Home guide to plumbing, heating, and air conditioning

194 Pages·2005·62.2 MB·English

by  George Emery Daniels

Home Guide to
Plumbing,
Heating and
Air Conditioning
A Popular Science Book
Home Guide to
Plumbing,
Heating and
Air Conditioning
by
George Daniels
POPULAR SCIENCE
HARPER & ROW
New York, Evanston, Son Francisco, London
ACKNOWLEDGMENTS
The author wishes to thank the following firms for their assistance in the prep
aration of this book: Sears, Roebuck and Co.; Montgomery Ward and Co.; Ameri
can Standard, Plumbing and Heating Division; Crane Co.; The Donley Brothers
Co.; Copper Development Association, Inc.; Grinnell Co., Inc.; The Heyman
Co.; Ace Industrial Hardware Co.; American Gas Association, Inc.; Republic
Steel Corp.; United States Steel Corp.; Committee of Steel Pipe Producers,
American Iron and Steel Institute; National Oil Fuel Institute; Holman, Inc.;
General Motors; Space Conditioning, Inc.; De Palma Brothers; Danbury Plumb
ing Supply Co.; Hoffman Fuel' Co.; Westinghouse Electric Corp.; General
Electric Corp.; Airtemp Division of Chrysler Corp.; Carrier Air Conditioning
Co.; Philco Corp.; Fedders Corp.; Electromode; Dent Electric Co.; Stanley
Tools; Plastics Pipe Institute; Lennox Industries, Inc.; Air Conditioning and
Refrigeration Institute.
Copyright © 1967, 1976 by George Daniels
Published by Book Division, Times Mirror Magazines, Inc.
Brief quotations may be used in critical articles and reviews. For any other repro
duction of the book, however, including electronic, mechanical, photocopying,
recording orothermeans, written permission mustbeobtained from the publisher.
Library of Congress Catalog Card N urn ber: 67-10841
ISBN: 0-06-010957-2
First Edition, 1967
Nine Printings
Second Edition, Revised and Updated, 1976
Fourth Printing, 1977
Manufactured in the United States of America
Contents
Introduction
l.
How Your Plumbing Works 7
2.
Plumbing Tools 15
3.
Plumbing Materials and Their Use 23
L+. Your Source of Water 47
5.
Common Plumbing Repairs 56
6.
How to Alter or Extend Your Plumbing 76
7.
Outdoor Plumbing 94
8.
Septic Tanks and Drainage Fields 97
9. How Heating Systems Work 107
10.
How to Install a Central Heating Unit 126
1l.
Installing the Heat Distribution System 136
12.
Heating System Repairs 150
13.
Space Heaters 158
1L +. Fireplaces 165
15.
Air Conditioning 174
Index 183

Introduction
WE HAVEN'T had our modern plumbing, our automatic heating, and our air
conditioning very long, and considering the obstacles that have impeded their
development over the years, it's a wonder we have them at all. England, for
example, once rated the burning of coal as a capital offense, and at least one
Britisher was executed for the crime. So it's understandable that heating innova
tors may have become a bit timid. In France, advances in cooling rather than
heating were blocked by the government. When 16th century Frenchmen built
a thriving business by carting tons of snow and ice from the mountains to chill
their summer foods and make frozen delicacies, they might soon have progressed
to air conditioning by the same means. But the icemen's taxes were boosted
until the business collapsed, and artificial cooling was forgotten for another
hundred years. (More about the rigorous past of heating and cooling shortly.)
Plumbing, on the other hand, made slow headway largely because our
ancestors of long ago rarely took much interest in it. If they had they might have
copied an almost incredible example 4,000 years ago. At that time, archaeologists
now know, the plumbing in the Cretan palace of King Minos was so advanced it
incorporated the most important features found in our plumbing codes today.
Its sewerage system, for instance, was vented as required by modern health
regulations. Its toilets not only could be Hushed, but, like all present-day plumb
ing fixtures, were designed to seal out sewer gases. And, for a final master's
touch, the terra cotta water-supply pipes w'ere tapered to increase the How
velocity at points where sediment might otherwise accumulate. But, along
with the ancient culture that created them, all these things and their related
ideas of sanitation, vanished. If they had not, many of the great plagues of history
might never have occurred; and, in addition to the name of King Minos, history
might have recorded the name of his plumber.
Though hygienic refinements faltered and progress was slow, the water
supply aspects of plumbing eventually revived on a major scale. What was
probably the first long-distance municipal water system was developed for
Jerusalem by King Hezekiah in 727 B.C. To do it, he had his workmen tunnel a
third of a mile through rocky hills to bring water from the Pool of Siloam to the
city. The finished job worked beautifully.
To the ancient Romans, however, goes the credit for first supplying water
in the truly grand manner. They not only did their plumbing on an unprece
dented scale, but coined the word itself, and developed what was undoubtedly
the first method of cheating the water company. Around Nero's heyday (34 to 68
A.D.) they were getting their water through as many as fourteen aqueducts with
a total length of almost 360 miles. Siphon systems lifted the How over hills,
towering stone trestlework carried it across valleys. Approximately 130 million
2 INTRODUCTION
gallons a day poured into the city where more than 90 million gallons went into
247 reservoirs, nearly 40 decorative fountains, and close to 600 public water
supply basins operating around the clock. At the basins, official tenders supplied
the Roman man in the street with his water on a fill-your-jug-for-cash basis. And,
as the business brought in a total close to $40,000 a year, shady characters oc
casionally found their way into it. As might be expected, they also found a way
of boosting their profits by "beating the meter." The "meter" in those days was
simply a piece of pipe a little less than a foot long out of which water flowed
constantly from the main. As the meter pipe was made of soft lead not quite an
inch in diameter, the slick water tenders simply enlarged it with a little prying
on nights when things were slow. And from then on, they enjoyed a greater
supply of water and a more rapid procession of customers than the city fathers
had planned. So Rome's water officials had to switch from lead pipe to harder
brass and bronze.
But it was lead, known to the Romans as plumbum, that gave plumbing its
name. The ancient Roman plumber, however, was called a plumbarius, and
frequently was a woman. At least, we know that many Romans of the fair sex
owned plumbing shops, as much of the pipe unearthed from the ruins bears the
stamp of a feminine name. Their best customers, of course, were the government
and the wealthy citizens who had water piped directly to their homes. Along
with their water supply, the latter received a status symbol of sorts by having
their names stamped into the pipe together with that of the plumber. As the pipe
was exposed, the monogram also made it awkward for less-than-honest Romans
to tap into it for their own benefit. And it seems that Romans with such inclina
tions were rather plentiful. In fact, Sextus Julius Frontinus, one of Rome's most
dedicated water commissioners toward the end of the century, found some of
them bleeding the aqueducts before they even reached the city, and others
tapping into the city mains and fountain supply pipes - while some of his own
hirelings were juggling the metering pipes at distribution points for a tidy profit.
In any event, the Roman plumbers were efficient. They made their own pipe by
roIling a lead sheet around a wooden cylinder and soldering the seam. They did
it so well that their ancient pipes, tested in modern times, have withstood pres
sures as high as 250 pounds per square inch-enough to blow your car's tire to
shreds.
Much of Rome's prodigious water supply went into the baths for which the
city's inhabitants were famous. There were, however, no bathtubs in the luxury
homes of the day as it was customary to merely flood the bathroom and use it
as a pool. A roaring fire under the concrete floor warmed the water, and the excess
flame and smoke rose through the hollow tiles behind the marble walls and
created a sort of sauna. But this was a family affair. Important guests were taken
out to the lavish public baths that served as the men's clubs of the era. Some of
these, whose pools were replenished through bronze pipes with silver spouts,
could accommodate better than 3,000 bathers in a building about the size of
New York's old Penn Station-which, incidentally, embodied many architec
tural features of the Roman bath clubs. Some of the luxurious bath establish
ments reserved certain hours for women - and a few operated on a coed basis.
INTRODUCTION 3
The bath and its plumbing, however, all but disappeared with the Roman
Empire, condemned by many Christian churchmen as immoral. The bathtub,
apparently first used by the Greek athletes of ancient Nemea, became an unmen
tionable thing through Europe's Dark Ages. But, with filth and pestilence ram
pant, there were many wise defenders of the tub. England's Henry IV struck
a blow in its favor in 1399, when he created the military order of the Knights of
the Bath. The selected warrior was assured at least of a shave, a haircut, and a
good tub bath, as all three were part of the ceremony that pledged him to purity
when he became a member of the order.
Centuries passed before the bathtub could shed its evil stigma. Even in the
19th century, long after aeronauts had ridden horses into the sky slung under
balloons, crossed the English Channel by air, and set an altitude record of nearly
five miles, you still needed a doctor's prescription to use a bathtub in Boston. So
we can appreciate the courage of Britain's Sir John Harington when, almost three
centuries earlier, he sought acceptance unsuccessfully, for his invention - the
water closet. But, unlike many others who helped make our modern plumbing
possible his name is at least recorded, and his contribution has made the grade.
While all this was going on, the science of heating was muddling through.
Because man urgently needs to be warm, it got its start long before plumbing
apparently in the Stone Age. Evidence indicates that our relatives of that period
made use of fire, though at first they probably had to rely on Nature to create it
by lightning. Later, we know they brought fire into their cave homes, for both
light and heat. And their relics tell us that their combination lamp and heater was
often a skull stuffed with fat-soaked moss. The skulls, charred from use, have
been found on cavern ledges, and evidently provided warmth and illumination
for the primitive cave-wall decorators whose art work has been discovered in
modern times.
Wood has usually served as fuel for the major heating jobs of the past, but
just about everything else that burns has also been used, including the dried
manure that has fed the shepherds' fires in treeless lands over the centuries.
Even in a primitive shelter, the problem of the warming fire was smoke, for the
true chimney wasn't invented until the 1300's and three more centuries passed
before it was available to the general public. In the meantime, plain folks in
most of the civilized world led either a cold or sooty existence. The pit dwellers
in parts of Europe and Russia, residing in crudely roofed holes in the earth,
warmed themselves with a fire on the mud floor. When their heating system
threatened them with suffocation they simply banged a hole in the roof.
Elsewhere, a permanent hole in the center of the roof, with a hearth directly
below it, improved things somewhat. But while the smoke escaped through the
hole most of the heat went with it and the rain came in. So the hard-put house
holders capped the hole with a little open-sided steeple called a "smoke louver"
to let the smoke out without letting the rain in.
The chimneyed fireplace, when it finally appeared, was definitely better
than a hole in the roof. But it, too, had its troubles - and its detractors. There
were many who claimed, for example, that without the usual cloud of smoke at
the ceiling to preserve the rafters like smoked hams, the roof would rot and cave