NO MORE FIRES IN CHIMNEYS.

Kumara Times, Issue 797, 21 April 1879, Page 4

NO MORE FIRES IN CHIMNEYS.

(GARDINERS’ MAGAZINE.) We think it to be our duty to communi cate to our readers a rapid, clean, safe, and easy method of putting out fire in chimneys. This is a process invented by M. Quequet, a French chemist, and laid by him before the “Society for the Encouragement of Nationl Industry.” His method is simply to burn about 100 grammes of sulphuret of carbon in the fireplaces, taking care to place it in one or two saucers provided for that purpose, so that the combustion may produce a more diffused volume of vapor. Fires in chimneys have frequently been extinguished by means of burning sulphur in them; but in employing this means it was almost always necessary to mount the roof and Stop up the chimney pot; and worse still, if the fireplace were nearly cold the sulphur burned with difficulty, molted, and its combination with the oxygen in the chimney was so slow that there remained an abundance to keep the soot burning. M. Qmquet has selected sulphuret of carbon for this purpose, because it ignites very easily, burns quickly, and, while absorbing the oxygen from the air, evolves a gas composed of two-thirds of sulphurous acid and one third of carbonic acid. 3n burning a very small quantity—say 100 grammes—there is immediately an immense evolution of vapour, which prevents the combustion of the soot, and at once smothers out the fire without the necessity of climbing up to the chimney pot. This quantity of sulphuret of carbon only costs about Id., and there is not the slightest difficulty or danger in 'its use if the precautions taken by the Paris firemen, who use this substance largely, be made use of. These are merely to keep the eulphuret in flasks in quantities of ounces (troy) each, taking care to leave plenty of room in the bottle foa the immense expansion of the chemical. The bottles are lightly stopped with bees-waxed corks; they are then placed in some out-house where where no fire is ever made. In the month of March alone last year the firemen of Paris extinguished only by this means 138 chimney fires; and this instantaneoucly, and without having to move the furniture of the rooms.