Fire in the house

The classical house had one fire and it was watched: the stove had a god above it who reported on the household once a year, and the manuals gave the stove more rules than any other thing in the kitchen. The Western house has a second fire, in the living room, and the tradition has nothing to say about it, though a designer reads the hearth as the wall of honour under another name. This guide gives the stove as the tradition kept it, the hearth as the room’s face, the small fires of candles and lamps, the element of Fire in a room, and what the fire research adds, which is a set of minutes and a closed door.

The one fire, watched

The tradition’s fire was the stove, and the kitchen page gives its rules: a solid wall behind, nothing that burns above, not under a beam or a window, not facing the front door, the sink and the stove not side by side, and the Kitchen God, Zao Jun, on the wall above it, watching the household all year and reporting to heaven in the last week of the twelfth month, as the household gods essay tells. Knapp records the stove as the one fixed point of the vernacular house, built of brick before the house had furniture, with its flue running under the kang in the north so that the family slept on its warmth; the stove was the house’s hearth and its altar at once, and a household that moved lit it before it unpacked, which the moving house guide draws. The rules are about the one fire because it was the one fire: a house that cooked, heated and lit itself from a single flame put its god there, and put its fear there too.

The hearth as the wall of honour

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The Western living room has a fire the tradition never wrote about, and the drawing above reads it with the tradition’s eyes. The chimney wall is the room’s wall of honour: the fire at its centre, the mantel above it at about the height of the altar table, carrying the clock, the photographs and the candlesticks that the altar table carried in burners and vases, the picture or the mirror above where the hall hung its scroll, and a seat either side where the hall’s two armchairs stood. The wall is symmetrical about the fire, and the fire is what the room faces, which is exactly what the tradition asked of the living room’s wall of honour and the furniture essay’s hall. Alexander’s pattern for the fire, which he thought a house should have even when it did not need one, asks for the seats in an arc facing it and one another, with the fire seen from the entrance, and that is the plan drawn beside the elevation. The one thing that competes with the fire for the room’s face is the television, and it usually wins; the tradition’s rule for the wall of honour and the designer’s for the hearth both put it to one side, so that the room faces its fire and its people, and looks at the screen when it means to.

Fire as an element

The Five Elements essay gives Fire its place, the south, the summer, red, the heart, and the practitioners apply it to rooms as a quantity: a room with too much Fire, red walls, a stove, a south window and a fireplace together, is read as one that will not rest, and a room with none, a north bedroom in blue with no lamp, as one that will not wake. The rules that follow are about balance rather than fire: the bedroom, which the tradition wanted yin, takes little Fire, no red, no stove wall behind the bed, no candle by the pillow; the kitchen and the living room take more; the study takes its Fire in a lamp. The colour guide gives the reds and their places. The element rules are the tradition’s way of saying that a house should be warm where it gathers and cool where it sleeps, and a household that keeps its fire in the kitchen and the living room and out of the bedroom has followed them, whatever colour it paints the walls.

The minutes a fire allows

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The fire research measures what the tradition feared and gives the household the minutes. Kerber’s full-scale burns of furnished rooms found flashover, the moment a room’s contents all ignite, arriving in three to five minutes in a modern room where the old furnishings gave thirty, because foam and plastics burn faster than wood and wool; the same burns found a closed door holding a bedroom survivable, cool and breathable, while the room beyond it burned, which is the finding behind the advice to close bedroom doors at night, and the reason the doors guide asks for solid leaves. Ahrens’s figures for American homes give cooking as the leading cause of fires, smoking and heating as the leading causes of deaths, most deaths at night, and most in homes without a working alarm. The plan drawn above is the tradition’s flat with the research added: the stove on the outer wall with its clearances and the extractor above, a heat alarm in the kitchen where a smoke alarm would sound at every meal, smoke alarms in the hall and the bedrooms, the bedroom doors closed at night, the route from every bed to the door kept clear, and the candles on the table under nothing. The Kitchen God watched the stove for a year at a time; the alarm watches it every second, and the tradition would have bought one.

The minutes, drawn

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The research’s minutes are the household’s budget, and the clock above draws it. Kerber’s burns set the two rooms side by side: a room furnished as rooms were in the middle of the last century, in wood, cotton and wool, which reached flashover, the moment at which every surface in a room ignites at once, at about thirty minutes, and the same room furnished as rooms are now, in foam, polyester and plastics, which reached it in three to five. The ratio is about ten to one and it is the finding; the times themselves move with the room and the fire. On the modern bar the household’s three minutes are marked, because they are what the fire safety plan is for: an alarm within the first minute, which a smoke alarm in the hall gives for a fire in a modern room and a heat alarm in the kitchen gives without the false alarms of cooking; a household awake and up by the second; the route and the door by the third. The tinted band is the margin, and it is short enough that the plan’s two rules about routes, nothing stored in the hall and nothing across the bedroom door, are not tidiness but time. Below the bars are the two bedrooms of the same burns at the moment the room beyond them flashed over, one with its door open and one with it closed: the open room’s air at about a thousand degrees Fahrenheit and the closed room’s under a hundred, breathable, with the fire on the other side of a single leaf of timber. The tradition closed the bedroom door at night for privacy and against the draught, and the bedroom page keeps it closed for sleep; the clock keeps it closed for the minutes, and a household that reads nothing else on this page should read the two rooms.

Fire, in order

1. The stove on a solid wall. Nothing that burns above, the water a metre away, the extractor over it, the god or the alarm above.
2. The hearth as the wall of honour. Fire at the centre, the mantel as the altar table, the seats in an arc, the screen to one side.
3. The small fires in their places. A lamp at the hand, a candle on the table under nothing, incense in sand.
4. Fire out of the bedroom. No stove wall behind the bed, no candle by the pillow, little red; the room that sleeps stays cool.
5. A heat alarm in the kitchen, smoke alarms outside the bedrooms. Tested monthly; the god reported once a year.
6. The bedroom door closed at night. Solid, with the alarm outside it; the minutes a fire allows are behind that door.
7. The route kept clear. From every bed to the front door, the same route the moving day kept.