HEATING AND VENTILATION
In the future as in the past, most farm houses, without doubt, will be heated by stoves. However, some farmers will desire either an air, water, or steam heater. Air heaters are dangerous, because if the valves are not properly managed, the pipes may become superheated and may set the building on fire. They carry fine dust into the rooms, and the heat cannot be evenly distributed when the house is exposed to the full force of the wind, as it usually is in the country. The system of heating by means of hot water has many objections when used in the farm house. The water in the pipes is likely to freeze at night in the unused rooms if it is cut off; if it is left on, all the rooms must be heated, which is frequently not desirable. Then, too, heat cannot be secured as quickly in the morning as desired, and in case of too much heat, the rooms cool slowly unless doors or windows are opened. The first cost of placing a steam heating plant is expensive, but once in place it is most satisfactory. Wherever steam power can be used to advantage in the dairy, the steam plant might well be placed in one end of the summer kitchen or in the wood house, where it may be separated from the balance of the room by a partition. There is no more danger of fire from a boiler than from a stove. The one plant which furnishes steam and hot water for various purposes, such as churning, sawing wood, and pumping water, need not be more expensive if it also is made to serve for heating the house.
A simple contrivance now in common use,—when several buildings are heated from a central station,—serves to govern the amount and pressure of steam introduced into the building. The farm steam plant should be situated, when possible, below the level of the radiators on the first floor, that the warm water from the condensed steam may be used again in the boiler instead of cold water. In the long run, this system would heat the house more cheaply than stoves, require less care-taking, and be cleaner and more satisfactory in every way.
Much has been written about ventilation; and too often the systems applicable to ventilating large, overcrowded rooms and public halls have been applied to dwellings. However complex and difficult the ventilation of large buildings may be, the ventilation of a room in a dwelling is simple. If there are two or more windows in a room, ideal ventilation can be secured by raising the lower and lowering the upper sash as much as desired. By this method three streams of air are allowed to enter or leave the room, as there will be openings at the top, bottom and middle of the windows. The impure air is largely found at the top of the room and at the bottom. If, then, the warmer and lighter air is allowed to escape at the top, the colder air will rush in at the bottom, which will result in keeping it moving as water moves when the inflow is at or near the bottom of a vessel and the outflow near the top. Whenever only one window can be secured in the sleeping room, large transoms should be placed over the doors into the hall. While this method does not ventilate as well as the other, it serves to keep the air pure in the chamber. When there are many rooms situated on one hall, the hall should be ventilated by means of windows at its end, or at the top of the house. Many farm houses are over-ventilated in winter, the cold air entering the loose casements until the wash water expands and breaks the pitcher. In such cases storm sashes are a necessity, and are more economical than feather beds or coal in preserving a living temperature.
CHAPTER XI
HOUSE FURNISHING AND DECORATION
House furnishings do not exist for themselves, but as a background for the people who live among them. Just as the trees, rocks, fields and animals have for their setting the green earth and the blue sky, and as pictures have a background, a middle distance and a foreground, so human beings have their setting. If the setting be more striking or more elegant than the people for whom it exists, they are made uncomfortable and overshadowed by it; if meaner and uglier than they, the people are belittled by it. How many houses there are whose furnishings are much more attractive than their inhabitants! A woman of superficial education and trivial character has the distinction of having the most beautiful library in her state; rows on rows of the best books, in beautiful bindings, in a room of the most artistic design, and nobody to read them. The contrast between the woman and her environment is pitiful.
The house and its contents should be an outgrowth of the tastes, habits and occupation of its owners. Farm life in its best aspect is a synonym for breadth, generosity, simplicity, cleanliness, abundance of sunlight, fresh air and good food, the beauty of nature, freedom from stiff formality—these are the things which the city dweller envies the farmer. The equipment of the house should express this breadth, beauty, and freedom of life. It follows from this that many pieces of furniture and some kinds of decoration which are offered in the shops are quite out of place in a country house. Imitation is, therefore, a dangerous principle, for it is likely to lead to the choice and purchase of articles which, however suitable for some other family and pretty in themselves, are wholly inappropriate in the case of the purchaser.
There are three main considerations which should always be taken into account in house-furnishing: health, suitability, and beauty. The order of these is often reversed to the permanent injury of the housewife. The first law of hygiene is that nothing can be suitable which is not wholesome for those who are to use it; the first law of decorative art is that nothing is beautiful which is not wholly suitable. If these principles should be applied to the furnishing of country houses, they would taboo dark, thick window draperies, nearly all bric-a-brac, heavy upholstered furniture, parlor tea-tables filled with delicate (and generally dusty) china, and many other things which have been copied from the unwholesome and perhaps necessary customs of city life.
Taste is a matter of cultivation, as much as efficiency or honesty; the habitual application of its fundamental principles in one’s own household, and the seeing of beautiful things elsewhere, are the chief means of its development. Man obtained his first conception of beauty from the form and color which he saw in the world about him, and we have only to apply the principles which are there apparent, in order to develop good taste. Nature provides an immense and comparatively neutral background; Nature always makes curves, never angles; Nature blends the most sharply contrasting colors together in the butterfly’s wing, in the poppies in a meadow, and in the feathers of the robin’s breast. The greater part of the world is in soft colors, browns and grays, dull greens and dull blues; the brilliant yellows, reds, pinks, purples and blues are always in very small quantities against this very large, neutral background. Since the furnishings of a house are the setting of the people, none of them should be more conspicuous than the people. Whatever brilliant color there is must be in relatively small quantities against a soft background. Nothing either in form or color should “stick out.”
If the general principles just laid down be applied to the details of house furnishing, we shall find that many matters must be changed. Since the housewife must usually do her own work with very little or, at most, inadequate help, everything should be planned to save her strength. If we remember, also, that the first effort of good housekeeping is to keep dirt out of the house, and the second to get it out at once, it will appear that carpets are unsanitary. It has already been shown that good floors are now to be had easily and cheaply. If properly painted or finished with oil and wax, they form the best foundation for tasteful and cleanly housekeeping. Carpets not only keep the dirt in the house, but they involve that annual bugbear, house-cleaning. Even when the floors are old and poor, the space around the edge of a rug may be puttied and painted so as to look very well when the rug is put down. By rugs, I do not mean several little rugs, like oases in the slippery surface, or at the doorways to trip the unwary, but a good, generous-sized rug which just escapes the edges of the heavier furniture around the sides of the room; which is substantial enough not to roll up, and which is yet small enough to be carried in and out by one person. If the woodwork and pictures be wiped with a damp cloth, the windows washed, the floor dusted, and the rug beaten out of doors, now and then, no such terrible upheaval as house-cleaning usually implies, is necessary. Rugs may be had ready-made of ingrain, Japanese cotton, and jute, Brussels, and more expensive materials, but should always be heavy enough to lie flat without fastening and large enough to cover the entire portion of the floor which is to be walked upon. The uncovered space should usually not be wider than one and one-half feet.
All furniture that is not actually built into or fastened to the wall and floors should be easily movable and easily cleaned. This at once precludes the purchase of heavy, upholstered chairs and large sofas. Wicker and rattan furniture, though not so artistic and costly as antique wood, is very light, and with good removable hair cushions, may be made quite as comfortable and far more cleanly than upholstered plush and damask. The cushions may be beaten at the same time as the rugs, and the dust thus taken out of the house. White enameled bedsteads and washstands are rapidly superseding the heavy wooden ones. It is a curious fact that although the persons of a family are of various sizes and ages, chairs are still bought by the half dozen, without reference to the people who are to sit upon them. Even in such minor matters as chairs and tea-cups, some account should be taken of individuality.
If all furniture be selected with these simple principles in mind, i. e., hygienic cleanliness, the minimum of labor for the housewife, and the comfort of those who are to use it, there remains only one other way in which to go astray: it may still be superlatively and positively ugly; or it may be comfortable, sanitary, easily moved, and yet be merely negatively ugly; or it may be made decorative by its graceful form, the color of its covering, or the carving upon it. The first principle of artistic decoration is that it must be wholly subordinated to the use of the object which it adorns. For instance, windows are for two purposes: to light the house and for seeing out. If a window opens on a barnyard or some unpleasant prospect, you may put up a sash curtain of light silk or muslin. Thus you obtain light but no view. But if you wish to see out of the window, sash curtains are absurd. In the ordinary private house, elaborate and heavy window curtains are out of place, both for sanitary and artistic reasons. Whenever cleanliness is a prime object, drapery should be movable and washable. Silk and velvet draperies are only to be tolerated where there is a retinue of maids to keep them clean.
The facility and cheapness of mill-work and lathe-work in wood has vitiated the taste of Americans to a terrible degree. Nearly all ready-made furniture is grooved, machine-carved, and ornamented in a way to violate not only the principles of beauty, but of strength and cleanliness as well. Ornament that does not mean anything is not merely commonplace but ugly. There are four chairs of different patterns, and costing from $1.50 to $15, in the room where I sit; all of them have legs. Now, legs are intended as a support, yet all these are grooved and beaded and hollowed out in spots, so that twice as much material as is necessary has been used to insure support. The ornamentation is not pretty, the hollows are inevitably full of dust, and they mean absolutely nothing to anybody who sees them. On the front crosspiece of one large chair is glued a design of leaves in oak, by way of ornament. If these had been carved out upon a beautiful strip of wood by the hand of a cunning workman, they would at least have meant a man’s thought and skill. As they are, they suggest merely a machine and a glue pot, and thousands of others as hideous as they. Contrast with this gingerbread furniture the plain, substantial colonial chairs and tables and sideboards, made of beautiful wood, almost without ornamentation, with shapely, slender, and strong legs and softly polished by hand. Cheapness and quantity have been secured by machinery at the expense of beauty and strength.
If the principle thus illustrated be true, then it follows that patterns of any sort, whether in carpets, wall paper, china, or drapery, must be very carefully used that they may not be more conspicuous than that which they decorate. The floor and the wall are the basis both of color-scheme and decoration. They are the background of the people who are to live there; they should, therefore, be rather inconspicuous, soft and indefinite in effect, and as becoming as possible to the human figures. If the climate be sunny and the room well lighted, the walls and floor may be dark and rich in effect; if the climate be uncertain and often cloudy, or the room badly lighted, the effect should be light and gay. Color is the chief means of producing this result: the walls and floors of living rooms should be of soft, neutral brown, yellow, red, green, or warm gray tints. Blue, though very lovely when carefully used, is cold in effect, and seldom satisfactory for living rooms, while the blue grays are positively chilling. Yellow in paler or richer shades, depending on the lighting of the room, is uniformly cheerful and satisfying; next to it rank the various terra cotta shades. Neither rug nor wall-covering should have large, striking designs; if having pattern at all, it should rather be of an indefinite, wandering design like the Japanese jute rugs, or of small inconspicuous conventional design, such as may be found in the best Brussels carpet.
If the floors, however, be poor and old they may be covered very inexpensively with thick, strong building paper which comes in beautiful tints and the rug may be laid on top of this; or with denim on top of newspapers, which is only a little more expensive, and which may be had in a variety of beautiful shades; or, best of all, with matting on top of paper. Matting is especially desirable because the dust sifts through below, and does not rise easily when swept. But the money spent to cover up a poor floor would often serve to lay a good new one, and this should be done whenever possible. For kitchen and, in some cases, for a dining room floor as well, nothing is so satisfactory as linoleum. It is impervious, warm, soft to the foot, easily kept in order by an occasional coat of oil, and to be had in agreeable patterns. It may also be used like denim, building paper, and matting, to cover up bad floors, and as a basis for the rug; while more expensive, it is also much more satisfactory than anything except a good hardwood floor. There is often far too great contrast between the furnishings of the living room and the parlor; between the “spare room” and the family bedrooms. The money spent in elegance which is shut up in a room rarely used would serve to add much to the comfort of the whole family. The guest will enjoy the hospitality offered all the more if not treated too ceremoniously.
The furnishing of the living room should always include several easy chairs, a good lounge, a place for books and magazines, and a thoroughly good reading lamp. If it can be afforded, a small room off the sitting room for writing and study is very desirable. It should contain book shelves, a large writing table or desk, and a good lamp. But if the extra room cannot be had, the desk and book shelves may be placed in the parlor. There should certainly be some place where the children may study or any member of the family may read and write uninterrupted. It is as irksome to write without proper appliances as to bathe without proper facilities.
The furniture and decorations of bedrooms can scarcely be too simple; the walls may be lighter and gayer than those of living rooms. Blue and white or pale green and white may be used as color-schemes for very sunny bedrooms, yellow or pink and white for less sunny ones. One or two single, white, enamelled iron bedsteads, a washstand, a bureau or a chest of drawers with glass above, two or three low, light chairs, and a table or desk at which one may write, is an ample furnishing, if there be a good closet or wardrobe. The rug need be only large enough to cover the space in front of the bed, bureau, and stand, if the floor be well matched and painted or oiled. A bedroom should give the impression of spotlessness and comfort; everything should be washable or cleanable; unless used also as a sitting room, it should not have a superfluous article in it. Mats, bric-a-brac, even many pictures, are quite out of place.
Since cost, styles and tastes differ so widely in different localities, no detailed directions can or should be given that will be generally applicable. If the principles illustrated in this chapter be correct, they will serve to guide and to develop the taste of many different kinds of persons.
CHAPTER XII
CLEANLINESS AND SANITATION—WATER SUPPLY AND SEWAGE
Filth and disease have gone hand in hand from the beginning of the world; but only during the last quarter-century have we known the true cause of infection, and why it is so closely associated with dirt. The danger of uncleanliness lies in the existence of certain microscopic organisms belonging to the vegetable kingdom, known popularly as microbes or germs, but more properly as bacteria. Bacteria, like the plants with which we are more familiar, thrive in moisture and moderate heat, but differ from them in many respects. Some of the more striking differences are structure and method of reproduction, many of them possessing the faculty of growing without sunlight. Bacteria are composed of minute masses of vegetable matter which vary from one ten-thousandth to one-thirty thousandth of an inch in length, and they reproduce by simple division. This process of multiplication may occur as often as once in half an hour; thus immense numbers may develop in a very short time. Under conditions unfavorable for growth, some species may form within their interior dense masses which are called spores. These resemble the seeds of higher plants in their function of distributing the species and in preserving life through intervals of time unfavorable for continuous multiplication.
Bacteria may be classified in several ways, but for the discussion of cleanliness and sanitation, the simplest division is into the harmless and the injurious. The harmless forms live mostly on dead organic matter, causing nitrification, fermentation, and putrefaction; they break down the more complex organic compounds into simpler ones, so that they can be used again as food for plants. Familiar examples of this are seen in the decay of meat and vegetables. This class is more numerous, much hardier than the other, and comprises an overwhelmingly large proportion of the bacteria in nature.
Bacteria are found almost constantly in water, in soil, and in air. Consequently they are present in all our food, except that which has been heated to kill them. Certain bacteria are normal inhabitants of the mouth, throat and intestines, while others find suitable conditions for growth on the skin and in the accumulation of substances excreted in the perspiration.
Owing to the short time which has been devoted to the study of bacteria and their functions, closer attention has been paid to the harmful or pathogenic bacteria because of their relation to human health. This one-sided study of bacteriology has blinded us to the beneficent action of many bacteria, and has caused us much unnecessary fear of their presence in food.
The harmful bacteria cause disease either indirectly through poisons which they excrete in food products, or directly by poisons or toxins which they form when living within the body. Although harmless bacteria are everywhere present, the pathogenic or harmful varieties are ordinarily much less numerous. It should be understood, however, that many of the so-called harmless bacteria are the cause of certain decompositions of vegetable and animal matter with the formation of substances which are detrimental to health. This is illustrated by the occasional cases of meat, fish, and oyster poisoning. The pathogenic bacteria, such as those of tuberculosis, typhoid fever, diphtheria, and the like, constitute, as has been already stated, a small number of species. These are disseminated through various channels, such as the milk and the water supply, and by persons directly. When they are introduced into dirty and unwholesome homes, they find in the filth suitable conditions for their multiplication, with the usual consequence of causing more or less disease in the family. The human body possesses more or less power of resistance to bacteria, but if these natural forces cannot overcome their invasion, they in turn will be successful and produce disease.
Once infected with disease-producing bacteria, a house should be renovated from attic to cellar, and subjected to the action of agents possessing the power of destroying the pathogenic organisms. Numerous means are employed to kill bacteria, among them being the use of disinfectants in the form of liquids or gases, and the application of heat. The list of chemical disinfectants is long, but owing to their cost, a relatively small number are available for the disinfection of houses. The use of carbolic acid, copperas, whitewash, and the fumes of burning sulfur are familiar disinfectants used for this purpose. Among the disinfectants which can be applied directly to wounds, to prevent suppuration, are weak solutions of corrosive sublimate and of carbolic acid.
The greater number of bacteria, pathogenic or harmless, which do not form spores, are destroyed by a temperature of 155 degrees Fahrenheit for twenty minutes. Very few resist the boiling point; thus water may be made safe by boiling, and milk by Pasteurizing at 155 degrees for twenty minutes. Cold merely checks the growth of bacteria, but, ordinarily, does not destroy them. Sunlight and fresh air are especially unfavorable to them; therefore the house should be sunny, and beds, bedrooms and living rooms thoroughly aired. If there be no organic matter to serve as nutriment for them, they cannot multiply; therefore the body, the clothing, and the dwelling should be kept as clean as possible. For this reason the first test of good sanitation is the immediate removal of all waste matter from the house, and the first preventive of disease is personal cleanliness.
In [Chapter VI] suggestions have been made concerning the site, location, and drainage of the farm house. The kind, number, and convenience of the sanitary appliances, such as hot water boilers, closets, lavatories, and baths, are chiefly dependent upon the water-supply. If there be an abundance from a town water-main, or from a windmill or house-tank which will give some pressure, the problem of plumbing is comparatively easy; but if there be no such supply, it becomes far more difficult. A good water supply in the house is of the first importance; therefore, for several reasons, plumbing conveniences lessen the work of the housewife by half, they encourage the practice of that virtue which is “next to godliness,” and if properly arranged they do away with many sanitary dangers. Personal cleanliness is irksome enough with every convenience for washing and bathing. When there is no convenience except a wash basin and a quart or two of hot water, habitual cleanliness is practically impossible. In this respect town and city life have an immense advantage over rural life. A woman who had moved from town to country for the sake of her husband’s health, was asked how she liked it: she said, “It is delightful, but I sometimes think I cannot endure it on account of this nasty privy and no bath-room.” Cleanliness of the skin is hygienically far more important than cleanliness of clothing. In athletics and gymnastics, the bath following the exercise is considered an essential part of their hygienic value; how much more necessary, then, is opportunity for frequent bathing, where the family, both in and out of doors, do daily manual labor which causes much perspiration, and which is often very dirty! The recent movement in cities to provide public bath-houses for the poor in tenements should not outstrip the farmer’s effort to obtain equally good facilities.
If there be a sufficient water supply available, there should be in every house a hot water boiler of at least twenty gallons capacity, attached to the kitchen range, to supply hot water for laundry work and bathing; a kitchen sink and a bath-tub, each with hot and cold water faucets and waste pipe to sewer or cesspool; and a water-closet. These are the essentials; but, if possible, a stationary wash stand and two laundry tubs, with hot and cold water pipes, should also be provided. In the farm house it will save expense and many steps for the housewife, and will encourage frequent use, if all these be located on the first floor; the boiler in a cupboard in the wall of the kitchen, which may be shut in summer and opened in winter; the sink in the kitchen, or if preferred, in a pantry between the dining room and kitchen; the bath-room and stationary washstand in a room either opening out of the kitchen or out of the family bedroom, or out of a rear passage; the water-closet should be in some well ventilated space, on an outside wall, where the noise of the fixture will be as little heard as possible. It should have an outside as well as an inside entrance. It is customary to place the closet in the bath-room, but this often interferes with the general use of the washstand and bath-tub by the family, and should be avoided. The nearer all plumbing fixtures are to each other, the less expensive they are to put in; therefore in planning the first floor, this point should receive special consideration.
Certain general principles apply to all plumbing, and may serve to test the various kinds of fixtures offered for sale. All foul and effete matter should be immediately and completely removed from the house; any back current of foul air into the house should be prevented, and any communication between the sewer or the cesspool and the water supply should be made impossible. Fixtures should be as simple in construction as possible and easily accessible. Pipes were formerly enclosed in the walls, but in the finest new buildings in cities, are now placed altogether in sight, and painted the color of the walls, or of the woodwork. The sewer pipe, on reaching the level of the ground, should pass directly out of the house, and should never be carried along under the first floor of the house. In the southern states and on the Pacific coast, pipes may run on the outside of the house, thus fulfilling ideally the principle that waste matter should be removed from the house as soon as possible. A few years ago there was much controversy over the placing of vent pipes in traps and in branches. Gerhard and the older sanitarians advise a complicated and elaborate use of them, but Putnam and the more recent authorities consider thorough ventilation of the soil pipe at top and bottom quite sufficient. The material of fixtures should be good (not extravagant), and the workmanship should be of the very best. The efficiency of any sanitary convenience depends almost as much upon the care with which it is put in as upon its material and style. But of all the principles of sanitary plumbing, probably the most important is frequent and thorough flushing, if possible with hot water. Any fixture will become foul and dangerous if there is not water enough and under sufficient force to scour it out thoroughly.
Having laid down certain principles which apply to plumbing fixtures generally, we may now consider these fixtures more in detail. Pipes should be rather heavy. Waste pipes are generally too large, and therefore do not scour well; they need be only three to four inches in diameter for one or more closets in an ordinary house, and from one to one and a-half inches for washbowls, sinks, and tubs; they should always be of uniform size, i. e., “full-bore” throughout. Soil pipes should never run level, but as nearly as possible at a uniform slope of not less than one foot in fifty.
The kitchen sink may be of white porcelain, enameled iron, painted iron, or granite ware, any of which materials are serviceable and desirable; or of wood, lined with lead, zinc, copper or slate, all of which are more or less undesirable, because after some use, the water and filth is apt to get in between the wood and its covering, or because they are not durable. The sink should have as little woodwork about it as possible, since wood is porous and, therefore, collects filth. It should be set open on brackets, and not over a dark, moist, dirt-collecting, back-breaking closet. Flushing is especially important in the case of the kitchen sink because of the grease. The best plumbing provides a grease-trap outside the house, which may be easily cleaned; but whether outside or immediately beneath the sink, the trap should have a screw-plug, so that it may be frequently cleaned. It follows that the kitchen waste pipe should not be too large, should have a good incline, and if possible no abrupt curves, so that cooling grease in the water may not harden on the sides of the pipe and finally fill it up. The use of a cheap wire screen garbage basket in the sink will prevent the small particles of waste from passing down the pipe.
Bath-tubs of white earthenware or “porcelain” are the most expensive, the most durable and very heavy; of white enameled iron, are less expensive and heavy, durable if carefully used, impervious and cleanly; those of copper, tinned and planished, dent easily and the tinning wears off, but are fairly durable and still less expensive; those of wood-fiber are not very common, but are impervious, light and cleanly.
The stationary washstand bowl and top are usually of marble; the outlet of the bowl should not be smaller than the wastepipe; the trap should be near the bowl, and have a screw plug, so that obstructions may be easily removed.
There is an immense variety of water-closets; those should be especially avoided which have moveable machinery in connection with the bowl, such as the pan, valve, and plunger closets. Some of these are very inexpensive, but they are objectionable, either because they rust and accumulate filth, or because they get out of order easily. The forms of closets without movable machinery in connection with the bowl, that is, in which the machinery is connected with the flushing cistern, such as the hopper, the siphon-jet, and the washout closets, are to be preferred. Any washout or hopper closet bought from a responsible firm is likely to give satisfaction, if thoroughly flushed and kept in order.
Stationary laundry tubs are of less importance than these other plumbing fixtures, since there are several excellent washing machines the use of which does away with the necessity for them. If one must choose between the two, the washing machine will be most useful; but if one wishes to have laundry tubs also, they come in porcelain, soapstone, granite, and wood, the latter being the least desirable.
If the water supply be limited, as when a tank is supplied by pumping from a cistern, the hot water boiler, the bath-tub, and the stationary washstand may be arranged almost as easily as when there is an abundance of water; but it may be necessary to substitute the dry-closet for the water-closet.
When no tank supply is available, and all water must be carried from a cistern or from the well in the yard, the cost of plumbing is very small and the discomfort very great. Warm water must be supplied chiefly from a reservoir at the back of the range, thus making frequent bathing very inconvenient, even if a regular bath-tub be provided. If, however, a cesspool be built in the yard, the kitchen sink, the slop-hopper, the bath-tub, and the laundry tub may have waste pipes to it. Such waste pipes save just half the work, for the water has to be carried only to the fixture, not away from it again. It thus seems worth while to have the fixtures, even though they serve only half their purpose. A slop-hopper with pipe to the cesspool, on the same level and near the kitchen, for waste wash water, etc., from the chambers, saves many steps, and is far more sanitary than throwing slops on the ground outside the house or carrying them to the outhouse.
The chief problem is the outhouse, or privy vault. There is no more disgusting or unsanitary feature of rural life than this ill-smelling, dirty hole in the ground, from which the filth permeates the surrounding soil, and may contaminate the water supply. Much discomfort and some digestive ills arise from the necessity—especially for women—of going a considerable distance in cold weather and at night, to such places. The closet should, therefore, be as near the house as is compatible with decency, and should be reached by a covered walkway. If properly built and regularly disinfected and cleaned, it need be neither disgusting nor unsanitary. The wooden house should never be papered nor carpeted, but should be painted or whitewashed yearly and kept scrupulously clean. The habitual use of ashes or dry earth in the receptacle and an occasional application of some disinfectant, such as copperas or chloride of lime, is necessary. If drawers are used in the privy, they may be hauled out frequently by horse; and with the liberal use of road dust, no offense arises. The writer knows a country house in which dry-earth closets are under the house-roof, and yet there is no unpleasantness. Since the well is so easily contaminated by the seeping through the soil of manure and human waste matter, it is of the utmost importance that the privy vault should be below the source of water supply and as far as possible from it. In the following pages the details of construction of the privy vault are given, the relative location of it, and the water supply.
Plumbing fixtures, like all other mechanical contrivances, to be efficient, require to be kept in perfect order. Frequent, thorough flushing with hot water whenever possible, and disinfection of the closet and the sink, are especially desirable. If all fixtures be set “open” and all pipes in sight, any leakage may be easily detected and remedied. If the pipes be painted with white lead, the defect will be discovered by the discoloration of the paint.