Page:Popular Science Monthly Volume 34.djvu/331

Rh the greatest freedom from nuisance, security to health, permanence of satisfactory performance, and ease and cheapness of inspection and repair, are as follows:

1. Have no more fixtures and pipes than are really necessary, and have all the fixtures as close to the soil-pipes as possible. Do not put fixed wash-basins in any sleeping-room, nor any fixture in such a position that its outlet-pipe must run horizontally, or nearly so, beneath the floor for a distance of more than ten feet before it discharges into the soil-pipe.

2. Avoid, as far as possible, the placing of fixtures in the basement or cellar of the house. In a house properly constructed from a sanitary point of view, the basement or cellar should be entirely given up to heating and ventilating arrangements and to storage, and should not contain either kitchen, laundry, sinks, or closets. All the pipes for drainage, water, gas, etc., should be plainly visible and readily accessible on the ceilings or walls of this lower story, and this can not be effected if kitchen-sinks or laundry-tubs are placed on the lowest floor. This advice can not be followed in many cases because of the expense; but it should be the rule for all houses costing twenty-five thousand dollars and upward.

3. Soil-pipes should be of cast-iron, of the kind known as extra heavy, and, for an ordinary dwelling-house, should be four inches in diameter, weighing about thirteen pounds per foot run. If the soil-pipe must be carried beneath the floor of the cellar or basement, it should be either bedded in cement or put in a brick trench with a removable cover. Every joint in a soil-pipe should be so made that it will not leak when the pipe is filled with water to a height of ten feet above the joint.

4. Provision must be made for the constant passage of a current of air through the soil-pipe from the bottom to the top, and it should have no dead ends. For this purpose it is necessary that the soil-pipe should pass up through the roof and be freely open at the top. It must not be diminished in size above the highest fixture; on the contrary, it is better that it should be slightly enlarged, so that a four-inch pipe may properly be connected with a five-inch pipe above the upper fixture. That part of the soil-pipe above the upper fixture should be of as good material and have the joints as carefully made as that below.

5. In order that a current of air shall pass through the soil-pipe, it must have an opening connected with the air below as well as above. Should this air which is to pass up through the soil-pipe be taken from the sewer, or from the air of the street? In other words, should there be a trap in the soil-pipe between the house and the sewer, with a fresh-air inlet between the trap and the house, or should the trap be omitted and the sewer be