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Home Sanitation and Hygiene: Cellar

Cellar or Basement. -The vital importance of a clean dry cellar is due to the danger of the contamination of the air from soil pollution. The artificial heat in a house, especially in winter, rises and creates suction from the soil beneath and around the cellar. Thus the building as a whole acts as a flue. It draws up and transports to the rooms above whatever noxious air or gases the earth may contain. Moisture in the atmosphere of the cellar is thus quickly communicated to all parts of the house. These facts have been abundantly proved by experiment. A new cellar should be so drained as to keep the water level below the cellar floor. Or if this precaution has been neglected, such a drain may be put in after the house has been built, provided a proper outlet can be secured. sill air Space Damp proof course Method of draining cellar walls. Courtesy State Board of Health of Maine. he cellar wall laid up dry and then chinked and "pointed" on the inside should be avoided, especially in damp localities. The open crevices admit the water freely from the outside. The plaster or cement on the inside then becomes wet and eventually falls off. Cellar walls should preferably be built of concrete or stone laid solidly in cement-mortar and brought to a good smooth face both inside and outside, particularly the latter. This will exclude all vermin as well as moisture. Such a wall, especially if backed with gravel, coarse sand or fine rubble, as shown in the illustration, turns the water and allows it to drain off rapidly through the tile surrounding the foundation.

To drain a cellar after a house has been built, dig a trench outside the foundation wall to a depth at least 12 inches below the cellar bottom and lay 2-inch unglazed tile all around the foundation wall outside of and close to it. Give the tile a slope of 10 or 12 inches on an even grade from the corner of the house diagonally opposite, around both sides and down to the outlet. If the drain must then enter a sewer, insert a trap well HOME SANITATION AND HYGIENE outside the cellar wall with a deep water seal which will not go dry at any season. If the ground is very damp, point up the outer side of the cellar wall with good hydraulic cement and fill the trench with loose stone and gravel. If the outlet pipe can be brought out of the ground at a point such that there is sufficient fall, this will provide perfect drainage. Take care not to disturb the foundations. If the earth is not very firm, dig the trench in sections and fill it as fast as the drainage pipe can be laid.

If the ground under the cellar bottom is exceptionally wet, underlay it with tile drains not more than 12 feet apart and converging toward the point of the outlet.

Cellar Bottom Foundation Wall F Method of draining cellar bottom. Courtesy State Board of Health of Maine. Damp-proof Courses. - Some kinds of building materials used for foundation and the underpinning of houses are porous. These readily absorb water from the soil and transmit dampness to the structure and the rooms above. Brick is the worst offender, but concrete and some kinds of building stone are almost equally as bad. Hence insert a damp-proof course laid completely across the foundation wall and extending all around the building. This may consist of a half-inch layer of asphalt or of slate embedded in cement. It must necessarily be above grade so that the ground may not come in contact with the work above it. In many old brick houses, or wooden houses with brick underpinnings, the ground comes in contact with the brickwork. This is a standing and very cordial invitation to serious forms of illness to visit the occupants. Hence remove, sectionally, a course of brick all the way around the house above the ground line and below the sills or floor timbers, and insert a damp-proof course. DANGERS FROM ARTIFICIAL HEAT The various kinds of fuel and systems of heating have been considered elsewhere from the standpoint of their efficiency. We are concerned here only with their sanitary and hygienic effect. The most common danger to health is perhaps from over-heating. E. C. Jordan says: "Cold, pure air is a wonderful tonic.

It improves the appetite, increases the red corpuscles of the blood and tones up the system generally. Many American children and adults emerge from their hibernation in the spring anemic and weak. This is largely due to the faults in our methods of heating. We customarily overheat our houses and offices. Seventy degrees or more of artificial heat is enervating. We should accustom ourselves to being comfortable at a temperature at least a few degrees below 70. "A second serious danger is from the products of combustion. Burning coal, wood, oil or gas generate certain very harmful gases. The utmost care should be taken to exclude these from the air we breathe. Yet leakage of gas from stoves or furnaces not properly constructed or managed is very common. The use of oil and gas heaters is perilously imprudent.

They should never be used unless the products of combustion are carried from the room by means of a pipe connecting with the chimney flue. "A third fault and danger is want of ventilation. In unventilated living rooms the air is rendered unsuitable for breathing by these four things: (1) An insufficient percentage of oxygen; (2) the poisonous products of respiration; (3) the deleterious products of combustion from lights or leakage from heaters; (4) diseaseproducing bacteria. One principal reason why grip, pneumonia, diphtheria, smallpox, and some other diseases are more prevalent in winter than in summer, is that in winter the doors and windows are closed and the bacterial causes of these diseases are concentrated. "It is a serious yet common mistake to put in a heating apparatus which cannot easily do the work required of it in cold weather. Such a heating plant is then sure to be crowded and overheated, its period of usefulness is shortened, the greatest practicable amount of heat is not obtained from the fuel, and deleterious products escape into the rooms. "Another prolific source of ill health for those who breathe artificial air is the unintelligent use of dampers. Everybody who uses coal knows that, if the damper is turned too soon, we get into our rooms an illsmelling sulphurous gas. That gas is also dangerously poisonous. But unfortunately most people are unaware that after the damper is turned so that the draft is too slight, another gas, without odor to reveal its presence, continues to leak out. This is carbonic oxide. tities is having his blood corpuscles slowly destroyed. He comes out in the spring pale and weak, and with his general health impaired. Many persons, with no suspicion of the cause of their illness, feel the need of the recuperation which they can gain in the summer season to enable them to endure the next winter's chronic foul-air poisoning. Any perceptible odor of gas from the furnace or other heating apparatus is always an indication of serious danger to health and should have immediate attention."

WATER SUPPLY Water should be brought into the house and also to the barn whenever possible, and pipes should then be laid to remove the waste water from house and barn and to so dispose of it as to avoid breeding grounds for the bacteria that cause filth diseases. There are important reasons why water should be brought to the barn, but if it is not possible to bring it to both places, the house should have the preference. L. H. Bailey says: "The first thing I would now do for the farm home is to put in sanitary water works for the care and comfort of the person. Nothing would so soon lift the home ideals."

Every dwelling should have good kitchen sinks, water closets and a bathroom. Drinking water should be brought in by pipes. Such a water supply means additional comfort, better health, protection against fire, saving of labor and a supply of water for lawn and garden. Various "Of the two carbon gases found in vitiated air, both will cause death by suffocation if the percentage in the air is large enough. If he is rescued in time and carried into the open air, the victim of carbonic acid gas will quickly recover, and apparently with-methods are in use, as gravity from out permanent injury. But in cases of partial asphyxiation from carbonic oxide gas, resuscitation and ultimate recovery are very doubtful. The red corpuscles of the blood seem to suffer destruction, or a great diminution of their oxygen-carrying capacity. Recovery, when it occurs, is usually very slow and incomplete. The person chronically poisoned by habitually breathing this gas in small quanhigh springs or creeks, or power from windmills, hydraulic rams, small gas or hot air engines, or from tanks which may be filled by pneumatic pumps operated either by power or by hand. The location of the storage tank and the best means of forcing water into it depend upon local conditions. The source of supply, the amount of water required, the need of power for other purposes, the HOME SANITATION AND HYGIENE available fuel and the cost of labor all have a bearing on the matter, in addition to the first cost of installation.

A small hydraulic ram can be installed for $50 or less, pipe not included. This will be practicable if there is a fall of 18 inches or more from the source of supply. The illustration shows the method of setting a hydraulic ram. Spring.