Evening Republican, Volume 21, Number 150, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 12 July 1917 — HOUSES HEATED WITH SMOKE [ARTICLE]

HOUSES HEATED WITH SMOKE

Inhabitants of Korea Have ingenious Way of Making the Floor Serve as a Huge Stove. The rigorous winter of Korea, which deters many Japanese from settling there, Is made endurable, says the Herald of Asia, by means of heating contrivances called ondol. This is a very ingenious way of heating a whole room by making smoke and heated air pass under the floor. In fact, the floor serves as a huge stove. A floor Is first made of mud and is Intersected by three or four flues which spring from the fireplace at one side of the house and converge into the chimney at the other. Large slabs ■of stone are laid over this mud floor with its parallel flues. The joints are made airtight with clay, and a layer of day is added on the top. Finally the whole is covered with thick oiled paper. The fireplace is outside of the wall at one side and the smoke passes through those flues in the floor on its way to the chimney at the other end of the house. In this way the whole room Is effectively warded. Neither stove nor hlbachl is needed in such a room, even during an exceedingly cold day, and It Is a real comfort to sleep in it, feeling, as one does, the soft warmth enveloping the whole body from beneath.