Share on Facebook Share on Twitter Email
Answers.com

heating

 
Dictionary: Heat·ing

a. (hēt"ĭng)

That heats or imparts heat; promoting warmth or heat; exciting action; stimulating; as, heating medicines or applications.

Heating surface (Steam Boilers), the aggregate surface exposed to fire or to the heated products of combustion, esp. of all the plates or sheets that are exposed to water on their opposite surfaces; -- called also fire surface.


Search unanswered questions...
Enter a question here...
Search: All sources Community Q&A Reference topics

Process of raising the temperature of an enclosed space. Heat can be delivered by convection, radiation, and thermal conduction. With the exception of the ancient Romans, who developed a form of central heating, most cultures relied on direct heating methods such as fireplaces and stoves. Central heating, adopted for use again in the 19th century, is a method of indirect heating: heat is produced away from the occupants and then conveyed to them. In warm-air heating, air heated by a furnace rises through ducts to rooms above, where it is emitted through grills. In hot-water systems, a pump circulates water from a boiler through a system of pipes to radiators or convectors in rooms. In steam systems, steam is generated in the boiler and led to radiators through pipes. The high temperature of the steam makes it hard to control, and steam heating has been largely superseded. A common type of electric heating system converts electric current to heat by means of resistors that emit radiant energy. See also radiant heating, solar heating.

For more information on heating, visit Britannica.com.

House warming continued to depend on the primitive fireplace, often without a chimney, through the seventeenth century. In the mid-eighteenth century, the first steps were taken in developing a science of heat as the thermometer came into use and the effect of absorption and release of heat on evaporation and freezing (latent heat) was observed. By the end of the century, scientists were measuring the heat generated by combustion and other chemical and physical processes. Stoves were being designed on these new scientific principles, especially in France.

In 1744 Benjamin Franklin issued a pamphlet describing his famous "Pennsylvania fireplace." Stoves were already in use in America, especially by German immigrants, but they were not "scientific"—Franklin's stove was, thanks principally to information previously published in Europe. Invented in 1739 or 1740, Franklin's fireplace, while set into the existing house fireplace, projected into the room to achieve the maximum possible heat radiation. The smoke followed a circuitous route in reaching the chimney so as to extract the maximum possible heat from it.

In Europe ancient architectural traditions inhibited the introduction of stoves, which were usually as unaesthetic as they were utilitarian. In America, Franklin's fire-place was not particularly popular either, but it ushered in a fever of invention of what came to be called Franklin stoves, Rittenhouse stoves, or Rumford stoves—the second being a more efficient version of the first, and the third, a by-product of the multifarious activities of Benjamin Thompson, an American Tory living in Europe (where he was known as Count Rumford). Rumford's activities ranged from the study of the science of heat to the organization of public soup kitchens that incorporated elaborate cooking stoves. Most complicated of the new stoves, perhaps, were those designed by Charles Willson Peale and his son Raphael to heat Independence Hall, where Peale had his museum. Through the above inventions the stove gradually became independent of the fire-place, which it replaced as the household hearth. Stove plates—that is, the sides and backs of stoves—became the largest single product of the American iron industry.

Central heating, the warming of entire buildings, had been known in ancient times to both the Romans and the Chinese, both of whom made hollow heating ducts in the floors and walls of houses. The American architect B. H. Latrobe made such an installation in the U.S. Capitol building in 1806. But more common was the kind of central heating introduced by Daniel Pettibone in 1808 in the Pennsylvania Hospital in Philadelphia. It was a stove in which the smokepipe was enclosed within a larger pipe through which hot air circulated to five upper-story rooms. In either case the principle of convection was used: hot air expands on heating, causing it to be lighter and to rise, thus inducing a vacuum that cold air rushes in to fill (and to be heated). A general circulation and mixing of the air results.

Heating by passing hot water through pipes had been used in European horticultural greenhouses in the eighteenth century, and this method was subsequently used to heat buildings as they became too large to be heated efficiently by stoves. The U.S. Capitol, which seems to have seen experimentation with all types of heating, was adapted in 1857–1867 to hot-water heat. At the same time, many factories came to be heated by the "waste" heat from the steam engines with which they were powered, and piped steam became an alternative to hot water. Both systems were installed in the skyscrapers—far too large to be heated by stoves or by the natural convection of hot air—that began to appear in Chicago in the 1880s.

The heating properties of natural gas were known as early as the nineteenth century, but transporting the gas proved a technical barrier until after World War II when advances in metallurgy and welding allowed the construction of thousands of miles of pipe by the close of the 1960s.

The 1973 oil crisis caused many families to investigate alternative heating strategies for their homes. Some turned to natural gas and new solar technology, while most individuals began investigating how to seal door and window leaks that increased heating bills. The trend formed the foundation of the first U.S. Department of Energy weatherizing assistance program, which continued to operate through the close of the twentieth century.

Bibliography

Beattie, Donald, ed. History and Overview of Solar Heat Technologies. Cambridge, Mass.: MIT Press, 1997.

Clark, John G. Energy and the Federal Government: Fossil Fuel Policies, 1900–1946. Urbana: University of Illinois Press, 1987.

Goodwin, Crauford, ed. Energy Policy in Perspective: Today's Problems, Yesterday's Solutions. Washington, D.C.: Brookings Institution, 1981.

Vietor, Richard H. K. Energy Policy in America Since 1945: A Study of Business-Government Relations. New York: Cambridge University Press, 1984.

Wright, Lawrence. Home Fires Burning: The History of Domestic Heating and Cooking. London: Routledge & K. Paul, 1964.

 
heating, means of making a building comfortably warm relative to a colder outside temperature. Old, primitive methods of heating a building or a room within it include the open fire, the fireplace, and the stove. In ancient Rome a heating system, called a hypocaust, warmed a building by passing hot gases from a furnace through enclosed passages under the floors and behind the walls before releasing them outside. The principal modern systems that are used to heat a building are classified as warm air, hot water, steam, or electricity. In the warm-air system air, heated in a furnace, rises through warm-air ducts and enters the rooms through outlets, while cooler air in the rooms passes into return ducts that lead back to the furnace. The air circulates through the system by convection, i.e., the tendency of a fluid such as air to rise when warm and sink when cool. In newer buildings the circulation is assisted by a fan. The hot-water system has a boiler for heating the water that is sent through connecting pipes to radiators and convectors, the latter devices being metal enclosures containing hot-water pipes surrounded by metal fins. The circulation is maintained by pumps or, in older buildings, by convection. In the steam-heating system, steam generated in a boiler is circulated by its own pressure (sometimes aided by a vacuum pump) through radiators. There are many kinds of electric heating systems. In one type current is sent through wires into electric resistors that are contained in convectors in rooms. The resistors convert the current into heat. In a radiant panel heating system a room is warmed by heat emitted from wall, floor, or ceiling panels. They are warmed by the circulation of warm air, hot water, or steam or by an electric current in resistors within or behind the panels. Experiments are being made to utilize solar energy for heating buildings. In many large buildings, such as theaters, public libraries, and municipal buildings, the heating, ventilating, and air-conditioning units are combined in one system. In district heating, heat is distributed from a heating plant to buildings in a section (usually commercial) of a city.

Bibliography

See F. Porges, Handbook of Heating, Ventilating, and Air Conditioning (1982).


Wikipedia: Heating
Top

Heating may refer to:

  • HVAC: Heating, ventilation and air-conditioning

Heating devices, or systems:

  • Block heater, or headbolt heater, an electric heater that heats the engine of a car to ease starting in cold weather
  • Boiler
  • Cathode heater, a coil or filament used to heat the cathode in a vacuum tube or cathode ray tube
  • Central heating, method of providing warmth from one point to multiple rooms or apartments of a building
  • Convector heater, a heater which operates by air convection currents circulating through the body of the appliance
  • Dielectric heating, the phenomenon in which radiowave or microwave electromagnetic radiation heats a dielectric material
  • District heating, a system for distributing heat generated in a centralized location for residential and commercial heating requirements
  • Fan heater, a heater that works by using a fan to pass air over a heating element
  • Feedwater heater, a power plant component used to pre-heat water delivered to the boiler
  • Fireplace, an architectural element consisting of a space designed to contain a fire for heating or cooking
  • Gas heater, a heater that burns natural gas or liquefied petroleum gas
  • Geothermal heat pump, a heat pump that uses the thermal mass of the ground to regulate indoor temperatures
  • Geothermal heating a method of heating using geothermal heat from deep in the Earth
  • Ground source heat pump, a heat pump that uses the thermal mass of the ground to heat, or cool, buildings
  • Heating pad, a pad used for warming of parts of the body
  • Hydronics, the use of water as the heat-transfer medium in heating and cooling systems
  • Induction heating, the process of heating a metal object by electromagnetic induction

Interseasonal Heat Transfer, a form of on site renewable energy that combines solar thermal collection in summer with heat storage in thermal banks to provide space heating in winter.

  • Radiant heating, a heating system which heats a building through radiant heat rather than convection or forced-air heating
  • Radiator, a heat exchanger designed to transfer thermal energy from one medium to another for the purpose of cooling and heating
  • Radioisotope heater unit, small heaters that provide heat through radioactive decay
  • Salamander heater, a portable forced-air or convection heater, often kerosene-fueled, used in ventilated areas for worksite comfort
  • Solar furnace a structure used to harness the sun's rays to produce very high temperatures
  • Solar heating, the use of solar energy to provide process, space or water heating
  • Storage heater, an electrical appliance which stores heat at a time when base load electricity is available at a low price
  • Underfloor heating, a system of distributing radiant heat through flooring at lower temperatures than needed by radiators
  • Water heating, the heating of water for residential, commercial or industrial use

See also


Translations: Heating
Top

Dansk (Danish)
n. - opvarmning, ophedning

idioms:

  • central heating    centralvarme
  • district heating    fjernvarme
  • underfloor heating    gulvvarme

Français (French)
n. - chauffage

idioms:

  • central heating    chauffage central
  • district heating    chauffage urbain
  • underfloor heating    chauffage au sol

Deutsch (German)
n. - Heizung

idioms:

  • central heating    Zentralheizung
  • district heating    Fernheizung
  • underfloor heating    Fußbodenheizung

Ελληνική (Greek)
n. - θέρμανση, ζέσταμα, συγκέντρωση επικίνδυνων αερίων σε γαλαρίες ορυχείου

idioms:

  • central heating    κεντρική θέρμανση, καλοριφέρ
  • district heating    κεντρική θέρμανση συνοικίας
  • underfloor heating    υποδαπέδια θέρμανση

Italiano (Italian)
riscaldamento

idioms:

  • central heating    riscaldamento centrale
  • district heating    riscaldamento urbano
  • underfloor heating    riscaldamento a pavimento

Português (Portuguese)
n. - aquecimento (m)

idioms:

  • central heating    aquecimento (m) central (Téc.)
  • district heating    aquecimento (m) distrital
  • underfloor heating    aquecimento (m) sob o chão (Téc.)

Русский (Russian)
нагрев, отопление

idioms:

  • central heating    центральное отопление
  • district heating    центральное отопление
  • underfloor heating    лучистое отопление

Español (Spanish)
n. - calefacción, calentamiento, calentar

idioms:

  • central heating    calefacción central
  • district heating    calefacción urbana
  • underfloor heating    calefacción por losa radiante

Svenska (Swedish)
n. - upphettning, eldning

中文(简体)(Chinese (Simplified))
加热, 暖气装置

idioms:

  • central heating    中央暖气系统
  • district heating    分区供暖
  • underfloor heating    装置在地板下的暖气设备

中文(繁體)(Chinese (Traditional))
n. - 加熱, 暖氣裝置

idioms:

  • central heating    中央暖氣系統
  • district heating    分區供暖
  • underfloor heating    裝置在地板下的暖氣設備

한국어 (Korean)
n. - 가열, 난방장치

日本語 (Japanese)
n. - 暖房

עברית (Hebrew)
n. - ‮חימום, הסקה‬


 
 

 

Copyrights:

Dictionary. Webster 1913 Dictionary edited by Patrick J. Cassidy  Read more
Britannica Concise Encyclopedia. Britannica Concise Encyclopedia. © 2006 Encyclopædia Britannica, Inc. All rights reserved.  Read more
US History Encyclopedia. © 2006 through a partnership of Answers Corporation. All rights reserved.  Read more
Columbia Encyclopedia. The Columbia Electronic Encyclopedia, Sixth Edition Copyright © 2003, Columbia University Press. Licensed from Columbia University Press. All rights reserved. www.cc.columbia.edu/cu/cup/ Read more
Wikipedia. This article is licensed under the Creative Commons Attribution/Share-Alike License. It uses material from the Wikipedia article "Heating" Read more
Translations. Copyright © 2007, WizCom Technologies Ltd. All rights reserved.  Read more