Hypocaust
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Hypocaust
A hypocaust ( la, hypocaustum) is a system of central heating in a building that produces and circulates hot air below the floor of a room, and may also warm the walls with a series of pipes through which the hot air passes. This air can warm the upper floors as well. The word derives from the Ancient Greek meaning "under" and , meaning "burnt" (as in ''caustic''). The earliest reference to such a system suggests that the temple of Ephesus in 350 BC was heated in this manner, although Vitruvius attributes its invention to Sergius Orata in c. 80 BC. Its invention improved the hygiene and living conditions of citizens, and was a forerunner of modern central heating. Roman operation Hypocausts were used for heating hot baths and other public buildings in Ancient Rome. They were also used in private homes. It was a must for the villas of the wealthier merchant class throughout the Roman Empire. The ruins of Roman hypocausts have been found throughout Europe (for example in Ital ...
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Central Heating
A central heating system provides warmth to a number of spaces within a building from one main source of heat. It is a component of heating, ventilation, and air conditioning (short: HVAC) systems, which can both cool and warm interior spaces. A central heating system has a furnace that converts fuel or electricity to heat. The heat is circulated through the building either by fans forcing heated air through ducts, circulation of low-pressure steam to radiators in each heated room, or pumps that circulate hot water through room radiators. Primary energy sources may be fuels like coal or wood, oil, kerosene, natural gas, or electricity. Compared with systems such as fireplaces and wood stoves, a central heating plant offers improved uniformity of temperature control over a building, usually including automatic control of the furnace. Large homes or buildings may be divided into individually controllable zones with their own temperature controls. Automatic fuel (and sometimes ash ...
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Central Heating System
A central heating system provides warmth to a number of spaces within a building from one main source of heat. It is a component of heating, ventilation, and air conditioning (short: HVAC) systems, which can both cool and warm interior spaces. A central heating system has a furnace that converts fuel or electricity to heat. The heat is circulated through the building either by fans forcing heated air through ducts, circulation of low-pressure steam to radiators in each heated room, or pumps that circulate hot water through room radiators. Primary energy sources may be fuels like coal or wood, oil, kerosene, natural gas, or electricity. Compared with systems such as fireplaces and wood stoves, a central heating plant offers improved uniformity of temperature control over a building, usually including automatic control of the furnace. Large homes or buildings may be divided into individually controllable zones with their own temperature controls. Automatic fuel (and sometimes ash ...
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Ancient Roman Architecture
Ancient Roman architecture adopted the external language of classical Greek architecture for the purposes of the ancient Romans, but was different from Greek buildings, becoming a new architectural style. The two styles are often considered one body of classical architecture. Roman architecture flourished in the Roman Republic and to even a greater extent under the Empire, when the great majority of surviving buildings were constructed. It used new materials, particularly Roman concrete, and newer technologies such as the arch and the dome to make buildings that were typically strong and well-engineered. Large numbers remain in some form across the former empire, sometimes complete and still in use to this day. Roman architecture covers the period from the establishment of the Roman Republic in 509 BC to about the 4th century AD, after which it becomes reclassified as Late Antique or Byzantine architecture. Few substantial examples survive from before about 100 BC, and most of t ...
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Sergius Orata
Caius Sergius Orata ( fl. c. 95 BC) was an Ancient Roman who was a successful merchant, inventor and hydraulic engineer. He is credited with inventing the cultivation of oysters and refinement to the hypocaust method of heating a building to provide in addition, heated water for bathing. Origins of his name The writer Festus noted "The Orata", the gilt headed bream, "is a kind of fish so called for its golden color (''aurata'', "golden," also spelled ''orata'')." ... "Because of this, it's said about the very wealthy Sergius that they called him ''orata'', because he wore two big rings of gold. Some authorities assert that his nickname just comes from the commercialization of those fishes." Biography Sergius was well known to his contemporaries for the breeding and commercialization of oysters, of which he was a noted innovator. Orata wanted to take advantage of the wealthy Romans' liking for shellfish as food, so he developed many new techniques for breeding oysters. This inc ...
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Pilae Stacks
Pilae stacks are stacks of pilae tiles, square or round tiles, that were used in Roman times as an element of the underfloor heating system, common in Thermae, Roman bathhouses, called the hypocaust. The concept of the pilae stacks is that the floor is constructed at an elevated position, allowing air to freely circulate underneath and up, through the hollow bricks, into the structure walls. Examples of such baths are found not only in Rome, but also in distant parts of the Roman Empire such as Roman Britain, or Chellah, in modern-day Morocco.C. Michael Hogan. 2008 This architectural technique was the first form of underfloor heating and the same principle is still used today. See also * * * Notes References * C. Michael Hogan. 2008''Chellah'', The Megalithic Portal, ed. A. Burnham
* J.H. Middleton. 1892. ''The Remains of Ancient Rome'', Published by Adam and Charles Black, v.2 Ancient Roman baths Ancient Roman architectural elements Ancient Roman pottery {{AncientRom ...
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Kang Bed-stove
The ''kang'' (; Manchu: ''nahan'', kk, кән) is a traditional heated platform, 2 metres or more long, used for general living, working, entertaining and sleeping in the northern part of China, where the winter climate is cold. It is made of bricks or other forms of fired clay and more recently of concrete in some locations. The word ''kang'' means "to dry". Its interior cavity, leading to an often-convoluted flue system, channels the hot exhaust from a firewood/coal fireplace, usually the cooking fire from an adjacent room that serves as a kitchen, sometimes from a stove set below floor level. This allows a longer contact time between the exhaust (which still contains much heat from the combustion source) and (indirectly) the inside of the room, hence more heat transfer/recycling back into the room, effectively making it a ducted heating system similar to the Roman hypocaust. A separate stove may be used to control the amount of smoke circulating through the ''kang'', ma ...
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De Architectura
(''On architecture'', published as ''Ten Books on Architecture'') is a treatise on architecture written by the Roman architect and military engineer Marcus Vitruvius Pollio and dedicated to his patron, the emperor Caesar Augustus, as a guide for building projects. As the only treatise on architecture to survive from antiquity, it has been regarded since the Renaissance as the first book on architectural theory, as well as a major source on the canon of classical architecture. It contains a variety of information on Greek and Roman buildings, as well as prescriptions for the planning and design of military camps, cities, and structures both large (aqueducts, buildings, baths, harbours) and small (machines, measuring devices, instruments). Since Vitruvius published before the development of cross vaulting, domes, concrete, and other innovations associated with Imperial Roman architecture, his ten books give no information on these hallmarks of Roman building design and technology ...
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Dzalisi
Dzalisi ( ka, ძალისი) is a historic village in Georgia, located in the Mukhrani valley, 50 km northwest of Tbilisi, and 20 km northwest of Mtskheta. It is the ''Zalissa'' ( el, Ζάλισσα) of Ptolemy ( AD 90–168) who mentions it as one of principal towns of Iberia, an ancient Georgian kingdom (''Geographia''; § 10, 3). Archaeological digs have revealed the remains of four palaces and hypocaustic baths, acropolis, swimming pool, administrative part, barracks for soldiers, water supply system and burial grounds. One of the villas is notable for its floor mosaics, which, together with the mosaics of Pityus, are, by far, the oldest ones found in the Caucasus. The style of the mosaic dates to around AD 300. Its central part depicts Ariadne and Dionysus In ancient Greek religion and myth, Dionysus (; grc, Διόνυσος ) is the god of the grape-harvest, winemaking, orchards and fruit, vegetation, fertility, insanity, ritual madness, religious ecstasy, fes ...
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Vitruvius
Vitruvius (; c. 80–70 BC – after c. 15 BC) was a Roman architect and engineer during the 1st century BC, known for his multi-volume work entitled ''De architectura''. He originated the idea that all buildings should have three attributes: , , and ("strength", "utility", and "beauty"). These principles were later widely adopted in Roman architecture. His discussion of perfect proportion in architecture and the human body led to the famous Renaissance drawing of the ''Vitruvian Man'' by Leonardo da Vinci. Little is known about Vitruvius' life, but by his own descriptionDe Arch. Book 1, preface. section 2. he served as an artilleryman, the third class of arms in the Roman military offices. He probably served as a senior officer of artillery in charge of ''doctores ballistarum'' (artillery experts) and ''libratores'' who actually operated the machines. As an army engineer he specialized in the construction of ''ballista'' and '' scorpio'' artillery war machines for sieges. ...
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Caldarium
230px, Caldarium from the Roman Baths at Bath, England. The floor has been removed to reveal the empty space where the hot air flowed through to heat the floor. A caldarium (also called a calidarium, cella caldaria or cella coctilium) was a room with a hot plunge bath, used in a Roman bath complex. This was a very hot and steamy room heated by a hypocaust, an underfloor heating system using tunnels with hot air, heated by a furnace tended by slaves. This was the hottest room in the regular sequence of bathing rooms; after the caldarium, bathers would progress back through the warm bathroom to the cold water room. In the caldarium, there would be a bath (alveus, piscina calida or solium) of hot water sunk into the floor and there was sometimes even a laconicum—a hot, dry area for inducing sweating. The bath's patrons would use olive oil to cleanse themselves by applying it to their bodies and using a strigil to remove the excess. This was sometimes left on the floor for the ...
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Kachelofen
A masonry heater (also called a masonry stove) is a device for warming an interior space through radiant heating, by capturing the heat from periodic burning of fuel (usually wood), and then radiating the heat at a fairly constant temperature for a long period. Masonry heaters covered in tile are called cocklestoves (also tile stoves or ceramic stoves). The technology has existed in different forms, from back into the Neoglacial and Neolithic periods. Archaeological digs have revealed excavations of ancient inhabitants utilizing hot smoke from fires in their subterranean dwellings, to radiate into the living spaces. These early forms have evolved into modern systems. Evidence found from 5,000 B.C. of massive blocks of masonry used to retain heat foreshadowed early forms of fire hearths that were used as multifunctional heating sources. Later evolutions came in the Roman ''hypocaust'' and Austro-German cocklestove (''Kachelofen'', literally "tile oven", or ''Steinofen'', "sto ...
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Caldarium
230px, Caldarium from the Roman Baths at Bath, England. The floor has been removed to reveal the empty space where the hot air flowed through to heat the floor. A caldarium (also called a calidarium, cella caldaria or cella coctilium) was a room with a hot plunge bath, used in a Roman bath complex. This was a very hot and steamy room heated by a hypocaust, an underfloor heating system using tunnels with hot air, heated by a furnace tended by slaves. This was the hottest room in the regular sequence of bathing rooms; after the caldarium, bathers would progress back through the warm bathroom to the cold water room. In the caldarium, there would be a bath (alveus, piscina calida or solium) of hot water sunk into the floor and there was sometimes even a laconicum—a hot, dry area for inducing sweating. The bath's patrons would use olive oil to cleanse themselves by applying it to their bodies and using a strigil to remove the excess. This was sometimes left on the floor for the ...
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