IM- PROVEMENTS IN HEATING APPARATUS FOR HORTICULTURAL BUILDINGS
Year: 1879

page_text: PROVISIONAL SPECIFICATION left by John Hammond at the Office of the
Commissioners of Patents on the 23rd July 1879.
"
JOHN HAMMOND, of Brayton, in the County of Cumberland, Gardener. IM-
PROVEMENTS IN HEATING APPARATUS FOR HORTICULTURAL BUILDINGS."
This Invention has for its object to improve the construction and action of
apparatus for heating horticultural buildings, and especially to arrange the piping
so that the boiler or water heater can be placed at a comparatively higher level
than in ordinary arrangements, and so that the deep stoke hole or pit ordinarily
found so costly in the first place and so objectionable afterwards will not be
required.
The improved boiler or water heater consists of a lower horizontal annular
cylindrical part, and an upper semicylindrical or saddle-shaped part, the latter having
a vertical part at its inner end reaching down to about the level of the fire bars.
The firebars are placed inside of the lower part of the boiler, and the two parts are
built in with brickwork in such a way that the flames or fire gases proceed to the
inner end of the lower part, then return towards the front along a space between
the lower and upper parts of the boiler, and next descend at each side at the front
end into a horizontal underflue leading to the chimney. Both parts of the boiler
communicate by branch pipes with the flow and return pipes which are led through
the building to be heated.
The improved arrangement or system of piping is advantageously applicable with
any suitable boiler or water heater, and is such as to cause the water to circulate
automatically in the manner necessary for maintaining the action of the apparatus
without inconveniently lowering the relative position of the boiler. In most hot
houses or horticultural buildings heated by means of hot water pipes it is necessary
for the piping to cross footpaths and doorways without obstructing them, and this
has heretofore been attained by making the piping dip below the ground or floor
level at the pathways and doors. The dipping of the piping in the manner referred to
renders the automatic circulation impossible or extremely difficult and uncertain unless
the boiler is placed at so low a level as to require the use of an inconvenient and
objectionable pit or stokehole below the ground level. By the present Invention the
piping is arranged so that in the parts thereof in which the water has to change its
height it rises in a part nearer the flow outlet of the boiler and descends in a part
577

page_text: nearer the return inlet into the boiler, the distance being measured along the piping.
It is the reverse of this arrangement which the ordinary dipping pipes necessarily
have, and it is in consequence thereof that they cannot be used without a sunk position
of the boiler. In single-hot-houses and the like the improvement can generally be
very conveniently carried out by leading the part of the piping nearest the flow
outlet of the boiler up to a level above the door or passage, then across, and at the
further side down to the level at which the pipes are required, and the part rising and
crossing over in that way may be covered with an ornamental grating or be other-
wise ornamented. The colder_part of the piping. which recrosses-the-pathway-may-
be led under the pathway as it has to be connected to the bottom of the boiler.
When a series of hot houses or sections are to be heated by meaus of one boiler a
main flow pipe-may-be-led horizontally along the back wall at a level, by preference,
as high as the tops of the doors or passages, and a branch pipe may in each house
or section be led from the main flow pipe over the door or passage, and then down
to the required level. In a similar way branches from the several sections of
piping may communicate with a main return pipe which may be below the floor
level.