The lookers-on are filled with various emotions. The farmer sees his thousand bushels of potatoes submerged, and devoted to speedy decay; the good wife mourns for her diluted pickles, and apple sauce, and her drowned firkins of butter; while the boys are anxious to embark on a raft or in the tubs, on an excursion of pleasure and discovery.
To avoid such scenes as the above, every cellar which is not upon a dry sandbank, should be provided with a drain of some kind, which will be at all times, secure.
For a main drain from the cellar, four or six-inch tiles are abundantly sufficient, and where they can be reasonably obtained, much cheaper than stone. The expense of excavation, of hauling stone, and of laying them, will make the expense of a stone drain far exceed that of a tile drain, with tiles at fair prices. The tiles, if well secured at the inlet and outlet of the drain, will entirely exclude rats and mice, which always infest stone drains to cellars. Care must be taken, if the water is conducted on the surface of the cellar into the drain, that nothing but pure water be admitted. This may be effected by a fine strainer of wire or plate; or by a cess-pool, which is better, because it will also prevent any draft of air through the drain.
The very best method of draining a cellar is that adopted by the writer, on his own premises. It is, in fact, a mere application of the ordinary principles of field drainage. The cellar was dug in sand, which rests on clay, a foot or two below the usual water-line in winter, and a drain of chestnut plank laid from the cellar to low land, some 20 rods off. Tiles were not then in use in the neighborhood, and were not thought of, when the house was built.
In the Spring, water came up in the bottom of the cellar, and ran out in little hollows made for the purpose, on the surface.
Not liking this inconvenient wetness, we next dug trenches a few inches deep, put boards at the sides to exclude the sand, and packed the trenches with small stones. This operated better, but the mice found pleasant accommodations among the stones, and sand got in and choked the passage. Lastly, tiles came to our relief, and a perfect preventive of all inconvenient moisture was found, by adopting the following plan:
The drain from the cellar was taken up, and relaid 18 inches below the cellar-bottom, at the outlet. Then a trench was cut in the cellar-bottom, two feet from the wall, a foot deep at the farthest corner from the outlet, and deepening towards it, round the whole cellar, following the course of the walls. In this trench, two-inch pipe tiles were laid, and carefully covered with tan-bark, and the trenches filled with the earth. This tile drain was connected with the outlet drain 18 inches under ground, and the earth levelled over the whole. This was done two years ago, and no drop of water has ever been visible in the cellar since it was completed. The water is caught by the drain before it rises to the surface, and conducted away.
Vegetables of all kinds are now laid in heaps on the cellar-bottom, which is just damp enough to pack solid, and preserves vegetables better, in a dry cellar, than casks, or bins with floors.
A little sketch of this mode of draining cellars, representing the cellar referred to, will, perhaps, present the matter more clearly.