Abstract
A NEW laboratory for research on the heating of buildings has been completed at the Building Research Station of the Department of Scientific and Industrial Research so that work can go on all the year round, instead of only in the winter. The laboratory was opened on July 22 by Sir Frank Smith, Secretary of the Department of Scientific and Industrial Research, on the occasion of the annual visit to the Building Research Station of the Institution of Heating and Ventilating Engineers, which is providing a sum of £1,500 to enable the studies, at the Station, of heating problems to be speeded up and extended. The laboratory is one room within a larger room. The smaller room, which is 18 ft. x 12 ft., is the test-room which is to be heated in all the different possible ways. It has a ceiling which can be screwed up or down so that both low rooms and high rooms can be studied. The larger room in which the test-room is situated isolates it completely from outside weather effects. The various walls of this outer enclosure can each be refrigerated and their temperatures can be controlled to 0.1° F. Modern heating methods have been utilized in the control of the outer enclosure. Every surface is panel-heated or panel-cooled by brine which circulates in pipes in the walls, floor and ceiling. For cooling the brine which refrigerates the walls, a 41/2-ton ammonia compressor is installed in the engine-room at one end of the laboratory. At the other end of the laboratory is an instrument room, where records are made of the conditions in the test-room and its enclosure. The new laboratory provides unique facilities for research and will undoubtedly mean a great speeding up of heating research.
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New Heating Laboratory at the Building Research Station. Nature 138, 156 (1936). https://doi.org/10.1038/138156a0
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1038/138156a0