Chapter 291 Floor Heating Plan

Underfloor heating is a facility that both of them are relatively unfamiliar with, and there are several options for building this heating facility.

For example, facilities such as kangs and fire walls, but because the layout of the house is not reasonable, the kitchen, which can save space and fuel, is not connected to the brick house.

The kang is not very comfortable. Not only is it hard, but if it is too hot, it would be very hot to sleep on it.

Mu Xi also suggested modifying the original fireplace to allow the smoke to go downwards and to install flues under the house. While the burning fireplace generates heat, the smoke can also flow along the flues to warm up the entire room, thus killing two birds with one stone.

This idea is not impossible to implement, but it is very troublesome.

Zhao Yeqing has lived a simple life in the mountains for a long time and hates troubles the most. He thinks it would be better to just give up and burn the fireplace during the winter. It may be a bit cold, but it saves trouble.

After the two spent a whole day digging out the storage cellar, the final solution they came up with was to first experiment on a small scale with the feasibility of converting the fireplace to floor heating.

For floor heating, the heating fire must be embedded in the foundation of the brick house. If the fire is at a high place, the smoke will not be able to go down.

A part of the fireplace itself is embedded below the fire-burning position, where the ash falls. It is convenient to get the ash down and shovel it away from the back of the house. Mu Xi's idea is to place the floor heating fire-burning position at this ash pit.

The area of ​​the entire brick house is a bit too large. If it is fully covered, not only will a lot of firewood be consumed, but the paving work will also be larger.

The two planned to divide the house into three parts and use thick curtains as a simple partition.

When it gets the coldest, I guess no one will want to go to the kitchen to cook or anything like that, and the room will inevitably be filled with oil smoke. Use a bamboo curtain to divide the brick house into two parts horizontally in the middle, and then separate the bed for sleeping so that the quilt will have less oil smoke.

The floor heating only covers half of the room where the fireplace is, and using curtains to separate it can also reduce heat dissipation.

Curtains are not difficult to get. You just need to go to a homestay in a tourist area and remove the curtains and curtain tracks or horizontal rods. The curtains in homestays and hotels are basically blackout curtains, which are not only thick but also uniform in color, so they don't look ugly.

Of course, the premise of all this is that the floor heating has been successfully laid.

The most troublesome thing is probably the choice of flue material.

The flue material close to the fire source must be made of metal. The most common metal in the home is aluminum, followed by iron.

It is rather troublesome to melt iron as its melting point is too high. A brick kiln must be lit to melt enough iron into molten iron at one time.

The melting point of aluminum is only over 600 degrees, so smelting is relatively simple.

The two first melted the aluminum and poured it into a pipe-shaped mold made of clay, leaving it to cool and solidify into the shape of a pipe.

And most importantly, the flue material covers half the room from the fire source.

Mu Xi tried using bamboo and found that even without an open flame, high-temperature smoke passing through the middle of the bamboo would still turn yellow over time.

The experiment started to turn yellow less than a day later. If we burn fire every day in winter, it will probably carbonize in less than a month. That's too dangerous.

There were not many materials available locally, so Zhao Yeqing finally decided to use only mud.

The foundation is raised. There was originally a mud foundation underneath, and a red brick cement floor was laid on top. If bamboo pipes were used as a layer of separation, not to mention whether it would carbonize and catch fire, most of the heat would be blocked.

It would be better to just dig out a passage for the smoke to escape from the dirt foundation below, just like adding a winding ditch under the red brick and cement floor, allowing the hot smoke to pass through and finally be discharged from the chimney next to it.

Mu Xi's eyes lit up after hearing this, "This is good, not only saves trouble, but also is safe."

In fact, no matter which method you use, you will have to knock down the floor and re-lay it.

Zhao Yeqing felt that since he was going to do it, he had to do it well. If this winter was still so cold, this floor heating would be very necessary. If he succeeded, he might be able to rely on this floor heating to get through the winters for decades to come.

However, we cannot operate blindly, after all, it is the first time to install floor heating.

The two men first made a simulated scene outside the yard, dug out the flue, and laid red bricks on it, then lit the fire to test whether they could warm up the red bricks.

Maybe because the scene was not airtight, it took a long time of experimentation for the red bricks to slowly warm up.

The experimental area was not large, and the two concluded that this method was feasible, but it would take a lot more time to warm up half of the room.

However, if you really use floor heating, it will most likely be turned on until the temperature rises, and there will be no problem of having to spend time waiting for the floor heating to heat up every day.

Once the feasibility is confirmed, the operation can be started.

Mu Xi first moved the furniture to the back half of the room, then picked up the straw mats on the ground, picked up a sledgehammer and started smashing the floor.

After Zhao Yeqing helped to smash the floor, he drove to the tourist area to take down the curtains.

Mu Xi threw all the waste materials out of the window of the room into the backyard, and then dug out the chimney from the earth foundation.

The remaining red bricks are barely enough to cover the entire room, and I will replenish them once the room is finished.

Before winter, you need to prepare more red bricks and cement in case there is a need to build or reinforce something, so that you can have them available.

When Zhao Yeqing returned from the tourist area, Mu Xi had already re-laid the red tiles on the floor and was applying cement on top.

Seeing her come back, Mu Xi asked her to put the cement in a small bucket in the backyard and pass it in through the window. The cement was not mixed in the room. After all, half of the room was still intact, and it would make the room too dusty.

After Zhao Yeqing handed in a bucket, he leaned over the window and chatted with him, and continued to hand him more when he finished using it.

Mu Xi smoothed the cement on his hands and sighed, "It's a good thing I didn't pry the tiles back to lay the floor, otherwise it would be a pity to knock them off now."

Zhao Yeqing agreed, "After all, within our technical scope, tiles are already a non-renewable scarce resource. If we use one, we will have one less."

There are not many tiles in the tourist area. Most of them are primitive yurts or wooden houses. Their construction skills have not yet reached the level of self-proclaimed masters, so they will not easily touch the existing tiles. They will be heartbroken if they break them.

After the cement was smoothed, it had to be waited for to dry. Mu Xi lit the fireplace to increase the temperature to speed up the drying of the cement. The lit fireplace was still in the original normal burning position, and the part embedded underneath was not used.

Mu Xi was afraid that the smoke would cause cracks in the cement before it dried, so the floor heating could only be started after it was completely dry.

Zhao Yeqing first built the curtain in the middle part. The curtain used a Roman rod. After splicing two rods together, it can be better fixed at both ends of the room. When not in use, you can just pull it open like a curtain. It is flexible and convenient.