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A hypocaust (Latin: hypocaustum) is a system of central heating in a building that produces and circulates hot air below the floor of a room, and may also warm the walls with a series of pipes through which the hot air passes. This air can warm the upper floors as well. [1] The word derives from the Ancient Greek hypo meaning "under" and caust ...
Pilae stacks in the Roman Baths at Bath, England. Pilae stacks are stacks of pilae tiles, square or round tiles, that were used in Roman times as an element of the underfloor heating system, [1] common in Roman bathhouses, called the hypocaust. The concept of the pilae stacks is that the floor is constructed at an elevated position, allowing ...
The walls and floors of the warm and hot rooms were heated by a hypocaust heating system – the earliest surviving example from the Roman world. [16] The heat was produced from a single furnace, and circulated in the space under the floors, which were raised on tile pillars.
Underfloor heating and cooling is a form of central heating and cooling that achieves indoor climate control for thermal comfort using hydronic or electrical heating elements embedded in a floor. Heating is achieved by conduction, radiation and convection. Use of underfloor heating dates back to the Neoglacial and Neolithic periods.
Roman hypocaust heating systems made extensive use of fired clay elements: The space beneath the floor of a room to be heated was supported on robust pillars (pilae), usually made of small, square bricks mortared together, so that the heat from the adjacent furnace could circulate freely.
Vitruvius describes this system and its operation in his work De architectura. [2] The heating of the premises is also done by hot air distribution ducts called tubuli. These are elements of terracotta ducts of different shapes, allowing the circulation of hot air from the hypocaust to the upper parts of the thermal baths. [3]
A caldarium (also called a calidarium, cella caldaria or cella coctilium) was a room with a hot plunge bath, used in a Roman bath complex. This was a very hot and steamy room heated by a hypocaust, an underfloor heating system using tunnels with hot air, heated by a furnace tended by slaves. This was the hottest room in the regular sequence of ...
The tepidarium was the warm (tepidus) bathroom of the Roman baths heated by a hypocaust or underfloor heating system. The speciality of a tepidarium is the pleasant feeling of constant radiant heat, which directly affects the human body from the walls and floor. There is an interesting example at Pompeii; this was covered with a semicircular ...