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Heating, Lighting, and Refrigeration: Fires

To Kindle Fires without Smoke.- To start a draught without smoke, on kindling a fire in an open grate when the air in the chimney is cold and the first flame is feeble, use a sufficient quantity of very combustible substances, as kindlings, to create flames. These will heat the air in the chimney before cold or solid fuel is added, which burns less perfectly.

Or reduce the opening to the grate or fireplace by means of a blower or light screen lined with asbestos and placed across the opening so as to admit air only in the required quantity and beneath the grate. To Prevent Smoke. - A hot fire will consume its own smoke. Hence, to prevent the formation of smoke, heat a hot bed of coals and add fresh fuel in such limited quantity as not to lower the heat of the fire below the smoke-consuming point. Push the coals back and put on fresh fuel so that the smoke will pass over the bed of live coals, where it will be consumed.

Or adjust a wire screen having forty or more wires to the inch, ta prevent the escape of smoke.