When Willis Carrier gave us air conditioning, we lowered our ceilings because it's cheaper to cool the air in a room that has an eight-foot ceiling, as opposed to a room with a tall ceiling. There's just less air volume in that smaller space. So we lowered our ceilings and got down to the business of paying greater attention to details. I'm not sure if that stopped us from imagining as much as we used to because some pretty neat inventions followed air conditioning. For the heck of it, I dug out a photo of Thomas Edison's lab at Menlo Park, NJ. It has a very high ceiling. Hmmm.
And with that in mind, perhaps I was wrong about the ceilings in government and religious buildings. Maybe they're tall in those buildings because we're supposed to be thinking big, lofty thoughts while there.
I know those tall ceilings make those buildings more interesting to heat. Hot air rises. Many religious buildings find that if they use ceiling fans during the winter, the fuel bills actually increase.
Apparently, the hot air doesn't rise all the way to the ceiling. It goes up only so high from those old steam- or hot-water radiators before falling down by natural convection. This leaves cold air up near the ceiling, and ceiling fans will stir that cold air into the warmer air below, lowering the overall air temperature in the building and causing the burner to run longer. Go figure.
I have an old book on radiant heat that shows a drawing of the Liverpool Cathedral in England. There's an antique radiant system in that building and the book's author, T. Napier Adlam, writes that there's just a 1-1/2-degree difference in temperature between the air four feet above the floor and the air at the triforium level, which is 90 feet above the floor. A radiant system, when controlled well, is a fine choice for a building that has a high ceiling.
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When Willis Carrier gave us air conditioning, we lowered our ceilings because it's cheaper to cool the air in a room that has an eight-foot ceiling, as opposed to a room with a tall ceiling. There's just less air volume in that smaller space. So we lowered our ceilings and got down to the business of paying greater attention to details. I'm not sure if that stopped us from imagining as much as we used to because some pretty neat inventions followed air conditioning. For the heck of it, I dug out a photo of Thomas Edison's lab at Menlo Park, NJ. It has a very high ceiling. Hmmm.
Apparently, the hot air doesn't rise all the way to the ceiling. It goes up only so high from those old steam- or hot-water radiators before falling down by natural convection. This leaves cold air up near the ceiling, and ceiling fans will stir that cold air into the warmer air below, lowering the overall air temperature in the building and causing the burner to run longer. Go figure.