Cottages; or, Hints on Economical Building

by Unknown

A serious and all-important matter is the question of removal and disposal of the household wastes. We will assume, as is the case in ninety-nine out of every hundred isolated country dwellings, that there are no sewers in the streets, and that a discharge into a large creek or stream, or into the sea, is not feasible.

The common practice is to build a leaching cesspool, if the soil is at all porous. All the liquid wastes from the household are carried by a drain to this cesspool, and allowed to soak away into the soil, while the cesspool, and the spaces between its wall-stones, are gradually filling up with the more solid matter, the grease, etc., which undergo a slow process of decomposition, creating a noxious and disagreeable accumulation of gases. The cesspool is usually unventilated, and the only exit for gases is through the drain pipe, up the house pipes, and through defective joints and equally defective traps into the house.

Occasionally two cesspools are used, one for the kitchen sink waste, the other for soil and bath-room waste water. The conditions of these cesspools after some use will not differ materially from each other, and such an arrangement is, if anything, more of a nuisance than the one first-mentioned.

The smaller the house lot, the greater is the danger from a cesspool. No leaching cesspool should ever be placed nearer to a dwelling than one hundred feet. To locate such a cesspool close to the well, or even a cistern, is a practice which should be forbidden by law.

A cesspool or sewage tank, if required, should be built thoroughly tight, tighter even, if this were possible, than a cistern. It should be of moderate dimensions, preferably circular in shape, built with hard-burnt brick, laid in hydraulic cement, and the tank must be well rendered inside and outside with pure Portland cement. The tank should be arched over and covered with an iron cover. It must be emptied, cleaned and disinfected at frequent intervals, and it should be at all times well ventilated, by a pipe, carried up to a good height above ground. If possible, the cesspool should not be located in a direction from the house of the prevailing winds.

The liquid contents of a sewage-tank may with advantage be used to sprinkle and irrigate a lawn, or a kitchen garden, or shrubbery, or a vine trellis, while the solids, removed at frequent intervals, may be dug as fertilizers into the ground. If this arrangement is adopted I usually advise having two chambers in the cesspool; the smaller one for retaining the solids, the larger one to receive the liquid wastes. The overflow delivering the latter from the retaining or settling chamber for solids, into the liquid-tank, must dip well below the water-line, so as to avoid carrying scum with the water. The liquid manure may be pumped by a small pump, set over the top of the liquid cesspool chamber.

The question is to some extent simplified if the cottage contains no water-closets. The liquid manure will be easier removed and taken care of. The usual and much to be condemned substitute for a water-closet is a privy, located close to or at a distance from the house. It rivals with the leaching cesspool in nastiness and danger to health. It pollutes the soil, taints the water in the well and contaminates the air of the neighborhood. A privy must always receive unqualified condemnation. There are cheap and cleanly substitutes for it, such as the various apparatus known as earth or ash closets. While I should hesitate to recommend placing an earth-closet inside a cottage, except for the use of invalids, it is very easy to arrange it so as to be quite near the rear part of the house, accessible from it by a not too conspicuous, well covered, shady, dry and sheltered walk.

The shed, in which the earth-closet is placed, should be well-built, strong and tight, and preferably plastered, so as not to be too cold in winter storms, but also sufficiently ventilated. A simple earth-closet is illustrated in the writer’s book, “Hints on the Drainage and Sewerage of Dwellings.” More expensive closets, with mechanical apparatus for throwing a fixed quantity of earth after use, are sold and generally give satisfaction if used intelligently, although plain earth-closets answer well in the case of inexpensive cottages.

With cottages, provided with earth-closets, the earth-manure can be advantageously used in the kitchen garden, or else it may be disposed of to neighboring farmers. The disposal of slop water (kitchen and chamber slops) may be effected where there are grounds about the house, sloping somewhat away from it, by sub-surface irrigation, consisting in placing a series of common 2-inch drain tiles in parallel lines, about 10 inches below the surface of the ground, and distributing the sewage water intermittently through such a network of pipes into the ground, where it is acted upon by the vegetation and purified by the earth, acting as a filter. The details of this system, which answers better than any other known method of disposal for isolated country dwellings, are given in the author’s book, quoted before. This system is also practical when water-closets are used inside the house, but in this case, the solids should be intercepted in a small receiving reservoir, which must be frequently cleaned, otherwise the distributing tiles will speedily choke, and create a nuisance by ceasing to work.