Thursday, July 10, 2008

[papercreters] Hypocaust Finale

Unfortunately none of these links below, either singly or together, show that the word "hypocaust" occurs commonly in any language or that the hypocaust system created by the Romans exists in the modern world.    What you find is a varopis assortment of individuals attaching their own meaning to the word, perhaps seeking to be cute or to get attention, but they all use the word in their own way and for their own purposes.   This is epitemized by www.hypocaust.net, a company named Hypocaust Ltd. in England, which installs radiant heating through conventional fluid circulation plumbing -- nothing at all like hypocaust.   They have simply appropriated the name for their own marketing purposes.   Heck if I were starting a radiant heating company, instead of naming it "ABC Radiant Heating" I would probably name it The Hypocaust Corporation.   It is an exc ellent and catchy word to start a conversation with prospective clients.   I could break the ice for a long time talking about the ancient Romans and floor heating.   People would love it.  
 
The word "hypocaust" is a Roman.  It does of course have a greek etymology, but it was not used in Greece before it was invented in Rome and used commonly there.   I could give you a half a dozen Roman (latin) names for the rooms above the hypocaust system.  Greek was the second language in Rome known well by the educated class, including those engineers who worked on hypocaust systems.   When the Empire split Greek became the primary language of the East.   After the Fall of Rome, the hypocaust system (which meant the entire technology of floor heating in the Western World) was lost for over a thousand years.   It is an obsolete system and the word is archaic.   It has no common meaning other than what some person here or there arbitrarily bestows upon it.   The only accepted and proper meaning is in reference to the ancient Roman system of heating, and ther e are research papers even today (like ASHRAE) that attempt to reconstruct the science behind it.   They are a fascinating read.
 
The first link below is claimed to provide "detail" but there is none.   Someone has written a few words of summary mentioning the word "hypocaust" which simply refers to a heated floor system of some kind.   Three inferior papers can be found at the second link below.   Only one of them seeks to compare the Roman hypocaust system to some modern buildings, but since the hypocaust system does not exist in modern buildings, the only comparison involves looking at warm air cirulation. 
 
The third link below is a U.S. patent # 7 million something.  It uses the word but only talks about the circulation of air through convection channels.   Some advice to would-be patent applicants:   It is always good to use strange and unusual words in your patent application so that the examiner thinks that you have something new and different from the 100,000 or so older patents about air heating applications.
 
The other links are not to U.S. or European patents but to patents in Korea.   Have fun.
 
A couple of these papers come from India where the same author is attempting to use the word to attract attention to his writing, but all he means by it is a method for warm air to heat a building.   (India as some of you know needs more heat)  :)   Then there is the paper on "air to soil heat exchange" which of course has nothing at all to do with the Roman hypocaust.
 
I was really looking forward to a link to the much-rumored Texas company said to be doing "hypocaust ducting" (whatever that is), but if it exists it was not included in the many links below.
 
I could go on but it is obvious that these are all obscure references that have nothing to do with any modern use of the Roman hypocaust system.   They all simply use the word "hypocaust" with their own meanings for their own purposes, some innocent and some not.   
 
Nowaways anyone with a computer can type in a word and press a button to get a whole list of links to that word from this world of billions of people.   Amazing feat of the internet, but this is not research.   The most important part of research is actually reading the text of what you find and determining whether it has any applicability to the issue at hand.   If anyone had actually done research in this area, by which I mean have done some reading, they would have discovered that there is a country that uses a hypocaust-like system for residental heating that originated in the 5th century and is still the prevalent method in use today, despite attempts by the HVAC industry to intrude.   Surprise.   I wonder why nobody has mentioned it?
 
This is all I have to say on the subject.  I have the utmost respect for language and use it in a very precise way, according to accepted definitions.   I have to because I communicate with very technical people in my work.   But other people can use whatever words they wish in their language.   In the future when someone refers to "hypocaust" in this group, I will know that it is only a very general reference to some kind of heating a dwelling from below, usually with warm air, but maybe not?
 
Neal
 
 
-------------- Original message --------------
From: "ElfNori" <elf@elfnori.com>

http://www.tess-inc.com/projects/type  This site's great.  It's got some detail on the O'Neil Residence which uses both solar, geothermal and hypocaust (yes, Neal, the site actually uses that archaic and obsolete word)
 
Sorry for the really long link on this one.  If you want to just go to www.sciencedirect.com you can do a search on hypocaust.  Lots of interesting modern and archaic stuff.  Here's a quick extract of the article I found most interesting:
 

Abstract

Hypocaust, an ancient Roman concept for keeping the inside of buildings warm, has been explained with a survey of a few modern buildings based on these concepts and using solar heat employing a number of design variations. Results expressed in terms of energy requirements per m2 of floor area per degree day comes out to be minimum (15.4 kJ m−2 per DD per annum) for a solar chimney and maximum for solar air collectors (128.4 kJ m−2 per DD per annum). The basic parameters that determine the performance of a hypocaust construction are size of the cavity determining the heat transfer between the flowing fluid and the building component and the storage capacity of the hypocaust element. The optimum width of the cavity comes out to be betwee n 50 mm and 100 mm. Heat storage capacity of the building element used as hypocaust corresponds to 0.125°K temperature rise per hour in relation to the building heat load.
Here's a patent for a hypocaust system  http://www.freepatentsonline.com/7066239.html  This sounds a lot like that tricky whole floor ducting system from Texas.
 
Solar air systems: a design handbook by S. R. Hastings, Ove Mørck, International Energy Agency Solar Heating and Cooling Programme has a whole section on using solar heated air in a hypocaust system.
 
 
http://www.hypocaust.net/  This one made me laugh in light of Neal's statement that hypocaust is an archaic term no longer used in modern context.  This company in England installs hypocaust systems in modern homes.  At Hypocaust we are dedicated to making your heating requirements a reality, we strive to offer high quality products, fantastic service and superb after-sales support.  I first read about hypocaust floors in modern homes in a Dick Francis novel, the one about the architect/builder with six boys and a share of a race course.  The architect/builder converted barns, among other structures, into homes.  He had hypocaust installed flooring in his current project.  It's a great read, not only for the building stuff, but because Dick Francis is a really good writer, one of my all time favs.
http://www.wipo.int/pctdb/en/wo.jsp?IA=WO2006118363&WO=2006118363&DISPLAY=CLAIMS  Yet another patent.  I wish the patents had pics so we could *see* what they were describing.
 
http://cat.inist.fr/?aModele=afficheN&cpsidt=1776888 Evolution of hypocaust systems including reference to computer models on hypocaust system performance in a hospital
 
http://www.transsolar.com/__software/download/de/ts_type_460_de.pdf  Air to soil heat exchange, includes some interesting math.  This is the stuff Don understands really well.  As this is described, Don's AGS system could be refered to as a hypocaust system.
 
 
By now I'm fairly certain I've made my point.  If anyone wants to push it I can keep going . . . I am, after all (next to Charmaine, who is of course the supremest research queen) the research queen.
 
ElfN
 
 
 

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