Can Anyone Identify These?

[Slim]

Hi all,

Got these as a Christmas present and have no idea what they are. I haven't been around the forum for a while, but thought if I will get the answer anywhere it will be here. They are cast iron, about 9" tall and have 4" 92 cast on them.


image by slimjim81, on Flickr


image by slimjim81, on Flickr


image by slimjim81, on Flickr

Anyone any ideas?

 

[Nippychippy]

Would they be wellie hooks for helping you take them off

 

[MMUK]

Banana trees?

Or maybe a gauge for hooks?

 

[adidat]

did you ask the gifter?

im pretty sure these are pipe holders for a greenhouse??

adidat

 

[Preston]

Heavy duty Curtain pole holder?

 

[AndyT]

Adidat is right. As used in high grade heated greenhouses to hold two cast iron pipes.

 

[Eric The Viking]

I agree with AndyT.

We had them in the chapel I used to attend. If you work out the diameter of the circles, it'll probably be 3" or 4", for wide pipes used instead of radiators - they're used with the mounting on the floor and the pipes one over t'other.

Those were gravity/convection systems, using the difference in density between cold and hot water to move heat around the system - no pumps. It was balanced up by large gate valves, so that the upper parts of the building didn't bake and the lower parts freeze.

I went to a large chapel in Bristol, which had the luxury of being able to switch the furnace over to heat its large (adult-sized) baptistry. The furnace was coal/coke-fired. For a baptismal service, apparently, it took three days of continuous stoking to get the water to roughly lukewarm. In the 1940s and 1950s the chapel got university students to do it, in shifts. I don't know if they were paid or not!

I can only guess how the building itself was done: presumably someone fired up the boiler on the Saturday evening or very early on the Sunday. There was quite a volume of water in those pipes, and they weren't light weight, being cast iron.

E.

 

[Slim]

Of course, greenhouse heating pipe holders... :?

Thanks guys.