KinSource - Tale of the Week - Heating And Ventilating In Schools

KinSource

Minnesota Tales

The Sacred Heart Journal, November 30, 1905, p. 1

HEATING AND VENTILATING IN SCHOOLS.

Proper heating and ventilating in school houses is one of the conditions required to get the state aid. It is only recently that it has come into general practice. There has been some confusion and uncertainty as to a plan that will do the work well. Allow me to say however, that the air must be conducted into the room by a pipe or tube of sufficient size to admit enough of it, and that it must come into contact with a hot surface as it enters the room, and thus get thoroughly heated before it diffuses through the room. The ventilating pipe must come down to within four or five inches of the floor, or if there is a chimney, the opening into it must be not more than four or five inches from the floor. There must be no opening at the top of the windows or near the ceiling as that would let the heated air out and keep the floor cold. The ventilating pipe must be near the stove or at least in the same end of the building. The heated air there makes a complete circuit of the room, ascending first to the ceiling at the stove, passing near the ceiling to the further end, descending as it cools, and the suction of the lower end [of] the ventilating pipe draws it over the floor to the end of the room where it started. While cooler now than when it started, it is still warm enough to make the floor very comfortable.

I have no desire to impose any extra expense upon the tax payers of any district. I would say however, that it is best to have someone put it in who understands it. $50 to $55 for a new stove, for the pipes and for putting up is a very moderate expense. It is better to pay that and have it done right than to make a bungling and unsatisfactory job of it at less cost.

There are people who feel that there is not so much sense in having a system of heating and ventilating in our schools. Let me say that the matter is receiving more and more attention in the correction of both public and private building, and it seems to me that twenty to forty or more children crowded into a room should have sanitary and comfortable conditions, which may be secured at a very small [cost]. I frequently find windows as fast and immovable as if they were glued in place.

Oxygen is the life sustaining principle of air, and carbonic acid gas is poison. After air has passed thru the lungs, the oxygen has decreased one-fifth, while the carbonic acid gas has increased more than one hundred fold. In addition to this, organic poisons are excreted by the skin. The effect of impure air in the school room causes the children to become uncomfortable, fretful and dull, especially towards the close of day. Mental activity relaxes as the result of body weakness.

Eric Ericson,
County Supt.