What I did at my house today...

[Gothichome]

I would think each flame fired device would need it’s own exhaust. Whether two separate exhausts can be run up the same flu via separate liners, I suppose would be a local Code issue, some areas might allow, others may not. Running two liners up one flu might also depend on the flu construction. A framed chimney may not be allowed, do to the issue of exhaust heat if both appliances were fired at the same time. Were as a brick chimney it would be allowed.

[phil]

Just thinking that perhaps instead of considering a dropped ceiling to cover heat vent pipes, you could consider pipes of copper or brass that are not hidden. Kind of like how plumbing might be brass , copper or chrome and not hidden instead of being walled in. If it were a copper surround with copper piping that is visible that might at least enable you to keep the ceiling height intact.

I guess the size of the pipe is just a factor of the length x hieght so maybe you could make the pipe like only an inch x whatever width you needed to gain the airflow. It would probably need to just be the same area as the pipe so for example a 6" pipe is 3"x 3.14 or just over 9 square inches in area.. so maybe you wouldn't need a 6" drop to hide it if you went that route. not sure how code might affect that.


My kitchen was dropped from 9' to about 7.5' why ? well it was a style in the 70's I guess.. seems odd now. I ripped it out and got my height back.
when we were looking for houses one had the entire main floor converted to low ceilings and they had installed an oversized picture window that basically looked at their neighbors house.. I stood there thinking what it would take to change all that back and what where they thinking to do that initially, seemed crazy. maybe the heat ducts were in there but still it was pretty severe from my eyes. the rest of that house was nice.

[Manalto]

When I was in high school in New England, my friend's Greek Revival house had ceilings that nearly brushed the top of my head and then, years later, living in an old house in Savannah, Georgia with 12' ceilings, I came to the conclusion that ceiling height was usually a function of climate: high in hot climates and low in cold. (The grand houses being the exception.) So I find it interesting that in the Pacific Northwest, with its benign summers and chilly winters, that your house was constructed with 9' ceilings. I'm not saying your house isn't grand, Phil, I'm merely implying it.

[phil]

no my house isnt; "grand" its designed for a single family and not huge or small compared to others that surround me.
I think the style of most of the craftsman houses here is 9' ceilings rather than the 8' which was later considered normal. One thing I have noted is that as you go through the front door, there is a "doorway" weather or not there ever was a door is unknown to me but the opening is approximately the height of other doorways.

I think the thought may have been that when you open the door, yes heat escapes but the heat within about 2-3' of the ceiling is trapped and this may have helped to keep heat in. likewise my windows don';t run up near the ceiling which just seems normal. Maybe in southern homes there is a change in design to try to let trapped heat out. Ive often thought it would be nice to have more ventilation from the attic but I didnt; want o go cutting it up to put in skylights and such. I think it's neat when houses have a little lattice box on the roof to naturally ventilate but none near me have that. Ive only got a couple windows in the attic on the gable ends. the roof pretty uch meets the floor at the attic floor hieght and there are low walls that act as a structural support. Ive got a triangular space that tapers from nothing to about 4' inn height running the length of both sides of the attic. I put some insulation in the 2x4 floor joist and then put painted plywood overtop and added 4 doors to access this space for storage. when I bought this was unused dead space.

although the attic appears part of the original house, I think with mine , the basement and attic were not intended to be living space and I think that the stairs up and down from the main floor were added to get more bedrooms and that was probably done to most of the houses of my age by around the 30's. they added stairs up and down and extended the kitchen wall about 4' on the outside and changed the slope over the kitchen to make that possible. the flooring in my house is standard 3 1/4 but in the attic it is all 2" flooring. the stairs seem old and the doors upstairs so i think this was done pretty early on.
the attic did have K and T wiring so maybe it was even wired to be living space. It didn't seem to be added so far as I can tell but maybe the house was finished as one level but they wired the attic in preparation for expansion when it was built. maybe there was a staircase up. I did notice that the plaster wall seemed to run behind the staircase ( between the stairs and the wall) so it looked like it was plastered before the stairs were added.

the footings that my basement walls sit on are about 2-3' high around the perimeter. Ive noticed that the floor down there is pretty perfect. I think it had a dirt floor originally and then the cement floor was later added. the foundation walls have more big rocks in them. It never had plaster or drywall or anything I can see in the basement and when I bought it had empty stud bays, with shiplap and shingles on the outside and no more than cardboard boxes stapled up to the inside of the studs. wow it survived for some 70 years with no more than cardboard boxes for finish in the basement..

I think the basement had a separate entrance and was used to store wood or coal and provisions but was never living space. It does have good footings and it is very straight and plumb. I dont think it has ever been jacked or moved. It would be nice to lift it a foot ,or dig the floor.. If I did it could provide a legal suite that I could rent for lots. as it is I have enough headroom to walk freely so it's more or less my workshop. a previous owner had a couple of bedrooms down there but they were done on the cheap. It has windows on all the basement walls but they are not huge as is typical.


my house has a fairly steep pitch compared to modern day and I think the design was carried over from others , maybe from europe. by the 60's or so they had pretty much figured out we don't really get a lot of snow so then houses were designed with less pitch since self dumping of the snow usually isn't an issue. our weather is pretty similar to Seattle we get lots of rain and well typically get as miuch as 2' of wet snow followed by rain within a week or so. In the interior of our province it is higher and colder so they do see more winter conditions.
on the east coast cities in Canada we see much more severe winter weather and further up our coast we do see more snow.

[Jamie]

Years ago I picked up a small annunicator box at an an antique mall for very little. It had been kicking around my workshop too long. The time was finally right to steel wool & wax the wood case and install the thing in my kitchen. Originally these boxes used room names for residential installations and numbers for commercial. The Wade "Gingerbread man" and "Mouse running up the clock" were premiums from Red Rose Tea in the 1970's.

I'm joking I'll turn my house into Downton Abby now with a servant call box!!!

[phil]

that's neat and I found some history about the annunciator boxes, neat that some of these thing predate electricity.

I've got some of these northern electric intercoms. the master station has a switch to select what room you are talking to and each of the base stations has a paddle switch that you push to talk.

here's a pic of what the base station looks like and also a radio. the radio was available in a range of colors and I have a few examples. it must have been quite a common set. the most common was brown Bakelite and the ones that were painted different colors all had white knobs. the master station wasn't a lot different , also sharing the same Bakelite case. The intercoms are not radios, they just shared the same case design.

one that is a bit more famous is the one from charlie's angels, but that was 70's era. I think it was wired too. I think the ones I have are wireless devices other than the fact they need a plug in.

[Manalto]

Great styling on those intercoms, Phil. You mention Bakelite so I assume they're 1930s. Deco-inspired design endured into the 1950s in some cases, public architecture, for example. If you ever get down to Bellingham, they have a fine city hall (1940) with some Deco details.

[Gothichome]

Jamie, what a great thing to have, how does it work? The wade figures are a popular little collectable, they are cheap, lots to collect and you don’t need a lot of space to display them. Not sure but I think the clock one is rare.
Phill, James, the Art Deco radio/intercoms are great things to display as well.

[phil]

these details indicate 1946/47 so it was late for art deco and coincide with the soldiers coming home, buying radios and things to furnish their houses.
I think it was available up until around 1950 and would have been a typical department store purchase. this one is often coined the "rainbow" for obvious reasons, although it always came in solid colors. there were some variations , one model has an extra knob, probably tone control. some have a dial pointer and some have a pointer that looks like a propeller. For some reason I ended up with a lot of propellers, maybe leftovers from the factory. I've seen battery versions too, these would have been sold to farmers and such who were not on an electric grid.
this link suggests it is Machine age as much as deco

http://www.northernelectric.ca/radios/ne5104/ne5104.htm
there were at this time hundreds of radios with Bakelite cases with all sorts of interesting designs competing for the market. Ive got a lot of them, too many to really display them well. Its interesting to see them because aside from being a radio, the artistic designs helped them sell and so today there are a lot of neat examples left to marvel at.
the radio itself was reliable, worked well and most of them did by then, they were typical all american 5 superhetrodynes and by this point they all followed a very similar electronic design. during the war the tubes and hollow state electronics had been advanced by the resources put into the war effort. tube manufacturers and radio companies had to turn their production lines off to make war machines instead, so by '47 to '50 they were pretty well ramped up to provide consumer products again.
The bakelite is a stable material, its fire resistant and they really don't decompose. there are lots that were dropped and cracked but even many of those can be fixed with auto body filler and repainting. the plastic bubble isn't too hard to recreate.
I notice them a lot in movies and they are often used to set a certain era on movie sets. I find myself watching old movies and noting the radios in the background as well as things like the moldings and trim.

anyway back to old houses

[Jamie]

Phil asked, "Jamie, what a great thing to have, how does it work?"
One of the most informative books I own in regards to plumbing and early electric work is volume 73 of the I.C.S.Reference Library published in 1905.



The knob on the bottom of my annunciator box when pushed up will force the pointer off the electrified post and back to the resting position. There are patent dates on the back black panel from the 1880's so I think it is a safe assumption this originally ran off a battery set-up.

When I was running gas pipe for my gas lighting this book was invalueable for determining the right gas jet heights etc.....

I'm pretty sure you can search out these books on-line through different archive sites...