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Updated: May 4, 2025
In the diagrams at Figs. 8 and 9 the foul-air conduit is the space comprised under the marble-topped benches running round the hot rooms. At the end of the laconicum they enter flues, which I have shown as running side by side with the smoke flues.
Hung with heavy curtains over the inner face of either door, it forms a perfect preventive against the entry of the air of the hot rooms into the cooling room. Between the combined tepidarium and lavatorium and the laconicum is a glazed partition with a doorway, fitted with a curtain if necessary. The walls are 18 in. 9 in. and 4-1/2 in., with 4-1/2 in. cavity, used for ventilation.
We are, to all practical intents and purposes, in a Roman laconicum. The thick walls have been highly charged with caloric during the firing of the bricks or other articles. They have absorbed vast quantities of heat, and are now giving off the same to the enclosed air and to ourselves standing within.
But the nature of the heating accomplished by means of steam-pipes is very inferior to that from large radiating surfaces of firebrick. The average temperatures of a public bath should range from about 110° in the shampooing rooms to 250°-260° in the hottest part of the laconicum, taking the readings of the thermometer at a level of 6 ft. 6 in. above floor-line.
This may be 110°-120° in the shampooing rooms, 140° in the tepidarium, 180° in the calidarium, and 250° in the laconicum. These must be the maxima of the average temperatures of each room at 6 ft. 6 in. above the floor. In a pure atmosphere the highest temperatures are comfortable, but in a foul one they become insupportable.
The heated air may be delivered through the gratings in the walls of the laconicum, or a shaft of glazed brickwork, of rectangular section, may be constructed against the end wall and coped at the required level 5 ft. or more above the floor line.
The small third hot room will be less lofty if the heating-chamber be placed under it; for by raising the floor of the laconicum a few feet, so as to necessitate ascending to it by a few steps from the level of the tepidarium, one can more economically construct the furnace chamber.
If, however, the sheet be held across the lower portion of the doorway, he will find that there is a current of air setting in an opposite direction from the shampooing room to the laconicum. It will be seen from the diagram that the bather is really in this back-flow when he is standing between and in a line with the doors of the hot rooms.
In the unctorium only Eunice remained. She listened for a short time to the voices and laughter which retreated in the direction of the laconicum. At last she took the stool inlaid with amber and ivory, on which Petronius had been sitting a short time before, and put it carefully at his statue.
In small baths, however, the hot-water tank may, for economy's sake, be placed near the ceiling in the laconicum. Where waste steam can be obtained, a water super-heater, with steam coil, may be employed with advantage; but in the majority of cases the ordinary circulating system will be found the most suitable.
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