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Page 45
"One more danger closes the list, so far as the system is concerned.
Even if the water in the traps is clean and inoffensive it will
evaporate quickly in warm weather, and then the prison door is open
again. This adds another vigil which we can never lay aside if we must
have plumbing and water traps. The burden may be somewhat
lightened--since we are prone to forgetfulness as stones to fall
downward--by using traps made of glass and leaving them in plain sight.
[Illustration: Fig. 5.]
"I conclusion, I wish to remind you that the lower end of the main
drain must be protected from the iniquity of the sewer or cesspool to
which it runs by another trap, or dam, just below the open pipe that
admits fresh air from outside the house (Fig. 5), and also, as I have
before remarked, that the system is wrong. The rising tide of
civilization will some time wash it all away."
"Uncle Harry's notion of reform," said Jack, after the long letter had
been read, "seems to be to blow the universe to pieces and then put it
together again on a new and improved plan. It strikes me we had better
fight it out on this line and try to straighten the evils we know
something about rather than invent new ones. If we had begun on that
track and tried to utilize the waste materials on strictly economical
principles, perhaps by this time our methods and machinery would have
been so far perfected that the real or imaginary evils of modern
plumbing would not have existed. It seems a pity to throw away all we
have accomplished and begin again."
"That is a part of the price paid for progress," said Jill. "Stage
coaches are useless when steam appears, and locomotives must go to the
junk shop when electricity is ready to be harnessed. But I'm afraid we
cannot afford to be pioneers, and I'm sure the neighbors are not ready
to co-operate. We must still 'go by water,' and the important question
is where to send the lower end of the main drain. There is no sewer in
the street, and a cesspool is an atrocity worthy of the darkest ages.
The only safe thing appears to be the sub-surface irrigation plan, for
which, fortunately, there is plenty of room on our lot. This comes very
near to Uncle Harry's notion of 'earth to earth' in the quickest time
possible. If we do it and accept the architect's suggestion in the plan
of the house we shall be reasonably safe from that most mysterious of
all modern foes--sewer-gas."
"I've forgotten the architect's suggestions; in fact, I don't believe
my head is quite equal to housebuilding with all the latest notions.
When _my_ house was built I just told the carpenter to get up something
stylish and good, about like Judge Gainsboro's. He showed me the plans,
I signed the contract, and that was the whole of it. I supposed a house
was a house. Now, before the new house is begun, I'm like Dick
Whittington in the days of his poverty--I've no peace by day or night."
"Poor fellow!"
"I shudder to think what it will he when the house is fairly under way.
I can see five hundred different things at once, but when each one has
five hundred sides and we get up into the hundred thousands, I begin to
feel dizzy. Uncle Harry has settled the plumbing question to his own
satisfaction, so far as first principles are concerned; but who will
tell us what kind of pipes and trimmings and bowls and basins and traps
and plugs and stops and pedals and pulls and cranks and pistons and
plungers and hooks and staples and couplings and brakes and chains and
pans and basins and tanks and floats and buoys and strainers and safes
and bibbs and tuckers we are to adopt? If I should consume midnight oil
during a full four years' course at a college for plumbers I should
still find myself just upon the threshold of the temple of knowledge."
CHAPTER XIV.
SAFE FLUES AND MORE LIGHT.
By a tender but vigorous application of the remedies usual in such
cases, Jack was speedily restored to his wonted equanimity, and Jill,
laying Uncle Harry aside, took up the architect's suggestions
concerning the plumbing, which referred rather to its relations to the
plan of the house than to the details of the work itself.
"A bath-room, with all the plumbing articles it usually contains, must
possess at least three special characteristics. It must be easily
warmed in cold weather, otherwise the annual bill for repairs will be
greater than the cost of coal for the whole house; its walls, floors
and ceilings must be impervious to sound. The music of murmuring brooks
is delightful to our ears, so is the patter of the soft rain on the
roof; but the splashing of water in a, bath-tub and the gurgling of
unseen water-pipes are not pleasant accompaniments to a dinner-table
conversation. Thirdly, it must be perfectly ventilated--not the
drainpipes merely,--but the room itself in summer and in winter. Two of
the above conditions can best be secured by arranging to have this
important room placed in a detached or semi-detached wing; and here
begin the compromises between convenience, cost and safety. It is
convenient to have a bath-room attached to every chamber, and there is
no doubt that this may be done with entire safety, provided you do not
regard the cost. In your plan I have adopted the middle course. There
is one bath-room for all the chambers of the second floor, not too
remote but somewhat retired, and having no communication with any other
room. It is ventilated by a large open flue carried up directly through
the roof; it has also an outside window and inlets for fresh air near
the floor. All the walls and partitions around it will be double and
filled with mineral wool, and the floors will be deafened. The 'house
side' of the water-closet traps will have three-inch iron pipes running
to the ventilating flue beside the kitchen-chimney, a flue that will
always be warm, and therefore certain to give a strong upward draught
at all times, which cannot be said of any other flue in the house, not
even of the main drain, or soil-pipe, which passes up through the roof.
It would be easy to keep other flues warmed in cold weather by
steam-pipes, but in summer you will have no steam for heating purposes.
A 'circulation-pipe' might be attached to a boiler on the kitchen range
for this purpose, but in the present case such a contrivance would cost
more than the iron pipe carried from the bath-room to the flue that is
warmed by the kitchen fire. A good way to build this ventilating flue
is to inclose the smoke-pipe from the range, which may be of iron or
glazed earthen pipe, in a larger brick flue or chamber (Fig. 1),
keeping it in place by bars of iron laid into the masonry. The rising
current of warm air around the heated smoke-pipe will be as constant
and reliable as the trade winds. It will be well, indeed, if all your
chimneys are made in a similar manner; that is, by enclosing
hard-burned glazed pipe in a thin wall of bricks. Such chimneys will
not only draw better than those made in the usual way, but there will
be less danger from 'defective flues.' A four-inch wall of bricks
between us and destruction by fire is a frail barrier, especially if
the work is carelessly done or the mortar has crumbled from the joints.
To build the chimneys with double or eight-inch walls makes them very
large, more expensive, and still not as good as when they contain the
smooth round flues. To leave an air-chamber beside or between them for
ventilating (Fig. 2), is better than to open directly into the
smoke-flue, because it will not impair the draught for the fire, and
there will be no danger of a sooty odor in the room when the
circulation happens to be downward, as it will be occasionally. The
outside chimney, if there is one, should have an extra air-chamber
between the very outer wall and the back of the fireplace to save heat
(Fig. 3), a precaution that removes to a great extent the common
objection to such chimneys. Whatever else you do, let these 'windpipes
of good hospitalitie' have all the room they need. I shall not
willingly carry them off by any devious way to be hidden in an obscure
corner or dark closet, nor yet to give them a more respectable and
well-balanced position on the roof. Like the wild forest trees they
shall grow straight up toward heaven from the spot where they are first
planted. If we happen to want a window where the chimney stands in an
outer wall we will make one between the flues, as one might build a hut
in the huge branches of a mighty oak. It isn't the best place for the
window or the hut, but circumstances may justify it; as, for instance,
when we must have the outlook in a certain direction, but cannot spare
the wall-space for a window beside the chimney. The jambs beside a
window so situated will be very wide, and you may, if you please,
extend the view of the landscape indefinitely by setting two mirrors
_vis-�-vis_ in the opening at either side. This will also send the
sunshine into the room after the sun has passed by the other windows
on the same side of the house. It is rather a pretty fancy, too, when
the outside view does not require a clear window, to set a picture in
colored glass above the mantel, and the same thins: may be arranged in
the sideboard, if it happens to stand against the outer wall. These are
_fancies_, however, which lose their beauty and fitness unless they
seem to have been spontaneously produced. There should be no apparent
striving for effect."
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