Lectures on Ventilation / Being a Course Delivered in the Franklin Institute of Philadelphia

by Lewis W. Leeds

There is a valuable hint. Have you not noticed frequently gas in the room from the fire-place or stove, and especially at night? And do you see how easily it would be to account for it if the house were shut up tight at night, with a large fire in the kitchen or furnace in the cellar, and but a small fire in the second story? Don't you see how the whole products of combustion, all the poisonous gases, may be drawn out into the room? You often notice accounts of whole families being smothered to death in one night, but many seem to think if they are not smothered to death the first night, that it is not so very dangerous after all, and not knowing how to remedy it easily go on from day to day and sometimes escape the whole winter with a little of their lives left.

Now, let us put out the fire in the first story and make one in the second.

You must remember that this is not a fashionable double ceiled and plastered air-tight house. It is much more open, in proportion to its size, than any ordinary house. And now, as this lower flue has been so highly heated, it may take some time for the fire in the second story fire-place to become heated sufficiently in excess to cause the air to draw down the longest flue to the bottom of the house and up the stairs to the second story fire-place, but it will soon do it.

I wish you to notice one thing here particularly, and each one apply it to your own particular case. You know the lower part of the house is closed up tight to keep out the robbers, and if great care is not taken to give an abundant supply of fresh air to your chambers otherwise, it will be drawn up through the hall out of your kitchen and cellar, and as the cook has left the range lid off and shut the dampers, you will have a suffocating smell of gas all over the house. But the worst danger of all is the air that may be drawn in from an untrapped sewer or cesspool. This is a very common but great source of ill-health.

Sanitarians have given much attention to this subject lately, and have been astonished at the magnitude of the evil. I have long maintained that a family might go to the highest and most healthy location in the world, and by a little carelessness might accumulate sufficient filth around them, and by closing up the house at night and allowing the foul gases from untrapped sewers and cesspools to enter through the halls to their sleeping rooms, to thus make what would otherwise be a healthy place a very unhealthy one.

As a case in point, I would refer to a very interesting report of Doctors Palmer, Ford, and Earle, giving an account of their investigations of the causes of a severe epidemic that occurred in the summer of 1864 in a young ladies' seminary in Massachusetts. "The Maplewood Institute" is situated in Pittsfield, one of the most beautiful of those charming New England villages, which, to external appearances, are the very emblem of all that is pure and healthy. Yet even in this lovely place, from an ignorant or careless arrangement of the drains and cess-pools, much of the foul gas generated there found its way into the building,[ 2] making sixty-six out of seventy-four young ladies sick, fifty-seven of whom had the typhoid fever and thirteen died. Many similar cases are frequently occurring, some few of which, like this, are carefully investigated, and the causes removed. Many more, however, go unnoticed, and are accepted as special dispensations of Providence, when it is all due to our own negligence.

I want to show you an arrangement that ought to be in every house. We have seen the power of a fire to create a draft, and if you will think a little you will notice that the kitchen fire is the most considerable and most permanent power in ordinary dwellings, and this ought to be made use of to ventilate the kitchen, water-closet and bath-room in every house. But you must not make an opening directly into the kitchen flue; if you do you will interfere with the draft of the kitchen fire, and if you interfere with the kitchen fire you will soon wish yourself at anything but keeping house.

But we can easily get over that trouble. We will use this square glass box again to represent a flue. I don't mean this to represent the size—it ought to be twice that size. In the centre we will put a cold pipe, to show you that a pipe without any heat in it would only cause the foul air to tumble down into the room. Thus you see the smoke descending. We will substitute a pipe with a gas light to heat it. Now you see what a rapid current there is out of this large flue. See what a splendid arrangement this is for ventilating, and it may be extended so as to ventilate the whole house. It is not necessary that the room to be ventilated should be adjoining, but a pipe can be carried between the floors 50 or 100 feet.

I had an opportunity, during the late war, of thoroughly testing this system of ventilation in the government hospitals.

Let me say here that a very common mistake in making ventilating flues is, that they are entirely too small to be of any value. One of these little Philadelphia flues, four by nine inches, made with rough bricks, and nearly or entirely choked up with mortar, as many of them are frequently found, is of no account. They are simply a deception, and a perfect provocation to a sensible man.