Wright Chat

Is Jacobs (1936) the first Wright house to employ radiant heating? I just found out that the Neutra Beard house in Altadena, Ca. of 1934 had red scored concrete floors with radiant heating. Is this a coincidence?

http://xroads.virginia.edu/~MA01/Lisle/ ... ardage.jpg

By any chance does the Willey Residence have radiant heating?

From all that I've read on Jacobs I (and I'm reading Herbert Jacobs book at the moment), this was Wright's first use of radiant in-floor heating.


David

Part of Neutra's description of the Beard house, as published in "The Modern House in America" (Ford and Ford, 1940):

"The ground floor is of double shell construction of 12" overall depth. The
upper slab of integrally colored and waxed diatom cement composition is
carried by cross-braced steel channel studs and encloses a plenum chomber
of 6" clear depth which extends under the entire building and into which,
when desired, hot air is pressed from the furnace. The diatom cement slab
acts as a low temperature radiating panel during the cold season, while a
retarded convection carries the air volume of the subfloor void into the
vertical hollows of the cellular steel walls."

The Willey house has red brick floors with no radiant heating. Instead, the house has wall radiators typical of the period.

Does anyone know of other architects who were experimenting with floor heating in the early 1930s?
.

It seems like the sort of thing that would appear in the work of Irving Gill. . .

SDR

Schindler, I suppose, was much to preoccupied with space, to waste precious resources on these sort of technical innovations.

Gill certainly used the concrete floor slab. Was it heated or colored?

"...His houses are known for minimal or flush mouldings, simple (or no) fireplace mantles, coved floor to wall transitions, enclosed-side bathtubs, frequent skylights, plastered walls with only the occasional, but featured, wood elements, flush five-piece doors, frequent concrete or magnesite floors,..."

Giovannini, Joseph (March 26, 2000), "Raising California: The architect Irving Gill infused the West with a spare modernity", New York Times.

Dodge house, Irving Gill (razed):

http://3.bp.blogspot.com/_mEteTjritGA/S ... odge+2.bmp

Radiant heated floors were I think around as early as 1929 or even 1932. This was far to expensive back then and not used but by the time the mid 30's came I believe that the improvement came and was used. I believe that Radiant Heated Flooring was actually started by the Romans, a form of it.
Anybody have anything to back up my statements?

In the catalog for the recent exhibit at the Museum of Modern Art in New York, "Home Delivery", mention is made that "Wright's ingenious
floormat" system circulated steam between the flooring and the ground plane . . ." Does anyone know if this is indeed acurate? I question several other statement in the short article. If it is acurate, why would steam have been abandoned in favor of hot water?

It technically isn't radiant heat but gravity forced heat. It uses hot water(?) turns to steam to run through the pipes. This was on later houses though and some if not most of these homes are still working.
I think this is what I heard but I don't know for sure.

Hot water radiant systems can circulate warm water through the in slab radiant heating system. It does not use steam in any manner. Steam radiant heating uses steam as the thermal carrier. Hot water heating is superior to steam heating for numerous reasons, including efficiency, comfort, and the lack of the banging sound common with steam pipes as they expand with the high temperature of steam.

I would like to return again to my initial questions:

Is Jacobs (1936) the first Wright house to employ radiant heating? I just found out that the Neutra Beard house in Altadena, Ca. of 1934 had red scored concrete floors with radiant heating. Is this a coincidence?

I am more interested in the fact that Neutra used the same aesthetic and a similar technological choice as Wright, but two years earlier. Could Wright have visited the Beard house? Or did Neutra know what Wright was about to do, and "beat him to it"?

Hm. Well I don't know about that but as I did say Radiant Heated floors was around in the early 30's but didn't come of age till the mid 30's.
I thought Hanna was done before Jacobs (1936), was it?
If so does it have radiant heated floors?
Maybe Neutra did beat Wright to the Radiant heated floor.

I have lived for a number of years in a 'twenties apartment building of 50 units. The single-pipe steam radiators work well enough, if you can
accept their "all-on or all-off" nature. Banging is the result of "operator error": because the boiler is operated only during two extended daily
cycles, cold water can accumulate in a cold radiator if the tenant has chosen to close the valve on the radiator before the spent steam
condensate (i.e., cooled water) has had a chance to drain back to the basement. Under this condition, when the boiler is once again sending
steam to the radiators, if the tenant now opens the valve on the subject radiator, draining cold water meets steam -- and the noise is dramatic.

Tenants are thus instructed to leave their radiator valves open or closed, at least during the heat cycle, rather than attempting to moderate the
heat by means of the valve. As long as one remembers to drain the radiator during a boiler-off period, however, no harm can come from
shutting off a hot radiator.

Whether this is the only cause of steam-system noise, I cannot say. Two-pipe systems may have their own issues. . .

SDR

peterm wrote:I would like to return again to my initial questions:

Is Jacobs (1936) the first Wright house to employ radiant heating? I just found out that the Neutra Beard house in Altadena, Ca. of 1934 had red scored concrete floors with radiant heating. Is this a coincidence?

I am more interested in the fact that Neutra used the same aesthetic and a similar technological choice as Wright, but two years earlier. Could Wright have visited the Beard house? Or did Neutra know what Wright was about to do, and "beat him to it"?

Yes, it is a coincidence. Neutra was a very fine architect with excellent technical skills. I am sure that he just used the newly available technology prior to Wright without knowing or caring what Wright was thinking he might do for heating two years later.