"How do you get the coal out?"
"Here"s a little door that slides up and catches. You notice that the floor of the bin isn"t level with the cellar floor; it"s raised to make it a comfortable height for shoveling. Under it is the place for the logs for the open fires. There are two bins, one for furnace coal and the other for the coal for the stoves, and the kindling wood goes in this third one. They are all together and large enough but not too large, and the furnace coal is near the boiler and the small coal is near the laundry and the wood is close to the dumb waiter that will take that and the clean clothes upstairs."
"All as compact as a cut-out puzzle," approved Roger. "I take off my hat to this arrangement."
"Thank you," courtesied Dorothy. "Mother and I worked that out together, and we"re rather pleased with it ourselves."
"What do you do with the ashes?" asked Roger, who took care of several furnaces in the winter time, and therefore made his examination as a specialist.
"Put them down that chute with a swinging door and into a covered can. It will be hard for the ashes to fly there."
"This is the concrete floor we superintended," said Helen, looking at it closely.
"All smooth and well drained with rounded edges. It"s going to be as clean as a whistle down here. See the metal ceiling? That"s for fire prevention, and so is the sprinkler system and there"s a metal covered door at the head of the cellar stairs."
"There seems to be a lot of machinery for a small house," observed James as he carried his examination around the s.p.a.ce.
"Mother said she couldn"t afford luxuries but she could afford comforts and these are some of the comforts," smiled Dorothy.
"Not very pretty comforts," remarked Ethel Blue dryly.
""Handsome is as handsome does,"" quoted her cousin. "When these things get to working you won"t care whether they"re beautiful to look at or not."
"What"s the heating system--steam or hot water?" asked Tom, standing before the boiler.
"Hot water. They say it"s more convenient for a small house because you don"t have to keep up such a big fire all the time."
"That"s so; in steam heating there has to be fire enough to make steam, anyway, doesn"t there?"
"And when the steam in the pipes cools it turns to water and dribbles away, but in the hot water system there will be some heat in the outside of your radiator as long as the water inside has any warmth at all."
"How does the expense compare?" inquired James who was always interested in the financial side of all questions.
"The hot water system is said to be cheaper," replied Dorothy.
"Why are there so many pipes?" asked Ethel Brown, looking with a puzzled air at the collection before her.
"Hear me lecture on heating!" laughed Dorothy; "but I did study it all out with Mother, so I think I"m telling you the truth about it. There have to be two sets of pipes, one to take the hot water to the radiators and the other to bring it back after it has cooled."
"There seem to be big pipes and small ones."
"Mains and branch pipes they call them. The man who put these in said this house was especially well arranged for piping because it wouldn"t take any more pressure to force the water into one radiator than another.
He says there"s going to be a good even heat all over everywhere."
"There isn"t a lot of difference between radiators for steam and those for hot water, is there?" asked Ethel Blue.
"No, you have to put something with water in it on top of both kinds to make the air of the room moist. Here you have to open the air valve yourself and let out the air that acc.u.mulates in the radiator. In the steam ones they are automatically worked by steam."
"There can"t be much air in the hot water radiator, I should think," said Margaret thoughtfully.
"There isn"t. You only have to open the valve two or three times in the course of the winter. The biggest difference is that the hot water system has to have an expansion tank."
"What"s that?"
"Why, when steam is shut up it just presses harder than ever, but when water is heated it swells and it"s likely to burst open whatever it"s in, so there has to be an open tank up at the top of the house where it can go and swell around all it wants to," laughed Dorothy.
"What are these affairs?" inquired Margaret who had been looking at two other arrangements near by.
"That one is a gas thing for heating water in summer when there isn"t any other fire. There"s a tiny flame burning all the time, and when the water is drawn out of the tank the flame becomes larger automatically and heats up a new supply."
"That"s a fine scheme; you don"t have to heat the house up and yet the water is always ready. What"s the other?"
"That"s to burn up the garbage. In the kitchen there"s a tiny closet for the garbage pail. It"s ventilated from the outside. There is a thing that burns the garbage and makes it heat the water, but Mother decided that we had so small a family that there might be days when there wouldn"t be fuel enough to make a decent fire, so we"d better have the gas heater."
"The other would be economical for a hotel," observed prudent James.
"Here"s the refrigerating plant," Dorothy said, motioning toward a tank and a set of pipes and a small motor.
"Going to cut out the iceman?" grinned Tom.
"We"re going to be independent of him. Mother doesn"t like natural ice, any way; she went over to the Rosemont pond last winter when the men were cutting and the ice was so dirty she made up her mind right off that she didn"t want any more of it. This thing will chill the refrigerator up in the kitchen and pipes from it are going under the flooring of the drawing room and the dining room so they can be made comfy in summer."
"Hope you can cut them off in winter!" and Roger gave a tremendous shiver.
"We can," Dorothy rea.s.sured him.
"Good work!"
"It makes small cakes of ice too, so we can always have plenty for the Club lemonades."
"I don"t know but I think that"s more useful than the heating arrangements," approved plump little Della.
"That"s because you"re fat," responded Tom with brotherly frankness. "You think you suffer most in summer, but if you didn"t have any heat in winter you"d change your cry."
"I suppose I should, but I do nearly _melt_ in warm weather," sighed Della.
"We don"t mean to if we can help it," laughed Dorothy. "This is the air-washing arrangement over here," went on Dorothy, as she continued her round of the cellar.
"Air-washing!" was the general chorus.
"As long as we have a little motor we"re going to make it useful. There"s a small fan here that brings in the fresh air. It goes into a "spray chamber" and is washed free of dust with water that is cold in summer and warm in winter."
"I see clearly that the temperature of this castle is going to be just right," exclaimed Roger.
"After the air leaves the spray chamber it goes over some plates that take all the moisture out of it, and then the fan forces it through the pipes that go into every room."
"Are those the little gratings I noticed in all the rooms the other day?"
asked Ethel Blue.