Nothing at all exciting!

This house has no complete ‘blueprints’.  It was mostly built before all that paper. We have measured out some of the rooms, but not all.  In the classic bit of insomniac pondering, I got to thinking about the old duct work for the original north end heating system.  This was a hot air system and built with the addition in 1893, so everything is buried in the walls and floors.  However, because it is not forced hot air, but simply gravity, the ducts are quite good sized.

Now, in the library section, between two rooms, there is a complicated stack running east-west.  On the first floor, this includes two closets, a chimney breast, and a bathroom.  On the second floor, there is the chimney, a hall, two closets, and a bathroom (offset from the one below on a long diagonal).  Now, that is all very well and fine…but there is on the second floor two wall vents for the hot air system: one at the extreme south-east, the other at the extreme north-west.  On the first floor, there are floor vents that are nowhere near where the wall vents must branch off.  Now, did those two second-story wall vents run directly up from the basement?  If so they have to have branched off somewhere in the basement ceiling, because only two main ducts ran below the ceiling in that direction, and one went to those floor vents.  Or does it snake through the first floor ceiling?  Or does it snake through that second story wall, but…  How did they fit? none of the walls appear to be thick enough to fit a duct in…but they must be….

I think I have a bit of measuring to do…unless the engineer knows?  I mean I could send our resident cat back in to the ducts…but he didn’t like it last time!