Part 9

One word with respect to closet seats. It is the prevailing fashion to have them fit as closely as possible, and to keep the lid shut. Emptage thinks this is a mistake. If there are any gases to escape, they should be allowed to do so at once, rather than be kept boxed in, ready to belch forth into the face of the next visitor. For this reason, he would discard lids altogether, and, provided a suitably finished apparatus could be introduced, the riser also, and allow the floorcloth to run right under the seat, leaving no space in the room where bad air could be detained.

Eassie recommends one of the various kinds of “wash-out” closet, and specifies Jennings’s as being good in every respect, especially for nurseries. For general household use he favours the valve closet on the Bramah pattern. In other details he directly opposes Emptage, warning the householder above all “not to fix a D trap under the apparatus, but only a P trap or S trap of cast lead.” Care should also be taken to make sure that the waste pipe from the leaden tray, or “safe”--which is usually placed under a closet in order to avoid any damage to the ceiling below should the basin overflow--is not led into the trap underneath the closet, but taken direct through the outer wall, and with a small copper flap at the end of the 1 in. pipe, in order to keep out the cold air. A sufficient supply of flushing water is indispensable, and many houses can be much improved in this respect by simply enlarging the service pipe which conveys water to the basin. See also p. 991.

In country dwellings, where earth-closets can be used, the following system works well. The refuse to be disposed of embraces rain and surface water, wash-waters, ashes, and excreta. The water is partly stored and partly run into the nearest brook. The ashes and excreta (no closet being fitted inside the dwelling) are carried to the garden. The wash-waters are emptied into a sink, which communicates directly with either a small trap, through a grating (the pipe being disconnected with the trap), or, if there be a sufficient fall, to a garden, by an open gutter, or open tile drain. The ashes and excreta are mixed together, and removed by the agency of one or other form of “earth-closet,” taking that term generally for an apparatus which is not a cesspool, which has to be frequently emptied of its contents in a more or less dry state, and which is wholly above ground.

The contents of the water-closet are discharged, as a rule, into a separate pipe, called the soil pipe; but sometimes into a rain-water pipe with an open head near the windows, or even _inside_ the house. The soil pipe is usually inside the house--probably because it ought to be outside! Even where water-closets are against an external wall, the pipe is often carried down inside the house. The closets themselves, like sinks, ought not to be placed in the middle of the house. They are very frequently under the stairs, close to bedrooms, or in the middle of the house, sometimes ventilating into a shaft. It is of course inevitable in these cases that the pipe must either be carried inside throughout the whole length of the house, or must run nearly horizontally under the floors of bedrooms, &c. Under such circumstances it is often not properly ventilated; and if not ventilated at all, the foul air makes its way out through holes, which it is capable of perforating in lead pipes.

The soil pipes are then frequently inside the house, and they are as a rule made of lead. They are very frequently not ventilated at the top, and the pieces are jointed together by merely being slipped into one another, with perhaps a little putty or red-lead. Of course these joints are not sound joints. The soil pipe goes down into the drain, and so the foul air gets into the house. The soil pipe, whether inside or outside the house, ought to have sound joints. If a lead pipe, soldered joints; if an iron pipe, the joints ought to be made secure in a proper way.

If any part of the soil pipe must pass inside the house, it should be of lead, and it can be made sound so long as it will last (and is not damaged by driving nails into it).

Iron pipes should not be allowed to be inside the house. It is so very likely that the joints will not be made perfectly tight, so that it is more undesirable to have iron pipes inside the house than it is to have lead pipes.

Of course it is practicable to plug the pipe at the bottom and to fill it with water to ascertain if it is water-tight; but all that is only a device to retain a thing which ought to be altered.

Soil pipes ought always to be ventilated by a pipe as large as the soil pipe carried up above the roof.

The soil pipes ought to be outside the house, and connected with the drain by plain stoneware bends, or, under certain circumstances, disconnected from the drains themselves by a trap with an open grating. Such a trap is called a disconnecting trap.

_Bath-room._--The first thing to mention in connection with the bath-room is that the inlet and outlet openings for the water should not be the same. Very frequently in a bath the water goes out by the same apertures as it comes in. This is a bad plan, for some of the dirty water comes back with the clean. The waste pipe should be treated in the same way as the waste pipe of a sink.

Frequently on the best bedroom floor there is a water-closet actually in one of the bedrooms, or opening directly out of it by a door. This ought not to be countenanced under any circumstances whatever.

On the drawing-room floor there is generally a balcony, the pipes from which go very frequently straight down to the drain, or they are connected with rain-water pipes from the top of the house, which _themselves_ discharge into the drain; so that these pipes from balconies and lead flats are not at all infrequently connected with the drains.

_Bell-wire Pipes._--There is sometimes an unaccountable smell in the drawing-room, and people puzzle themselves in all kinds of ways to account for it. It is generally noticed when people are sitting in a particular chair--which particular chair is a chair possibly most frequently sat in--one near to the fireplace. The smell noticed is a smell which comes up the tube that the bell-wire goes down. The bell-wire goes down into the basement. It may go into some part of the basement which is not very savoury, and foul air may be, and frequently is, taken up into the drawing-room or best bed-room. Or the wire may be in the basement passage close to the gas-light, and the products of combustion of the gas may pass up the wire-tube into the drawing-room or bedroom.

_Kitchen Waste._--Accumulation of waste animal and vegetable matter should be strictly forbidden; what cannot be used as food, even for domestic animals, ought to be burned daily. Where there is a large garden, refuse may be buried. The objection frequently raised to burning is the unpleasant smell which is caused by it; this may, with a little care, always be avoided. Where a close range is used, choose a time when the fire is bright but low; draw out all the dampers and put everything into the fire, close the door in front, and a very large amount of rubbish can be got rid of in a quarter of an hour. In open fireplaces this is a little more difficult, but may still be accomplished. Put all vegetable matter under the grate to dry, then put it on the fire. The oven dampers must be drawn out; the strong draught up the oven flue will carry off the smell. Fish-bones and other scraps may thus be burned. The habit prevalent in many country places of keeping a swill-tub cannot be too strongly condemned. A day or two of damp summer weather is enough to cause a most offensive smell to be given off. Dwellings in large towns become dangerous in warm weather from their close proximity to ashpits, which are made the receptacle of all kinds of decaying animal and vegetable matter. Much sickness might be prevented during the summer months if it could be made compulsory to have ashpits, &c., well sprinkled with chloride of lime or some similar disinfectant at least twice a week.

_Sinks._--The stoppage of drains by grease may be partially prevented by the use of soap-powder, which combines with the grease; but at least twice a week there should be poured down kitchen sinks one or two bucketfuls of boiling water, in which common soda has been dissolved. A much better plan is to use potash instead of soda, as potash makes a _soft_ soap with fats. The application of one or two doses of potash lye in hot water will almost always effect a clearance in stopped drains, which at first appear to be irremediably choked, and at the same time no injury whatever results to the pipes.

The proper arrangement and disconnection of a kitchen sink is shown in Fig. 23; _a_, stoneware trough; _b_, 2 in. stoneware waste pipe; _c_, stoneware gully or trap; _d_, iron grating; _e_, house wall; _f_, pipe leading to sewer.

The sinks in the basement have their waste pipes very frequently either directly connected with the drains or connected with the drains by bell traps. Of course this is a most dangerous state of things. For when the top of the bell trap is taken off, an opening into the drain is directly made. If the bell trap gets broken, no one is told of it, and the drain is ventilated into the house for months. On the other hand, if the top is left on and the bell trap is in a place where water does not get into it continually, or at all, the trap will get dry, and so become a ventilator of the drains into the house; so that this plan of having ventilating pipes in the sinks, or of having bell traps in the floor of basements, is most dangerous, still more dangerous if the sinks are not used. Some think in this way:--Oh! this sink is not used, there cannot be any harm in it! But there is, and much more harm too. For the water in the trap dries up, and so foul air comes into the house.

The sinks, then, ought not to be directly connected with the drains, but should discharge through trapped gullies in the area; and not only so, but the waste pipes of the sinks, whether upstairs or downstairs, ought to have siphon traps, with traps and screws fixed immediately under the sinks. These waste pipes are foul pipes even when not connected with the drains, and if you do not have siphon traps immediately under the sinks, foul air will come in, especially during the night, and you will have a very serious nuisance caused in the house in this way. The same remarks about cisterns upstairs apply to cisterns in the basement. The water-closets in the basement are simpler forms of closets, and they are very frequently supplied from water cisterns by means of pipes which have merely a tap which you may turn off or on. This is a most mischievous plan, as the cistern may be emptied and foul air enter it. The closets in the basement, therefore, ought to be supplied by means of water-waste preventers, the best kind being the siphon-action water-waste preventers, which discharge two gallons of water as soon as you pull the chain. These “preventers” are not only to prevent the water being wasted by the handle of the closet being fastened up, but also cut off the direct supply of the closet from the drinking-cistern water.

_Grease Traps._--A much-discussed subject is the grease trap. In small houses it is not needed; but in large houses, unless some provision is made for catching the grease sent down the scullery sink, the drains will soon be choked. Eassie gives a caution against having the grease trap too large for its work, and as to the importance of cleaning it out regularly, say once a week.

_Disconnection Traps._--Whether the house drains into a sewer, a stream, a cesspool, or upon a piece of irrigation ground, one thing which must never be omitted is a disconnection trap or chamber between the house drain and the outfall. These traps--which should be placed close to the house--prevent any smell from the outfall passing into the house, and inasmuch as they have an inlet for the taking in of fresh air between the siphon and the house, this fresh air will course along the underground drains, and be discharged at the ventilating continuations of the soil pipes, or at the tops.

Where the house is so large that the air inlet of these siphons would not suffice, the latter are replaced by a chamber as shown in Fig. 24. The sewage flows into the air chamber formed by the half-open pipe _a_, being ventilated through the grating _b_; thence it passes through the siphon _c_ to the sewer in the direction of the arrow. There is a raking entry into the sewer side of the siphon at _d_, closed by a plug, thus preventing any smell from the sewer or drain beyond the siphon entering the air chamber _a_. If the sewers are at a great depth, the walls of the air chamber are made thicker, and a manhole is built the length of the open channel, an arch being turned over when the siphon is fixed, as in Fig. 25. The sewage passes from _a_ through the siphon _b_ to the drain _c_, _d_ being the air inlet. (Eassie.)

One of the best modern traps is that introduced by Houghton (Fig. 26), in which the outlet _a_ at the bottom of the gully can be pointed in any direction, and the inlet _b_ to the basin _c_ of the gully, forming a movable half, can be turned round to accommodate the entering waste pipe _b_; _d_ is the open grating which covers the gully.

_Drains._--Tho drain itself is got at by opening down to it in the front area. It may be found to be an old brick-drain, in which case it ought to be taken out. Brick drains are pervious, they allow the escape of foul air, and with contaminated air rats also get in the house. Wherever rats can get, foul air can go; and rats coming in through these holes may carry with them the poison of disease, such as typhoid fever. Rats generally go to the larder, and carry with them often the poison of such diseases, which are very largely spread by their poisons being taken in this way by rats into the milk and other foods, and also into the water in the cisterns.

Whether a brick drain or a pipe drain, it should be trapped before it is connected with the main sewer or cesspool. This trap, in the case of a brick drain called a “dipstone” trap, is a brick pit with a stone across it from one side to another, and dipped into the water which remains in the pit. The object of this stone is to prevent foul air coming into the house. As a matter of fact, the pit holds a large collection of foul matter and becomes a small cesspool, indeed, there is no difference between them.

A drain may be made of glazed stoneware pipes, which may be joined together in one of several ways. They may be laid “dry,” i.e. without any jointing material between the ends, in which case they are, of course, not water-tight; or they may have clay in the joints, in which case you cannot fill them with water--that is to say, they will not hold water under pressure. (If you fill them with water, by plugging at the lower end, the water will come out at the joints.) Or they may be laid with the pipes the wrong way. When the joints are made with clay they will very soon become leaky; and when that happens, the water oozes through the joints, filth collects in the trap, and it gradually plugs up the whole drain from one end to the other. This may go on for years without being found out, and so cause the ground under the house to gradually become a large cesspool. This is an extreme case. Or they may be jointed with cement, and there are some other ways. They may be perfectly well jointed with cement, so as to be water-tight. The drains, then, should answer to this test, i.e. you should be able to plug them at the lower end, and fill them with water. They should not be under the house, if possible. In London we cannot help it as a rule. If under the house, the straighter the course of the drain the better. Do not let it wind about in order to get away from different rooms. The best thing is to have a straight course through and to see that it is water-tight. It should hold water like a teacup. The drain must not be directly connected with the main sewer or merely separated by a siphon trap; but there should be an air inlet into the drain between the siphon trap and the house. This opening may be of different kinds. The best kind is that of a manhole for access to the drain and trap (so that the trap can be examined and cleared out at any time); the air inlet should be a grating either over the manhole or in the nearest wall opening into a pipe leading into the manhole.

People who are afraid of foul air coming out of these inlets put on a valve with mica flaps, so that the air can blow in, but foul air cannot go out. But, if there are no D traps under the water-closets and sinks, if the pipes are straight and sufficiently large ventilators are used, if the ventilating pipes go up above the roof and are not protected from the action of the wind, you will never find foul air coming out at the air inlet though you will find that fresh air is drawn in. There can be no accumulation of foul air, and the air that may be occasionally forced out is the last fresh air that has entered. Should you, however, find foul air coming out you will know that there is something wrong with the drain, that the drain or siphon is plugged, so that this air inlet becomes most valuable in pointing out when anything is going wrong.

Brick drains, says Eassie, are variously shaped. The worst sections are those upon which two upright sides of brick have been built upon flat stones, so as to form a bottom, and then covered over with other flat stones, because the bricks can never joint tightly with the stone, and there is always a leakage going on into the surrounding subsoil. One great objection to brick drains is due to the fact that they cannot be constructed sufficiently small to meet the requirements of a house, and consequently are seldom found less than 9 inches in diameter, which is far too large a sectional area to properly drain a house.

However compactly and well-burnt the clay has been made into bricks, a brick drain has only a certain life, so to speak, before its decadence begins with the usual attendant danger. Its lifetime is longer or shorter according to the subsoil in which it is placed, the material used as mortar, the gradient at which it is laid, the sewage which it removes, and the quantity of water, and especially of heated water, which passes through it, but the consensus of opinion in their disfavour for use in the interior of a house is overwhelming, and a universal preference is accorded to drains formed of earthenware pipes. A second objection to brick drains, however well they may have been built, is their want of smoothness, especially at the bottom, whereby the effete matters are not carried easily away; and this want of smoothness is aggravated by the roughness due to the unequal perishing of the bricks.

One of the first proofs of the perishing of a brick drain, making it past redemption, is the appearance of rats. Rats will go always to that place which affords them most food; and it is the brick barrel drain which receives the washings from meat plates, and the grease from the scullery pots, which rats most commonly frequent. They will leave a drain, and nest themselves in the thatched roof of a farmhouse, and they will form whole villages under the floors of a town house. Rats generally find their way into houses by means of holes which have been formed in brick drains by the falling down of perished bricks from the arch, or owing to their having contrived to make a passage through the brick drain above the usual wetted perimeter. These rats, in the case of country houses, may come from the stables, the barns, or the brooks; but in town houses they chiefly emanate from the sewer. No matter whence originally derived, they soon become habituated to a house and its dainty scraps, and having once engineered their way thither, are seldom effectually dislodged, especially in country residences. As fast as a hole is discovered and stopped up, another is made by these persistent vermin, until the foul air evolved from the house drain becomes so distressful, and the rats so multiply, that some further steps are necessary in dealing with them. Where the evil has not yet grown formidable, traps are made use of, or poison; but this last is a dangerous resource, as the rats are apt to die underground and emit during decomposition, which lasts for months, the most horrible smells.

It may be added that rats are remarkably clean animals, and will never allow their fur to come in contact with anything that cannot easily be immediately cleaned from it; hence, very often a dairy, larder, or granary is surrounded by a trench outside the brick walling to a certain depth, by broken glass and gravel, well grouted with tar. Never rely upon a siphon trap in the drain, as a means of keeping out these voracious and fast-breeding animals. They will eat even through lead pipes ⅛ inch in thickness.

Having shown the necessity for discarding brick drains underneath a house, Eassie next considers alternative clay-derived materials, such as pipes formed of baked clay, after the latter has been worked to a consistency which would not naturally allow of an escape of their contents. There are, however, two or three subdivisions of this class. First of all come those kinds whose ends are merely abutted together, and not, as at the present day, socketed at the joints. These are almost equally faulty with brick drains, because when once they are poisoned and become the habitat of life-destroying germs, their normal tone cannot possibly be recovered. The only kind of earthenware drains which ought to be permitted inside a house are glazed socketed pipes, well formed, well kilned, and properly laid down, the whole of the pipes having been set on a concrete bed, and afterwards covered over with properly made concrete, so as to prevent any possibility of sewage reaching the subsoil, and especially water-tanks. It is not every glazed socketed drain-pipe that is fit for laying down, for the most abominably shaped pipes are often met with. There are many makers beyond reproach, and there are scores of pipes showing patent methods of jointing more or less complicated. The majority of the improvements refer to the fast seating of the ends of the pipes in cradles, well covered in cement, and one especially much in use, Stanford’s, provides a ring of material fitting truly upon a ring of similar material in the socket of the pipe, so that when the two ends are put together, with a little grease or resin between them, the pipes fit closely in every direction, and require but little other luting. These pipes are generally adopted for use under a house, and ordinary socketed pipes for outside.