Turkish Baths

ITS DESIGN AND CONSTRUCTION. 83
ever, it would seem to demand that the shaft conducting
from furnace to hot rooms should be of greater sectional
area than that to the furnace from the intake about
one-third larger and that the total area of outlets for
the escape of vitiated air should be about midway
between the two.
The whole principle of the ventilation of the hot rooms
of a Turkish bath resolves itself, primarily, into the fact
that we have to continually remove the bottom layer of
air. The provision of the foul-air conduits below the
floor level is equivalent to providing a suspended floor
with a hollow space under. This is just the reverse of
the principle of ventilating
rooms of ordinary temperature,
where we require to constantly remove the top
layer, and often actually do so when we provide false
ceilings to passages, &c.
The ventilators placed at the floor level of the hot
rooms should be actually so, and not 3 in. or 6 in. above.
Long, wide gratings 6 in. deep are preferable to those of
deeper and narrower design. In theory, indeed, the
whole circumference of the hot rooms should be lined
round with gratings, thus making the sudatorium like a
lidless box inverted, into which hot air is thrown and
escapes all round the bottom edges.
There is one point about the circulation of air in a set
of hot rooms that requires considerable attention, and
that is the back-flow along the floor. In any bath where
hot air is supplied,
if the bather will hold his linen
"check" across the top of the doorway between the
rooms he will find that the air is flowing from the laconicum
to the shampooing room. If, however, the sheet
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