The ventilation of public buildings / by Robert Boyle.

  • Boyle, Robert, 1627-1691.
Date:
1923
Catalogue details

Licence: In copyright

Credit: The ventilation of public buildings / by Robert Boyle. Source: Wellcome Collection.

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    Mechanical Ventilation as applied at the Houses of Parliament. “ Once more the periodical complaint about the bad ventilation of the House of Commons is the subject of discussion. This time Sir John Baird has promised that more elaborate scientific tests are to be made at the House of Commons, and inquiries are to be made about ‘ the psycho¬ logical effect ' on Members of Parliament. There are, however, to be no ‘drastic alterations/ as to change the system completely would cost £40,000, so it is said, and the Office of Works has no money to spare. Tinkering with the inlets and outlets will, we venture to predict, be of little benefit.”—Building News, March 23rd, 1923. “It is the experience of many Members that the air of the Chamber lacks ‘ freshness/ and that there are some qualities possessed by it which lead to a stay for a length of time in the Chamber causing in the Members a lassitude and a feeling of heaviness which tend to interfere with the due performance of their duties.”—Select Committee on the Ventilation of the House of Commons. “ When one considers the enormous volume of air, equal to ten times the cubic capacity of the House of Commons, which is passed through it every hour, and that the elaborate tables of air analysis are apparently all that can be desired, yet that the ventilation is so notoriously bad, it is clear that there is something very radically wrong with mechanical ventilation by impulsion, and that tables of analysis and of volumes of air passed through a building are not to be accepted as correctly indicating either the general purity of the air or the efficiency of the ventilation. “ I never yet knew of a system of propulsion that effected an efficient and satisfactory ventilation of any large building. • • • So long as architects employ this system, colossal buildings like the Houses of Parliament, the London Law Courts, the National Liberal Club, etc., will continue to be notoriously badly ventilated in every sense of the term.” —Report on the Ventilation of the Houses of Parliament.