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House Cleaning: Cellars

To Keep Cellars Warm. - Make a flour paste containing a strong glue size, and with a whitewash brush apply one or more layers of building paper, brown paper, or even newspapers to the rafters of the ceiling, and let it come down over the sills and around the frames of windows to prevent draughts. The thicker the layer or layers of paper the better. This helps to keep the floors warm and to make the cellar frost proof.

Care of Casks. - Keep an empty cask bunged up tight to keep it sweet.

Tar casks slightly on the inside to assist in preserving salt meat.

To sweeten a sour cask that has held pickles, vinegar, or wine, wash it with lime water, or throw in hot charcoal and ashes. Add water and let the cask soak.

To remove must or other odors, wash with sulphuric acid and rinse with clear water, or whitewash with quicklime, or char the inside with a hot iron. In all cases rinse thoroughly with scalding water before using. To Prevent Dampness in Cellars.- To avoid damp cellars furnish jets, gutters, and leaders to carry rain water from the roof to a cistern or away from the foundations of the house. Lay tile or other drains under the cellar floor to carry away water from springs or other natural moisture. Lay cellar walls in mortar made of water lime, and cover the cellar bottom and walls with hydraulic cement, water lime, or concrete made by melted asphaltum poured upon a surface of gravel and tamped hard while hot.

Or employ a layer of coal tar and asphaltum laid on a surface of gravel and covered with melted asphaltum applied hot. Finish with a layer of fine sand. Apply by means of a brush a thin layer of waterproof cement to the walls, floor, and sills.

If tile or other drains underly the cellar floor, let the floor slant slightly to an opening in the drain so that water coming in from freshet or otherwise may be carried off, and so that, if desired, the floor and walls may be flushed with water.

To Ventilate Cellars. - The upper part of the house being warmer than the cellar, the warm air of the upper rooms creates, by rising, a suction which draws the cellar air into the rooms above through cracks in the cellar door, or through the doorway whenever the door is open. By this means any impurities or germs of disease in the cellar are communicated freely to all parts of the house. Hence the importance of good ventilation in cellars.

Locate cellar windows, when possible, opposite one another so as to create a draught. Being placed near the ceiling, such windows afford good ventilation. But the best ventilator is a chimney reaching down to the cellar floor or resting on the foundation wall and communicating with the cellar by one or more good-sized openings.

Have the cellar windows open freely by means of rods or otherwise, and keep them open in clear weather whenever possible. - To Remove Dampness. - Place in the cellar a large open box or pan containing fresh lime. This will tend to dry and purify the air. Change the lime as fast as it becomes air-slaked.

Whitewash for Cellars. Slake enough lime for a pailful of whitewash. Mix half a pint of flour with cold water to a smooth paste, thin with scalding water, and boil until it thickens. Pour this boiling hot into the whitewash and stir vigorously.

Or use boiled rice strained through cheese cloth. Add a teacupful of the strained rice to a pailful of slaked lime.

Cover cellar walls twice a year or oftener with whitewash, to which add copperas at the rate of 2 pounds to the gallon. Apply whitewash freely, especially in out-of-the-way corners, removing all shelves, etc., so as to cover the entire surface of the walls.

To Disinfect Cellars. - Close windows and other apertures and stuff the cracks with burlap. Burn a quantity of sulphur in a suitable receptacle on the cellar floor. An ordinary tin pie plate covered with earth or sand may be used. Place on this live coals, on which sprinkle flowers of sulphur or brimstone. Take precautions to escape quickly so as not to breathe the fumes.