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Page 9
[Illustration: WARMTH IS BEAUTY.]
[Illustration: A HIDDEN FOE.]
"Now, if the particular spot of earth on which you expect to set up the
temple of your home is not well adapted to that sacred purpose, think a
bit before you commence digging. If it is low, wet and difficult of
drainage; if the surface water or the drains from adjacent lands have
no outlet except across it; if its size and shape compel your house to
stand so near your neighbor on the south that he takes all the sunshine
and gives you the odors of his dinner and the conversation of his cook
in exchange; if there are no pleasant outlooks; if it is shaded by
trees owned by somebody who will not be persuaded to cut them down for
love nor money--by all means turn it into a fish-pond, a sheep-pasture
or a public park. You can never build upon it a satisfactory home.
Perhaps it is within five minutes' walk of the post-office and on the
same street with Mrs. Adoniram Brown, and these considerations outweigh
all others. In that case there is no help for you. You must make the
best of it as it is.
[Illustration: A BURIED GRIDIRON.]
"If you have a suspicion that the ground is naturally wet, that it
contains hidden springs or conceals an impervious basin, making in
effect a pool of standing water underground, the first necessity is a
clean outlet--not a sewer--low enough to underdrain the lot at least a
foot and a-half below the bottom of the cellar. Having found the clean
outlet, lay small drain tiles, two or three inches in diameter, under
the entire house and for several feet all around it, like a big
gridiron. When this is buried under one or two feet of clean gravel or
sand you will have a permanently dry plot of ground to build upon. The
same treatment will be effective if the ground is "springy." But there
must be a "cut-off" encircling the house. This you can make by digging
a trench a foot wide, reaching down to the drain tiles, and filling it
nearly to the top with loose stones or coarse gravel, the surface of
the ground being graded to slope sharply toward the trench. The surface
water between it and the house, and any moisture creeping toward the
house from without, will then be caught in this porous trap and fall to
the gridiron.
[Illustration: THE PROTECTING "CUT-OFF."]
"It is possible, theoretically, to build an underground cellar so tight
that it may be lifted up on posts and used for a water-tank, or set
afloat like a compartment-built iron steamer. Such walls may be
necessary under certain circumstances. They may be necessary for
cellars that are founded in swamps, in salt marshes below the level of
the sea, and in old river-beds, where the original iniquity of the
standing water is made still more iniquitous by the inevitable foulness
of the washing from streets and the unclean refuse from sinks and back
doors. But for buildings that have four independent walls, with room
enough for a man to ride around his own house in a wheelbarrow without
trespassing on his neighbors, and which are not hopelessly depressed
below all their surroundings, it is better to use a little moral
suasion on the land itself than to spend one's resources in a defiant
water-proof construction. Instead of drain tiles, small stones covered
with a thin layer of hay or straw before being buried in the sand may
be used if more economical.
"If you cannot find the clean outlet for these buried drains or tiles
below the level of the cellar bottom, then raise the cellar, house and
all. No matter if you are accused of having a 'stuck up' house--better
be stuck up than stuck in the mud. Raise it till the entire cellar is
well above the level of thorough drainage. If this happens to carry it
above the surface of the ground, set the house on posts and hang the
cellar under the floor like a work-bag under a table or the basket to a
balloon.
"The foundation walls must indeed touch solid bottom and extend below
the action of frost; but if the wall above the gridiron and below the
paving of the cellar is of hard stones, or very hard bricks laid in
cement, there will be little risk from rising moisture.
"After all, the chief danger is not from underground springs, from
clean surface water or an occasional rising of the floods, but from the
unclean wastes that in our present half-civilized state are constantly
going out of our homes to poison and pollute the earth and air around
them."
"Half-civilized indeed!" said Jack, interrupting the reading of the
letter. "Besides, he is premature as well as impertinent. He doesn't
know but the house will stand on a granite boulder."
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