The doorways in the partitions should not be too lofty. They should not be hung with doors, as anything necessary in this way will be amply supplied by depending curtains.
_Glazing_ in the hot rooms requires care. The glass will expand considerably with the heat, and, what is more, if the furnace fire die out rapidly at any time, will contract and fracture. This difficulty, however, is the result of bad management, and does not concern the architect, unless, indeed, it be the result of improper fixing. Even moderate-sized sheets of glass should be carefully fixed in chamois leather with screwed beading, _putty_ being wholly inadmissible. The sheets of glass should not be of too large dimensions. Rolled glass will be found the cheapest in the end, as inferior qualities, where homogeneity of texture is wanting, will crack and split in all directions. Lead glazing should be altogether discarded.
No provision for draining the hot rooms is necessary, as they must, when in use, be kept free from moisture. The floor may, however, if thought desirable, be laid with an imperceptible fall the way the water would be swept when cleansing--viz. towards the lavatorium.
As the best position for a bather to assume in the sudatorium is one approaching to the horizontal, a bath cannot be considered complete unless a liberal number of marble-slabbed benches be provided. These should run round the solid walls, the risers of the benches being formed of brickwork--glazed, faced with tiles, or plastered--and white marble slabs set thereon. These slabs cannot be less than 24 in. wide, and must be of the ordinary seat height--not lower. In the risers must be provided a liberal number of "hit-and-miss" ventilator gratings, the vitiated air finding its way from the space beneath the slabs in the way designed, which may be into surrounding areas, into hollow walls, or into a flue or flues running the whole height of the building.
The air at the floor line and that at the ceiling level being of vastly different temperatures, it follows that an arrangement might be designed whereby the benches might be stepped in three or four rows, and, by ascending, the bather could select any temperature he might choose. Such an arrangement was often employed in the baths of the ancient Romans, and has been tried in modern institutions; but it should be avoided. The expirations from the lungs and the exudations from the bodies of the bathers _fall_, and it therefore follows that all below the first tier would be breathing air polluted by those above them. The system, therefore, stands condemned.