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Page 40
These aims and objects are beset with difficulties, and the most
scientific minds of the country have failed so far to devise a method
of ventilation which shall at the same time be within the range of
practical application as regards cost and universally satisfactory.
The report of last year of a committee of the metropolitan board of
works is worth attention, as showing the opinion of metropolitan
surveyors. Out of forty districts, the opinions of whose surveyors
were taken, thirty-five were in favor of open ventilation, two were
doubtful, two against, and one had no experience in this matter. The
average distances of the ventilators were from 30 to 200 yards, and
the committee came to the conclusion that "pipe ventilators of large
section can be used with great advantage in addition to, and not in
substitution for, surface ventilators." To supplement the street
openings as much as possible with vertical cast iron or other shafts
up the house sides would seem to be the first thing to do, for there
can be no doubt that the more this is done, the more perfect will be
the ventilation of the sewers. It must also not be forgotten that the
anxiety, of late years, of English sanitarians to protect each house
from the possible dangers of sewer gas from the street sewer has led
to a system of so-called disconnection of the house drains by a water
seal or siphon trap, and that, consequently, the soil pipes of the
houses, which, when carried through the roofs, acted as ventilators to
the public sewers, have been lost for this purpose, and thus the
difficulty of sewer ventilation has been greatly increased.
In Leicester we have been fortunate enough to secure the co-operation
of factory owners, who have allowed us to connect no fewer than
fifty-two chimneys; while we have already carried out, at a cost of
about �1,250, 146 special shafts up the house sides, with a locked
opening upon a large number of them, by means of which we can test the
velocity of the current as well as the temperature of the outflowing
air. The connections with the high factory chimneys are all of too
small a caliber to be of great use, being generally only six inches,
with a few exceptionally of nine inches in diameter.
The radius of effect of specially erected chimneys, as shown by the
experiments of Sir Joseph Bazalgette, and as experienced with the
special ventilating towers erected at Frankfurt, is disappointing and
discouraging when the cost is taken into consideration. It can not be
expected, however, that manufacturers will admit larger connections to
be made with their chimney; otherwise, of course, much more
satisfactory results would be obtained. To fall back upon special
shafts up the house sides means, in my opinion, that there should be
probably as many in number as are represented by the soil pipes of the
houses, for in this we have a tested example at Frankfurt, which, so
far as I know, has up to the present moment proved eminently
satisfactory.
The distance apart of such shafts would largely depend on the size of
them, but as a rule it will be found that house owners object to large
pipes, in which case the number must be increased, and if we take a
distance of about 30 yards, we should require about 5,000 such shafts
in Leicester. Whether some artificial means of inducing currents in
sewers by drawing down fresh air from shafts above the eaves of the
houses, and sending forth the diluted sewer gas to still higher
levels, or burning it in an outcast shaft, will take the place of
natural ventilation, and prove to be less costly and more certain in
its action, remains to be seen. But it is quite certain that
notwithstanding the patents which have already been taken out and
failed, and those now before the public, there is still a wide field
of research before this question is satisfactorily solved, so that no
cause whatever shall remain of complaint on the part of the most
fastidious.
One other important question common to all towns is that of the
collection and disposal of the ashes and refuse of the households. It
is one which is becoming daily more difficult to deal with, especially
in those large communities where the old privy and ashpit system has
not been entirely abolished. The removal of such ashes is at all times
a source of nuisance, and if they cannot be disposed of to the
agriculturists of the district, they become a source of difficulty. In
purely water-closeted towns the so-called dry ashpits cannot be kept
in such a condition as to be entirely free from nuisance, especially
in the summer months, inasmuch as the refuse of vegetable and animal
matter finds its way into them, and they are, in close and inhabited
districts, necessarily too close to the living apartments of the
dwellings. The tendency therefore now is rather to discourage the
establishment of ashpits by the substitution of ashbins, to be
collected daily or weekly as the case may be, and I think there can be
no doubt that from a sanitary point of view this is by far the best
system, harmonizing as it does with the general principle applicable
to town sanitation of removing all refuse, likely by decomposition to
become dangerous to health, as quickly as possible from the precincts
of human habitations.
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