Sewage and sewerage of farm homes [1928]

United States Department of Agriculture Farmers' Bulletin No. 1227 SEWAGE and SEWERAGE of FARM HOMES
DISPOSAL OF FARM SEWAGE in a clean manner is always an important problem. The aims of this bulletin are twofold—(1) to emphasize basic principles of sanitation; (2) to give directions for constructing and operating home sewerage works that shall be simple, serviceable, and safe.
Care in operating is absolutely necessary. No installation will run itself. Continued neglect ends in failure of even the best-designed, best-built plants. If the householder is to build and neglect, he might as well save expense and continue the earlier practice.

George M. Warren,
Hydraulic Engineer, Bureau of Public Roads
The main purpose of home sewerage works is to get rid of sewage in such way as (1) to guard against the transmission of disease germs through drinking water, flies, or other means; (2) to avoid creating nuisance. What is the best method and what the best outfit are questions not to be answered offhand from afar. A treatment that is a success in one location may be a failure in another. In every instance decision should be based upon field data and full knowledge of the local needs and conditions. An installation planned from assumed conditions may work harm. The householder may be misled as to the purification and rely on a protection that is not real. He may anticipate little or no odor and find a nuisance has been created.
Human excrements (feces and urine) as found in closets and privy vaults are known as night soil. These wastes may be flushed away with running water, and there may be added the discharges from washbasins, bathtubs, kitchen and slop sinks, laundry trays, washing vats, and floor drains. This refuse liquid product is sewage, and the underground pipe which conveys it is a sewer. Since sewers carry foul matter they should be water-tight, and this feature of their construction distinguishes them from drains removing relatively pure surface or ground water. Sewerage refers to a system of sewers, including the pipes, tanks, disposal works, and appurtenances.