Work to identify and preserve the engineering and technical heritage on the premises of the State Hermitage

In the summer of 2006 exploration of the cellar of the Small Hermitage revealed beneath a heap of old bricks a large fragment of an Amosov furnace that belonged to the main heating system of the Hermitage complex of buildings in the second half of the 19th and early 20th centuries. The fire-chamber and heat-exchange chamber were well preserved, as were the cast-iron sections of the ducts through which the hot smoke passed into the main pipes of the heaters. The pipes were made of thin metal and only small rusted fragments of them remained.

The Amosov furnace was invented in 1835 by Major General Nikolai Amosov. In its time it was the most advanced heating system while also providing greater fire safety. It was for that reason that when the Winter Palace was restored after the fire of 1837 the building was heated with the aid of Amosov furnaces installed in the cellars.

The chief distinction between these and conventional furnaces was that they could be located at a considerable distance from the rooms that they heated. Air was drawn from outside into special chambers where it was heated through contact with the incandescent walls of iron pipe-heaters. The pipes were filled with hot smoke from wood burnt in the separate fire-chamber alongside. The heated air then passed along ducts placed in the walls of the building, reaching the upper floors and entering the rooms through grilled apertures. More than 100 Amosov furnaces were installed in the palace-and-museum complex and they worked successfully until the 1930s-1940s, when the Hermitage was connected to the municipal district heating networks.

An Amosov stove: fire-chamber and the door to the chamber with heaters
Larger view