERMIC INFLUX, AS WELL AS A
PERFECT EFFLUX VENTILATION, TOGETHER WITH MEANS FOR DISINFECTING
DWELLINGS AND PUBLIC BUILDINGS."
1st. The first portion of my Invention relates to a more sanitary and a cheaper
construction of our houses by their partition walls being so arranged between two
rooms that only one chimney may be required, and that my janus or double-faced
grate, with its hot air chambers and heat conducting channels, &c., hereafter
described, may be placed between the two rooms, and not only economically warm
well the said two rooms; but also chambers above, by means of the tubes or
channels which conduct the heat to them. In the kitchen an oven and boiler with
food warmer are provided.
2nd. The Invention relates to a peculiar construction of grate, the same baving
two faces, one looking into each of two rooms, and also a narrow air channel on
each side of said grate, so that it may literally be described as having four sides by
which it can be supplied well with the oxygen of the air for the purpose of
carrying on complete combustion of the coal or coke or cinders used.
The grate may also be made with only one face and still admit of the hot air
chambers, &c., being applied. At the upper part of the janus grate a hinged door
may be used in cottages, &c., in order to convey food for kitchen to parlour, and to
ensure privacy, a sliding door on each side padded with nonconductors of sound
may be employed. At the bottom of hot air chambers the outer pure air is
admitted beneath the floor, and when warmed conducted through metallic and
other tubes, &c., into rooms below as well as rooms above. Having thus warmed
the rooms, I shall
3rdly. Provide for the halls, &c., that the air may here be warmed by a peculiarly
formed stove, which not only consumes its own smoke and lights the passage, but
also pneumatically effluxes vitiated air from a room, &c., and there and then con-
sumes it, thus accomplishing two of the greatest sanitary desiderata of the day
until perhaps the electric light heat the stove instead of coals.

page_text: 4th. I also adopt another and cheaper mode of admitting and warming the outer
cold pure air chiefly for passages and smaller offices, &c. This is accomplished by
fixing near to an outside wall or chimney a small lighted candle as a night light,
or small lamp charged with a fixed or other oil and indestructible wick lighter, or small
jet of gas or some other calorific medium placed in a kind of lantern with a shorter
open tube below and a longer one above, when the caloric within the lighted lamp
rarifies the air to such an extent that the cooler vitiated air even in the warm room
descends from the ceiling and rushes up the said tube beneath the lamp into the
lantern, where it is in a great measure, if not altogether, consumed, and even if
any portion remain undecomposed, it is carried off or effluxed along with the
impurities from the light by the upper and longer tube which escapes through a
hole in outer wall after ascending through a hot air chamber provided with
outer pure air which is retarded by gills in its ascent through the said chamber
when it escapes through perforated openings into the passage or hall, &c.,
agreeably warmed and fit for respiration. The face of the lantern is glazed with
a bull's eye glass, or talc, or mica, to radiate light into the passage or small hall.
Having thus warmed our ordinary dwellings, I next come to their ventilation.
5th. My mode of winter ventilation differs somewhat from summer ventilation,
but the principle is somewhat the same, viz. that of commanding a current in
any direction wished, and consists chiefly in conveying pure and vitiated air
through channels, metallic ones being preferred to others for the conveyance of hot
air, influxing one and effluxing the other by the same pneumatic beautiful and yet
simple power more tractable and cheaper than steam, and most useful in this
sanitary point of view.
Correct ventilation may here be defined as an agreeable steady influx of outer
pure air in conjunction with an incessant efflux of the inner air vitiated by our
respiration, the combustion of our fires, lighted candles, lamps, &c., and worst of
all from our sulphurous acid, curtain fading or bleaching, flowers destroying, and
air vitiating coal gas which ought never to find its way into inhabited rooms so
long as obtained from the article coal.
.
The influx of the outer air I accomplish in three or more modes:-1st. By a
special admission of it through a hit and miss air breech in the wall just beneath
the bottom of the grate for the supply of the fire above. This may be done in a
direct manner when the wall is as outer one, but if not, must be conveyed beneath
the floor to that spot, and when so doing it is desirable to place a second hit and
miss cast iron brick in a hole cut through the hearthstone just where the lower edge
of fender rests upon it, in order that at one time the fender may be withdrawn a
couple of inches into the room, when the outer air will ascend to the fire and
additionally revive it, whilst in cold weather the fender may be pushed closer to
the fire when the outer air will ascend to the top of fender where it will become
warmed before the fire and then diffused more or less into the room.
The next and last mode of supplying the room amply yet agreeably without air,
is from the passage or hall through properly guarded openings either in the inner
partition wall or through the upper pannel or just above the door by one or two
frames filled with perforated zinc, and either sliding or working on a pivot to
regulate the admission of air. This ample and agreeable triple supply of pure air
will in all properly constructed chimneys, cure their tendency to smoke, which
implies that the air is drawn or sucked down the chimney to supply the fire with
oxygen, because sufficient is not admitted by the door and elsewhere.
Having thus admitted or influxed pure air into our passages, halls, and rooms, &c.,
I next come to the far more important consideration of effluxing or removing the
deleterious vitiated air, which many have professed to do, but very few accomplished
except by powerful and costly means, as in our Prisons and the House of Commons,
and few other places, but as the pneumatic principles of ventilation are studied, the
difficulty will vanish, for it is far easier to command light vitiated air to come
down from a church steeple than to call and command an angel to come up from
the mighty deep.

page_text: This efflux mode is accomplished in different modes, viz:-1st. By an ever
present natural current within the chimney, and at ordinary or increased
temperatures. 2nd. Another mode is by producing a powerful current for the
generation of caloric in several ways from the simple night light to. the electric one.
The light from a lamp being charged with an indestructible or other wick, and by
this rarifying the air at a certain efflux point or points to a higher temperature
than is met with among the vitiated air in a room, and connecting these two
opposite temperatures by means of an intervening metallic or other channel; the
law of pneumatics is shown by the lower temperature rushing either downwards or
upwards through such tube or channel to the higher one at opposite ends of the
tube, just as the outer cold air will rush through a key hole in an outer door into
an adjoining warmer passage, and it is as easy to pull this vitiated air down from
the top of St. Paul's to the floor, as it is for a balloon to ascend to it.
My first mode of producing efflux ventilation at ordinary temperature is by
utilising the ever present current in a chimney or similar flue, and providing
a communication between it or them, and the sitting or bed room, &c, by means
of an opening through such brickwork near to the ceiling, at the same time
arranging that no down-draught can propel any smoke to black the ceiling of the
apartment, and by using a nonconductor of sound, no objectional flapping noise of
a valve is heard. The syphon like arrangement in this efflux ventilator with its
silent valve will be fully described in its proper place.
Additional influx ventilation coupled with disinfection of sick rooms, &c., I make
by small openings or louvres, or both, in the lower panels of the bedroom door, over
which slides a wooden frame filled with finely perforated zinc or gauze wire, au
intervening space being left for the suspension of a fold or two of muslin which is
to be saturated by means of a long circular lamp wick passed through an india-
rubber or other tube into a bottle secured to the lower panel of the door and
containing some disinfecting solution, as chloride of lime, carbolic acid, &c.
Another bottle may also be secured to the same door and supplied with materials
for fumigations or the generation of ozone that the gases may be diffused through
the room by the influx current through the door.