The cellar under a dwelling house has many advocates. It is a convenient, cool place, and nineteen times out of twenty is a damp, dark, musty, foul-smelling place. It cannot well be otherwise and be a cellar. It is a store-room for all sorts of vegetables; odds and ends of most everything are laid away in that dark retreat. It is the favorite resort of spiders, toads and other creeping things; it is the unrelenting enemy (?) of the family physician, the breeding-place of malaria, which unceasingly sends its poisonous vapors into every part of the dwelling above it. It would be suicide for one to make it their sleeping room.
But if you insist upon having a cellar under your house, and will not put it under the corn-crib or carriage-house, see that it is properly constructed. This is more important than most of the other parts of the house, for upon it in a great measure depends the health of your entire family.
The floor of the cellar should be hard and dry, with no woodwork in its construction. To obtain this result, cover the floor about three inches deep with coarse gravel, or broken stone, well pounded to a level surface. Fill this with a thin mortar, composed of one part hydraulic cement and two parts sharp sand, smoothing it off with a trowel or plasterer’s level. When we mention sharp sand, we mean coarse, clean sand.
Build a flue, say 8 × 12 inches (with an opening next to the floor of the cellar fully that size), from the bottom of cellar foundation alongside of and extending to top of kitchen chimney, the heat of which will create a constant, upward current of air from the cellar. On the opposite side of cellar from this ventilating flue make an air inlet near the ceiling for the purpose of supplying fresh air to the cellar. This will keep the cellar dry and the atmosphere healthy. Put a wire netting over the opening to prevent the entrance of rats and mice. If from the nature of the location, or other causes, a cellar is damp, dig a trench all around a little below and outside of the foundation wall; this trench should be covered with flat stones and earth filled in a little above the surface line, so that surface water will flow from, and not settle next to, the foundation walls. When the cellar is completed whitewash the walls and ceiling.
OUR “QUEEN ANNE” VALLEY,
FOR SLATE, TIN OR WOOD SHINGLES.
Patented October 30th, 1883.
This cut fairly illustrates our improvement. The corrugations at the side keep the edges rigid, and prevent the edges from dipping into any space that may be between the roof boards where they are not laid close. Besides this, they dispense with the necessity of chalk lines, and hold the shingle or slate from lying close upon the metal, preventing decay both of wood and metal. A convenience and benefit to every builder.
To be used where the pitch of the roof is equal to that necessary in using the ordinary shingle.