How to drain a house : practical information for householders

Front matter

How to Drain a House

JQtS.

Y&gJ.

Contents

CHAPTER. PAGE.

Prefatory : Our Enemy the Drains, . .3

I. House-Drains and Health, . . 1

Chapter I. House Drains And Health

FORTY years ago the best houses in American cities were little if at all better in the matter of drainage than are the best houses of Paris, with very rare exceptions, to-day. They had at best only one drain to remove the kitchen waste and another to drain the cellar. All the water used was carried by hand and it was used in limited quantities. The bath was an exceptional luxury ; the water-closet was almost unknown, and the unspeakable horrors of the privy, the closestool and the sick-chair — still dominant in undrained houses, and especially in country houses — were accepted as an inevitable incident of human life. Happily, we are now emerging from this barbaric condition, and are learning to regulate our appliances according to the dictates of health and decency. A dozen years ago in a pamphlet description of the earth-closet, then recently invented, I wrote the following, which is as true of country houses now as it was then :

Out-of-door privies, those temples of defame and graves of decency, that disfigure almost every country home in America, and raise their suggestive heads above the garden-walls of elegant town-houses, are, I believe, doomed to disappear from off the face of the earth. Twenty years ago, every back-yard in New York City was provided with one of these buildings ; now, since the water-closet has come into universal use, probably there are not twenty of them to the square mile. Twenty years hence, it is to be hoped, they will become equally rare in smaller towns and in the country. That they are objectionable on the score of decency and comfort, will be confessed by all. What is not so generally understood is their pernicious effect upon health. The influence of subterranean stores of fecal matter in the propagation of disease has already been referred to, and will be more fully discussed hereafter ; but that which produces, in the aggregate, far worse results — the aggravation of the difficulties of delicate females — has attracted less attention than its importance deserves. It is universally admitted that nothing is more injurious to health than irregularity and the undue retention of the rejectamenta of the intestines. It is not necessary to quote scientific authority to prove to any person of intelligence that in prompt and regular attention to this duty lies the cardinal secret of health. We have all been reminded, in our own persons, that our health and efficiency, as well as our cheerfulness and good humor, depend on perfect regularity in this regard.

There can be little question that the prevailing female complaints are often induced, and always intensified, by disorders of the digestive organs, and the oppression in the lower regions that neglect in this matter causes. Admitting the justness of the view, let us see what chance a woman living in the country has to escape the direst evils that a delicate health " has in store for its victims. The privy stands, perhaps, at the bottom of the garden, fifty yards from the house, approached by a walk bordered by long grass, which is always wet except during the sunny part of the day, overhung by shrubbery and vines, which are often dripping with wet, and sometimes exposed to the public gaze. In winter, snow-drifts block the way, and during rain there is no shelter from any side. The house itself is fearfully cold, if not drifted half-full with snow or flooded with rain. A woman who is comfortably housed during stormy weather will, if it is possible, postpone for days together the dreadful necessity for exposure that such conditions imply. If the walk is exposed to a neighboring work-shop window, the visit will probably be put off until dusk. In either case, no amount of reasoning will convince a woman that it is her duty, for the sake of preventing troubles of which she is yet ignorant, to expose herself to the danger, the discomfort, and the annoyance that regularity under such circumstances implies. I pass over now the barbarous foulness and the stifling odor of the privyvault. It is only as an unavoidable evil that these have been tolerated ; but I can not too strongly urge attention to the point taken above, and insist on the fact that every consideration of humanity, and of the welfare not only of our own families, but of the whole community, demands a speedy reform of this abuse. It will hardly be believed by my more civilized readers that, over more than half of the older settled parts of the United States, even the every-way objectionable system that I have described is comparatively unknown, and that the corn-field and the thicket are the only retreat provided, while the majority of farmers' houses, even at the North, are most inadequately supplied. In view of the foregoing facts, I make no apology for calling the attention of women themselves to this important matter, believing that they will universally concede that, however much of elegance and comfort may surround them in the appointments of their homes, their mode of life is neither decent, civilized, nor safe, unless they are provided with the conveniences that the water-closet and the earth-closet alone make possible.

As a positive source of disease, and as the occasion of a most injurious irregularity, the barbarous appliances of our ancestors, still existing in connection with nine-tenths of the habitations of the United States, were and are doubtless more injurious, even at the arm's length at which they were held, than are the average water-closets of average city houses. In saying this, however, it is not intended to be understood that these average modern appliances are acceptable as any thing but makeshifts — though relatively good, they are absolutely bad.

That their injurious effect on health is practically as bad as theoretically it ought to be, is not obviously true. Many of their victims die in infancy, and so large a number of those who pass this critical period withstand their evil effects, that it has come to be believed by the people at large that the outcry against them is an unreasonable one.

Perhaps all popular outcry is unreasonable, but certainly those who will take the trouble to investigate the condition of the drainage of an average house, supplied with the usual plumbing appliances, will find defects at every turn — not merely slight defects which it would on the whole be better to avoid, but generally very grave defects which it is absolutely necessary to eradicate before we can hope to secure those conditions of perfect health which we have a right to demand of the civilization of which we boast. In periods of epidemic, or when cholera or yellow

HOUSE DRAINS AND HEALTH. g

fever is apprehended, the popular imagination on the subject becomes excited, and the long death-roll which pestilence creates gives an almost dramatic force to the stronger arguments advanced against our imperfect plumbing work.

As a matter of statistics, however, the deaths caused by any epidemic, and the degree to which these are favored by bad drainage, are of very secondary importance. The thousands of deaths from yellow fever in New Orleans, and in Memphis, and in the Mississippi Valley generally, in 1878 and 1879, fairly shook the country with terror. They amounted in all, in both years, to less than twenty thousand.

Their suddenness and their concentration gave them their striking effect.

In the country at large there are annually not fewer than one million deaths, and not fewer than two hundred thousand of

I o HO USE DRAINS A ND HEAL TH.

these are from directly preventible diseases. Not fewer than one hundred thousand of these latter probably owe their origin to diseases occasioned by defective drainage or to the improper retention of fecal matter and other organic wastes.

This enormous preventible death is, from the point of view of the political economist, only an index of something worse. Each preventible death doubtless represents, taking one disease with another, twenty cases of preventible sickness, and each such case of sickness implies at least twenty days of suffering and disability with its serious incidental cost in nursing and medication.

The real benefit, therefore, that is to accrue to the community from the establishment of perfect sanitary regulations, in the house and in the town, aside from the establishment of greater vigor and efficiency, and of increased ability to withstand insalubrious conditions, is to be sought not so much in the prevention of these deaths as in the abolition of the diseases which cause them.

As in the town, so in the individual house, we shall be safe if our attention is given only incidentally to the saving of life, but directly to the preservation of health, i. e., to the removal of all those conditions which affect the purity of the atmosphere in which we live, involving, of course, the purity of the ground on which our houses are built and the absolute prevention of the putrefaction any where within or near the house of its organic offscourings.

Chapter II. Drains Of The Average House

A HOUSE completely equipped for convenient modern life has two systems, comparable to the arterial and venous systems of the living animal.

Its water supply is taken from the street main, or from the private reservoir or tank, and carried through tight pipes to the different points where convenience requires it to be delivered. This supply may easily be secured against contamination, and there is little trouble, if it is pure at its source, in keeping it pure until it is delivered for use. The venous system — that which has for its office the removal of the water after use — the water supply plus the burden of filth which has been added to it — has its main discharge through the outlet drain.

The various points where the pure water is made foul are also conveniently distributed throughout the house. The drains begin usually as small lead pipes ; these lead to larger iron pipes and these to the main channel, sometimes of iron and sometimes of earthenware. The particular office which this venous system has to perform is to remove all of the refuse of the house which is suited for transportation in water. This office it usually performs with such a degree of completeness as to satisfy the average demand of the householder, i. e.y when water is discharged from a vessel it runs into the waste-pipe and is not heard from again. What becomes of it after it passes out of sight, whether or not it and its filth are really removed from the house ; whether or not the removal is so rapid and complete as to prevent deposits and accumulations, are questions about which the average member of the community is heedless.

Lead pipes are usually tight. Iron pipes are connected together funnel-wise, so that whether they are tight or not the water runs away, and if the main drain does not carry to the outlet all that it receives, it leaks it out into the ground, where it is out of sight.

There is more or less unpleasant smell here and there and often a sensation of closeness about the atmosphere of the whole house. These attract little attention, because foul smells and closeness are generally accepted as a necessary incident of the production and disposal of filth.

It is precisely the conditions which lead to these more or less obviously disagreeable conditions which constitute the main feature of the practical sanitary question.

I have now in mind a large, elaborately decorated and richly furnished house in Fifth Avenue, New York, which I was called to inspect after a serious case of illness. The owner believed its drainage works to be all right. They had cost a very large sum originally and they had been repaired at considerable outlay.

Stationary wash-basins were distributed throughout the house. The spaces under them were closely encased in fine cabinet work. There were two bath-rooms on each floor, containing the usual assortment of fixtures. The water-closets — their bowls elaborately decorated, some of them with gilt — were the usual " pan " closets of the period. Every pipe was concealed behind partitions, and all traps and machinery were covered under the floor or behind elaborate carpentry. The kitchen and pantry sinks had waste-pipes two and a half inches in diameter, but were so filled with grease as to have but a thread of water-way left. The drains ramified in various directions under the floor of the cellar. These carried not only the wastes of the house, but the water from the roof. The waste-pipes in the house, in compliance with what was then believed to be the best practice, were vented with small air-pipes leading above the roof. There was no effective circulation of air in any part of the drainage system. There were evidences of positive leakage at many points, and the lines occupied by the supply and waste-pipes continued, in groups, through every floor, so that the whole house, behind the partitions and between the floor beams, constituted an unobstructed air channel from the ceiling to the garret. A stale odor was perceptible in all the passage-ways and closets and staircases, —

DRAINS OF THE AVERAGE HOUSE. I J

wherever the open fire places did not afford free ventilation.

It was demonstrated in the course of the inspection and renewal of the work, that the matters intended to be removed from the house were very largely only removed from sight. For lack of any thing like adequate flushing, the large waste-pipes and soil-pipes were lined with offensive slime ; the kitchen and pantry sink wastes were nearly filled with putrefying food involved in the congealed grease that had attached itself to their walls. The drains under the cellar leaked at many of their joints so as to saturate and render foul the earth under the concrete floor. A direct opening into the sewer, intended to drain the cellar floor, protected only by a bell trap, from which the water had evaporated, was pouring into the air of the house as much foul gas from the drain as could get past the accumulated dust and cobwebs by which it was nearly obstructed.

The chief complaint of the owner, and what he believed to be the source of all his woe, was that the public sewer was a foul one and that his house was pervaded with sewer gas. This may or may not have been the case. Whether it was or not, it was clearly demonstrated that there existed in the house itself, and almost throughout its whole drainage system, from the "container" of every water-closet, coated on the inside nearly half an inch thick with fecal matter, to the point where the main drain passed through the foundation wall — a more than ample source of all the difficulty.

Certain it is that when the work was reconstructed, though the sewer remained as before, the atmosphere of the house became, and still continues, perfectly pure.

The reconstruction of the work was substantially in accordance with the principles set forth in the following pages.

This is certainly not an exaggerated illustration of the condition of the drainage works of even the best houses of only a few years ago. Since then, not only has workmanship been greatly improved, but a number of radical modifications and reformations have been universally adopted. In some cities these reforms are enforced by rigid regulation of the health authorities. Nevertheless, a great majority of the houses in New York city as well as elsewhere are still in a very defective condition, and certain requirements, which the better sanitary practice considers important, are almost entirely absent.

The glaring mistakes of ten years ago are no longer repeated by reputable plumbers. The minor and more modern improvements which are still less generally appreciated will doubtless, before very long, be adopted into general practice, and the whole community will benefit greatly thereby.

It is still to be urged on every man and woman, who realizes the importance of perfection in this vital element of house construction, to anticipate the universal acceptance of the better processes and to insist that in their own cases at least, they shall be adopted forthwith.

The apprehension of cholera may stimulate attention to the subject, and that it may be urged on by each localized outbreak of typhoid fever or other zymotic disease is to be expected ; but much more than this is to be desired and to be advised, i. e., to put the whole house into such perfect sanitary condition as to its waste-pipes, and as to its drains, that it can no longer by any possibility be a source even of the malaise, headache, dullness, neuralgic affection, etc., which rob life of so much of its comfort and usefulness. One may properly recall in this connection Poor Richard's recommendation : Take care of the pence and the pounds will take care of themselves.

Look out well for the health-rate and the death-rate will lose its significance.

Chapter III. The Policy Herein Adopted

THE following chapters are presented as a simple and direct statement of some positive knowledge, and of more confident belief, about the drainage of houses.

They are not addressed to that indifferent public which sees a good deal of nonsense in the theories of all reformers. They are not addressed to plumbers, who, as a rule, are little attracted and less influenced by what is said by any body whose working years have not been given to plumbing work. They are not even addressed to architects and engineers, who, whatever their own convictions, when they have convictions on this subject, so often find it necessary to compromise with

THE POLICY ADOPTED. 23

their mechanics and with their clients, and to be content with such improvements as it seems under the circumstances judicious to insist on. They are addressed to that limited class who are willing to learn, and with whom a promising suggestion becomes a fruitful germ ; to the few who will agree with their teachings, and to the more who will take their propositions into earnest consideration without the intention, and often without the result, of agreeing with them.

Where they can be avoided, alternative suggestions will not be made. If there are two ways of doing a thing, one right and the other only not wrong, the right way alone will be described. There is usually but one best way, and all that is to be considered here is purely and simply the best way of improving the drainage of a human habitation, and of maintaining its good sanitary condition.

Chapter IV. The Healthfulness Of The House

THE house, and the ground under and about it, and the air with which it is filled and surrounded, should be as dry and as clean as the best constant effort can make them. To this end, the most intelligent care and the most earnest attention must be given to all details of construction, and, no less, to the details of maintenance. No house, however perfect its original condition, can remain in perfect condition if subjected to the deteriorating influences of even ordinary carelessness. Many a palace is a pig-pen in its hidden recesses, and where the light of day and the eye of a scrupulous housekeeper are withheld, there will those enemies of the

THE HEALTHFVLNESS OF THE HOUSE. 25

human race, dirt and damp and decay, surely make their stand. The whole range of cubby-holes, dark cellars, uninspected closets, and those spaces about pipes and fixtures which are screened from observation and withdrawn from the reach of care by the pernicious carpentry to which the plumbing art is so closely wedded, are, all of them, places to be suspected and as far as possible to be abolished. Where dark places must be maintained, they should be the chief objects of the householder's care. It is a wise old sanitary saying that " where daylight can not enter the doctor must."

Houses that are perfect, even in the general arrangement and construction of their drainage works, are extremely rare. Those which, having begun perfect, continue so under daily occupation, are still more rare. So true is this that it is sometimes asked if it is, after all, worth while

26 THE HEALTHFULNESS OF THE HOUSE.

to encounter the additional expense and the constant attention that perfection demands ; whether, indeed, the world has not got on so well in spite of grave sanitary defects that it is futile to hope for an improvement corresponding with the cost in money and time.

The most simple and the sufficient answer to this is that the world has not got on well at all, and is not getting on well ; that among large classes of the population one-half of all the children born die before they attain the age of five years ; that those who come to maturity rarely escape the suffering, loss of time, and incidental expense of unnecessary sickness ; that the average age of all mankind at death is not one-half of what it would be were we living under perfect sanitary conditions ; that one of the chief items of cost in carrying on the world, to say nothing of the cost of bury-

THE HEALTHFULNESS OF THE HOUSE. 27

ing those who die, is that of supporting and attending the sick and helpless ; that another great item is the cost of raising children to, or toward, the useful age, and then having them die before they begin to make a return on the investment ; that the great object of a well-regulated life is to secure happiness for one's self and for one's dependents, an aim which is crushed to the earth with every death of wife or child or friend.

There is a sentimental view, no less important, which need not be recited, but which is sufficiently suggested to the minds of all who have had to do with the sanitary regulation of houses by the frequency with which their services are called into requisition only when the offices of the undertaker have been performed. No cost and no care would be too great to prevent the constantly recurring domestic calamities which have had

28 THE HEALTHFULNESS OF THE HOUSE.

their origin, and which have found their development, in material conditions that a little original outlay and a constant and watchful care would have prevented.

The objects to be attained in the drainage of a house and of its site are, first, to remove all causes of excessive dampness ; and, second, to provide a means for the water transportation of organic wastes to a safe point of disposal, in such a way as to prevent decomposition on the premises, and so as to exclude from the house all air which has been in contact with these matters after their discharge into the drainage system.

The means for accomplishing • these ends are of two distinct sorts : one allied to the drainage of agricultural lands, the other to the flushing of gutters.

Chapter V. Foundation And Cellar

THE first in order of execution, and although not first in importance, still of absolute importance, is the work for preventing undue dampness of the interior atmosphere, or of the walls, of the house by an actual inflow of water, by an exhalation of vapor from the water contained in the soil, or by a soaking of the foundation. In the case of city houses occupying the whole width of the lots on which they stand, this drainage is necessarily confined to the cellar and foundations, and, as a rule, the water to be drained away can be delivered only into a public sewer — though there are frequent exceptional cases where, by piercing an impervious stratum of clay or other material, an outlet may be gained into a porous stratum of gravel or sand below.

Wherever the site is on a deep and naturally well-drained bed of sand or gravel, the question of drainage as a means for removing soil-water does not present itself. But here another very serious difficulty is to be encountered, having a different sanitary bearing, but of no less sanitary consequence. This relates to the protection of the house against exhalations from the ground — not of moisture, but of the atmospheric impurities of the ■ subsoil.

In the case of a country house, or of a town house standing in the center of a considerable area, it is often the most efficient means for securing satisfactory drainage to apply a very thorough system of underdraining to the whole area about it and for some distance away, by laying independent lines of tile drains, not necessarily under the house at all, but so as to surround it on all sides from which water flows toward it, and in all cases at a depth several feet below the level of the cellarbottom.

It is seldom, even where a spring is struck in digging the cellar, that such drains, surrounding the site of the house, will not entirely divert the water. In this drainage of large lots, the character of the outlet is of secondary importance. All that is needed is that it shall be low enough for the free discharge of the flow of the drains. If the discharge be into a sewer, the drains should descend toward it with a sufficient fall to prevent foul water from setting back into them in the case of a gorging of the sewer at a point near the house.

In the drainage of a city house occupying the whole width of the lot, the same system is to be adopted, save that the drains, instead of being so placed as to surround the house and cut off water approaching it, must perforce be placed under or near the foundation to receive such water as may have reached its actual site. Here the question of outlet becomes a serious one. If the discharge must be into a sewer, then some special means must be adopted for preventing the return of the air of the sewer to the subsoil under the house.

In the construction of these drains two courses may be pursued with perhaps an equally good result. One is, after having excavated the ditch and cleared its bottom of all loose dirt, to fill in to the depth of a foot with sand or gravel — and even fine sand will answer the purpose. The other is, to use agricultural drain-tiles, preferably of the smallest

FOUNDATION AND CELLAR.

size, say an inch and a quarter in diameter, laid at the bottom of a well-graded trench and continued to the point of outlet.

Where tiles are used, the joints should

"7777-77777777

A

FIG. I.— GRAVEL DRAIN, UNDER CELLAR FLOOR, NEAR FOUNDATION.

be wrapped twice around with strips of muslin drawn tight. This makes a perfect collar, holding the tiles in line, and affording much the best protection that has yet been devised against the ingress of sand or silt, which usually finds its entrance at the lower part of the joint, flowing in with the water as it rises with the general water-level and flows off over the floor of the tile.* Before the muslin will have rotted away the soil will become so compacted as not to follow the water into the tiles.

FIG. 2.— THE DRAIN, WITH MUSLIN JOINT.

Where tile drains are used, it is a mistake to marry them to other materials. Tile alone or gravel alone will make a very good drain — tile and gravel together, not nearly so good when per-

* This use of muslin is patented, but it is hereby dedicated to the public to the extent of its use under or within the foundation-wall of buildings.

manence is considered. Tiles should be laid on the bottom of a perfectly graded ditch, and should be compactly imbedded in the heaviest loam that is found in excavating. When covered to the depth of a foot, this clay should be well trodden down, so that if the tile could be taken out, leaving the earth undisturbed, we should find a complete matrix, or nidus, which had clasped it firmly at every point. The old marvel, How gets the water in ? is too long for discussion here. I beg the reader to take the word of an old drainer that it does get in — and get out — perfectly.

The large pipe drains with wide joints, often with fractures giving access to vermin — no less than the "box drains," " French drains," "blind drains," and various other antique devices for getting rid of soil-water — are costly, cumbersome, and in the long run, inefficient, owing to their liability to obstruction. The amount of water that can ever be collected as a constant stream, except in the case of a very copious spring, even in very wet foundations, is extremely slight. A sand seam in the natural soil one-fourth of an inch thick is generally sufficient to carry it ; and it is such seams, carrying water in a slow but constant ooze, which usually produce our subterranean and surface springs.

A tile an inch and a quarter in diameter will carry more water than can often be collected for a constant flow from the subsoil of half an acre of ground. A body of sand or gravel ten or twelve inches wide and of equal depth can not be so compacted, provided clay and loam be kept out of it, and it will not afford a free outlet for all the water that can reach it under these circumstances from the soil of an ordinary town lot.

As a rule, the tile will be found to be much cheaper than the other material. It is better always that the depth of the drain should not be less than two feet below the level of the foot of the foundation. The more rapid the descent the better, but even two inches in a hundred feet, with perfect grading, will remove a very large flow. Indeed, if the drain has no fall, or even if it be depressed in places, provided it have a good and unobstructed outlet and well-protected joints, its surplus water will be discharged as soon as the general level of the water reaches the overflow point.