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.