In this article, we will consider the very important issue of heating stone and brick buildings in the old days.
At the time of writing these lines, the temperature outside my window is -36g. Outside the city -48g. The last time in my memory such frosts were 12 years ago. The weather these years spoiled the southern regions of Eastern Siberia.
At such low temperatures, the issue of reliable and efficient heating is very important. In our technical age, in most cases, this is water heating from thermal power plants (in cities), or various types of fuel boilers (if it is a private house). In the villages, everything is the old-fashioned way: a brick stove with access of parts of the stove to all rooms, a firebox with wood.
But how were huge brick palaces heated in the old days?
Interiors of old buildings with large rooms and halls:
The tiled stove in the summer palace of Peter I. The impression is that this stove is not in its place, or is not provided for by the palace project.
Promotional video:
To effectively heat a building, such ovens must be in every room.
In a village house made of wood, everything is simpler, they put the stove in the center of the building:
The stove heats, heats all rooms.
Or it’s even simpler, the house has one room with a Russian stove in the center:
There is a version that stoves for such palaces and halls were not intended at all. They were installed later, out of hopelessness, when the climate changed to a sharply continental one with low winter temperatures. Indeed, many of the ovens in the palaces look strange, out of place. If there was a project before the construction of such a building, then obviously no one was involved in the heating project.
The official version about many palaces says that most of them were summer palaces, where they moved only in the warm season.
Consider the progress of heating using the example of the Winter Palace.
The coat of arms of the Winter Palace. Even now, heating such halls is still a challenge for designers.
At first, the heating of the Winter Palace was obviously stove. The living quarters were heated by fireplaces and Dutch stoves, heating pads were placed in the beds - closed braziers-pans with coals.
Large stoves were installed on the lower floor of the Winter Palace, the warm air from which was supposed to heat the rooms on the second floor. Multi-tiered stoves with decor were also installed in ceremonial double-height halls, but for large rooms such a heating system turned out to be ineffective.
In one of the letters written in the winter of 1787, Count P. B. Sheremetyev shares his impressions: "and the cold is unbearable everywhere … all the ends, and the stoves are just for show and some are not locked." There was not enough warmth even for the chambers of the royal family located on the second floor, not to mention the third, where the maids of honor lived. “On the occasion of the majestic cold,” from time to time even had to cancel balls and receptions - in the two-height ceremonial halls the temperature in winter did not rise above 10–12 ° С.
The huge stove economy of the Winter Palace consumed a lot of firewood (in winter the furnace was made twice a day) and posed a severe fire hazard. Although the chimneys were cleaned "with the established frequency and special care", the disaster could not be avoided.
In the evening of December 17, 1837, a fire broke out in the Winter Palace, and it was possible to extinguish it only by the 20th. According to the memoirs of witnesses, the glow could be seen several miles away.
In the process of restoring the palace, it was decided to change the stove heating to air (or as it was then called "pneumatic"), developed by the military engineer N. A. Ammosov. By that time, the furnaces of his design had already been tested in other buildings, where they proved to be excellent.
In the Ammosov furnace, the firebox with all smoke flows from iron pipes was located in a brick chamber with passages, in the lower part of which there were openings for the fresh external air or recirculated air from the heated rooms to enter the chamber. In the upper part of the furnace chamber, there are air-vent holes for the removal of heated air into the heated rooms.
“One pneumatic oven, looking at the size of its own and the convenience of placing a dwelling, can heat from 100 to 600 cubic meters. fathoms of capacity, replacing 5 to 30 Dutch ovens"
Another fundamental difference between the Ammosov system is an attempt to supplement heating with ventilation. For heating in the ventilation chambers, the freshest air taken from the street was used, and to remove exhaust air from the premises, holes were made in the walls connected to ventilation channels, which "serve to draw stuffiness and dampness out of the room." In addition, additional or spare channels were made in the walls for the future. It should be noted that in 1987, when examining the entire complex of buildings of the Municipal Hermitage, about 1000 canals of various purposes were found with a total length of about 40 km (!).
Remains of an Ammos oven in the Small Hermitage. Firebox and entrance to the air chamber.
So, the founder of thermochemistry GI Gess conducted an examination of Ammosov's furnaces and concluded that they were harmless to health. 258,000 rubles were allocated for the “pneumatic heating device”. and the process started. 86 large and small pneumatic furnaces were installed in the basements of the palace. The heated air rose through the "hot" channels to the ceremonial halls and living rooms. The exit points of the heating ducts were completed with copper gratings on the air ducts, made according to the drawings of the designer V. P. Stasova:
For his own time, the heating system proposed by General Amosov was certainly progressive, but not ideal - it dried the air. Through the leaky pipes in the heaters, the flue gases entered the heated air. Not much - dust was falling from the street together with the supply air. Having settled on the hot surface of the iron heat exchangers, the dust burned out and entered the premises in the form of soot. Not only people suffered from this "side effect" of the new heating system - combustion products settled on painted shades, marble sculptures, paintings … Let's add here significant temperature fluctuations during and in the interval between the furnaces: when the stoves are heated, the rooms are very hot, but when they stop heating, the air cools down rapidly.
In 1875, another representative of the military engineering corps - engineer-colonel G. S. Voinitsky presented a project for water-air heating. The new type of heating was tested on a small section of the Winter Palace (Kutuzovskaya Gallery, Small Church, Rotunda), and in the 1890s it was extended to its entire north-western part, installing a total of 16 air chambers in the basement. Hot water was brought in from a boiler room located in one of the "illuminated courtyards" of the palace. Hot water was supplied from the boilers through iron pipes to the heaters, and the heated air went through the already existing heat channels to the living quarters (naturally - due to the fact that warm air is lighter than cold air).
Only by the summer of 1911 did the heating system appear, which is most similar to the modern one. Cabinet technician e.i.v. engineer N. P. Melnikov has developed a new project. He created two complementary systems in the Hermitage: a water radiator heating system and a ventilation system with air conditioning elements. Reconstruction of heating in the Hermitage was completed by the fall of 1912, ventilation was installed by 1914. [Source]
As you can see, the progress of heating such brick and large premises lasted for almost 200 years. Too long. But the multi-storey brick houses themselves were built almost the same in the 18th century. and at the beginning of the 20th century. Indeed, there are thoughts that heating technologies simply did not have time to adjust in the wake of the dramatic climate change. Possibly post-cataclysmic climate changes (pole shift, flood, etc.).
In Europe, the climate has not become so harsh - in the past, most of them settled on fireplaces. In terms of efficiency, they are worse than ovens. But, apparently, this design of the hearth was enough.
All this heating experience could not but be used already in the buildings of the late 19th century, early 20th century.
Vilner's house in Minusinsk (a town near Abakan). Chimneys in the walls are shown. I think that's why many of the walls in such old buildings are a meter thick. A stove was heated in the basement and hot air warmed the walls.
Similarly, this heating design could and was used in other buildings from the 19th and 20th centuries. in Russia.
And now, based on information from previous articles about the use of electrostatics in ancient buildings, we will try to at least theoretically substantiate alternative sources of heating in those days, about which there are no technical books or other references. But stone cities, judging by the descriptions and maps, were for sure.
For those who are not familiar with the topic - The use of atmospheric electricity in the past, read the tag "atmospheric electricity".
In physics, there are many effects associated with static electricity.
The inverse piezoelectric effect is the process of compression or expansion of a piezoelectric material under the action of an electric field, depending on the direction of the field strength vector.
If an alternating voltage is applied to such a piezoelectric element, then the piezoelectric element will contract and expand due to the inverse piezoelectric effect, i.e. perform mechanical vibrations. In this case, the energy of electrical vibrations is converted into energy of mechanical vibrations with a frequency equal to the frequency of the applied alternating voltage. Since the piezoelectric element has a natural frequency of mechanical vibrations, a resonance phenomenon is possible when the frequency of the applied voltage coincides with the natural frequency of the plate vibrations. In this case, the maximum amplitude of oscillations of the plate of the piezoelectric element is obtained.
Can these micro-oscillations of the dielectric heat it up? I think, at a certain frequency of oscillations - quite. Another question - fired brick, ceramics, can it be the material where this effect is possible?
The pyroelectric effect consists in a change in the spontaneous polarization of dielectrics with a change in temperature. Typical linear pyroelectrics include tourmaline and lithium sulfate. Pyroelectrics are spontaneously polarized, but unlike ferroelectrics, the direction of their polarization cannot be changed by an external electric field. At a constant temperature, the spontaneous polarization of the pyroelectric is compensated by free charges of the opposite sign due to the processes of electrical conductivity and adsorption of charged particles from the surrounding atmosphere. When the temperature changes, the spontaneous polarization changes, which leads to the release of some charge on the pyroelectric surface, due to which an electric current arises in a closed circuit. The pyroelectric effect is used to create thermal sensors and radiant energy receivers intended forin particular, for the registration of infrared and microwave radiation.
It turns out that there is an electrocaloric effect (the opposite of the pyroeffect) - an increase in the temperature of a substance when an electric field of strength E is created in it and a corresponding decrease in temperature when this field is turned off under adiabatic conditions.
Scientists, if they are studying these effects, only in the direction of cooling:
The use of the electrocaloric effect (the opposite of the pyroelectric effect) makes it possible to obtain low temperatures in the temperature range from liquid nitrogen to freon temperatures using ferroelectric materials. Record values of the electrocaloric effect (2.6 gr. C) near the PT were observed in the antiferroelectric ceramics of the zirconate – stannate – lead titanate system and in the ceramics of lead scandoniobate. The possibility of developing a pyroelectric multistage converter with a cycle efficiency of about 10% with an expected power output of up to 2 kW / l of energy carrier is not excluded, which in the future will create real competitiveness for classical power plants. [Source]
According to the forecasts of physicists, there are ample opportunities for the electrocaloric one to create solid-state cooling systems based on it, similar to the Peltier element, but based not on the flow of current, but on the change in the field strength. In one of the most promising materials, the magnitude of the temperature change was equal to 0.48 Kelvin per volt of applied voltage.
A surge in the activity of the scientific community in the study of the electrocaloric effect and attempts to find a worthy application for it fell on the sixties of the twentieth century, but due to a number of technical and technological capabilities, it was not possible to create prototypes with a temperature change exceeding a fraction of a degree. This was clearly not enough for practical application, and studies of the electrocaloric effect were almost completely curtailed.
Another effect:
Dielectric heating is a method of heating dielectric materials by a high-frequency alternating electric field (HFC - high-frequency currents; range 0.3-300 MHz). A distinctive feature of dielectric heating is the volume of heat release (not necessarily uniform) in the heated medium. In the case of HFC heating, the heat release is more uniform due to the large depth of energy penetration into the dielectric.
A dielectric material (wood, plastic, ceramics) is placed between the plates of a capacitor, which is supplied with high-frequency voltage from an electronic generator on radio tubes. An alternating electric field between the capacitor plates causes polarization of the dielectric and the appearance of a displacement current, which heats the material.
Advantages of the method: high heating rate; a clean non-contact method that allows heating in a vacuum, protective gas, etc.; uniform heating of materials with low thermal conductivity; implementation of local and selective heating, etc.
Oddly enough, this method was used in the late 19th century. in medicine for the therapeutic heating of tissues.
All these effects are based on the possible receipt of power, which is converted into heat through the main parameter - high voltage. The currents in electrostatics are very small. Whereas all our modern electrical engineering is power engineering. It has a strict voltage parameter (take our standard 220V, in some countries there is a different voltage in the network), and the power of the device depends on the currents consumed.
I think that tens of thousands of volts from the installation for obtaining electricity from the atmosphere and installed as a potential difference on the walls can replace our modern electric heaters and convectors through dielectric heating. It's just that no one in the applied meaning of research plunged into this topic. Since the time of N. Tesla, modern physics is not interested in electrostatics. But everywhere there is room for feat. It would seem, what new can be invented in the circuits of electric motor windings? It turned out - you can. Dayunov created such an electric motor by combining the "star" and "triangle" induction motor winding circuits, calling his winding circuit "Slavyanka".
The efficiency of the electric motor and its traction characteristics have increased. I decided to leave the development in Russia, and followed the path of looking for private investors. Each inventor has his own way and look at his brainchild …
Returning to what was written above, I will assume that almost everything new is well forgotten old … And if there is something in theory, then it can be implemented in practice!
Author: sibved