Roger Sherman Tracy

“ How to prevent contamination of the air by the respiration, bodily emanations, and excreta of diseased persons.
It is not possible with our present knowledge to prevent the multiplication of morbid germs in the human body, when they are once implanted there, nor to prevent their discharge; but we can destroy them after their exit from the body, and so protect other persons who are not yet affected. ”

“ Where the soil consists of a natural bed of loam, sand, or rock, the house-sewer may be of hard, salt-glazed, and cylindrical earthenware pipe, laid on a smooth bottom, free from all projections of rock, and with the soil well rammed to prevent any settling of the pipe. Each section must be wetted before applying the cement, and the space between each hub and the small end of the next section must be completely and uniformly filled with the best hydraulic cement. Care must be taken to prevent any cement being forced into the drain to become an obstruction. No tempered-up cement shall be used. ”

“ Tanks for drinking-water are objectionable; if indispensable, they must never be lined with lead, galvanized iron, or zinc. They should be constructed of iron, or wood lined with tinned and planished copper. The overflow should discharge upon the roof, or be trapped and discharge into an open sink, never into any soil or waste pipe or water-closet trap, nor into the drain or sewer.
45. Rain-water leaders must never be used as soil, waste, or vent pipes; nor shall any soil, waste, or vent pipe be used as a leader.
46. When within the house, the leader must be of cast-iron, with leaded joints ”

“ Water-closets sometimes become loosened from the floor and leak fluids and gases. The covers of hand-holes of traps sometimes get loose and leak gas. Sometimes trap-screws, instead of being at the bottom of the trap, where they are covered by water, are at the top; if these are loose, gases may escape. All such defects should be repaired.
(c.) Pipes.—Both lead and iron pipes are corroded and in time perforated by sewer-air. Such corrosion is most likely to occur at points where gases come in contact with a dry part of the pipe, viz., at the crowns or domes of traps, and in ventilating-pipes. ”

“ Air contaminated by the products of respiration and by bodily emanations (perspiration, etc.) contains substances which have been ejected from human bodies as useless or injurious. What all systems reject can not be healthy for any, and it is found that long-continued exposure in an atmosphere laden with these impurities produces anæmia, general debility, and poor nutrition, conditions likely to result in the development of scrofula and consumption. ”

“ Wrought-iron pipes, with screw joints, are used by the Durham House Drainage Company, the joints being gas-tight. They have the advantage of being very durable and impervious to gases, but the disadvantage of being too permanent. If it is desired to change the position of a fixture, or to connect a new one, it is easy to break a hole in a cast-iron pipe, or to remove a portion of it, but where wrought-iron pipe is used this is almost impossible. ”

“ Leaving the dry and technical details of science, which are of chief concern to specialists, to the journals devoted to them, The Popular Science Monthly has dealt with those more general and practical subjects which are of the greatest interest and importance to the people at large. ”

“ The house-drain is the large pipe which receives the contents of the soil and waste pipes and conveys them outside the house.
A trap is a bend (with or without an enlargement) of the pipe, intended to retain a sufficient amount of the fluids that enter it to occlude the pipe and prevent the backward flow of air. The effective [Pg 36] water-seal is represented by the total depth of water in the trap, minus the inside diameter of the pipe, and should be at least one inch. ”

“ Lead can not be soldered to iron, and therefore brass or copper has to be used. If iron ferrules are used, the lead pipe must be turned up on the outside [Pg 46] far enough so that its edge shall be covered by the melted lead used in calking, so as to prevent leakage of gas, as hereafter described. (See “Bad Odors,” 1, b.)
28. Wiped-joints are those always used for lead pipe, and are indicated by a raised ring of solder surrounding the pipe.
29. A trap, with a good water-seal, is an effective barrier against the passage of sewer-air or particles of organic matter. ”

“ The following table shows how much carbonic acid artificial lights produce per hour:
A five-foot gas-burner produces as much carbonic acid per hour as five men.
As the most poisonous element of the breath can not readily be detected by analysis, the amount of carbonic acid is taken as a measure of the impurity of air contaminated by respiration.
Test for carbonic acid in air (Pettenkofer’s method) :
Shake up a definite volume of the air in a closed [Pg 10] vessel with a definite amount of lime-water. The carbonic acid unites with the lime, forming carbonate of lime. ”

“ There must be an inlet for fresh air entering the drain just inside the trap, of at least four inches in diameter, leading to the outer air and opening at or near the street curb, or at a convenient place not less than ten feet from the nearest window. No cold-air box for a furnace shall be so placed that it can by any possibility draw air from this inlet-pipe. ”

“ Fumigation with sulphur is the only practicable method for disinfecting the house. For this purpose, the rooms to be disinfected must be vacated. Heavy clothing, blankets, bedding, and other articles which can not be treated with zinc solution, should be opened and exposed during fumigation, as directed below. Close the rooms as tightly as possible, place the sulphur in iron pans supported upon bricks placed in wash-tubs containing a little water, set it on fire by hot coals or with the aid of a spoonful of alcohol, and allow the room to remain closed for twenty-four hours. ”

“ The drainage system should be so planned and constructed that neither the atmosphere of the house nor the drinking-water can be polluted by anything escaping from it, and no noxious matters can enter it from any other house. ”

“ All joints in the iron drain-pipes, soil-pipes, and waste-pipes must be so calked with oakum and lead, or with cement made of iron filings and sal-ammoniac, as to make them impermeable to gas.
27. All connections of lead with iron pipes must be made with a brass sleeve or ferrule, of the same size as the lead pipe, put in the hub of the branch of the iron pipe, and calked in with lead. The lead pipe must be attached to the ferrule by a wiped joint. ”

“ Safe-wastes and the overflow-pipes of tanks and cisterns may be connected with the soil or waste pipe. When they are, they are usually trapped. It will often be found that the traps are empty and useless, so that offensive gases escape from the pipes. With tank-overflow pipes this is generally the case. Safe-waste traps are sometimes provided with small feed-pipes, intended to discharge water into them every time the fixtures are used. ”

“ For this reason, ventilating-pipes should never be made of thin iron (galvanized iron) , and should always be protected by a tar-coating. The crowns of lead traps (especially of water-closets) are often bitten into by rats in search of water. In all cases when the crown of a trap is perforated, there is rarely any leakage of fluid to indicate it, but offensive gases escape. All corroded traps and pipes [Pg 60] should be replaced by new ones, and not patched up. Holes in iron pipes may be closed by iron bands surrounding the pipe, and fastened with red-lead putty and screw-bolts (Fig. 32) . ”

“ A preparation much used by the New York City Board of Health for the disinfection of clothing contains eight ounces of sulphate of zinc and three ounces of carbolic acid to three gallons of water. Another for privies, water-closets, etc., is composed of ten pounds of copperas, one pint of carbolic acid, and five gallons of water. [Pg 92] The strong acid injures iron pipe. Do not use in combination with the permanganate of potash or the chloride of zinc. “Dead Oil” (heavy oil of coal-tar) contains from 5 to 15 per cent of carbolic acid mingled with impurities. ”

“ Stoves and furnaces can not be relied on for ventilation, the ventilating power of a close stove being only one tenth of that required for a single adult.
Modern fireplaces are sometimes built with a metallic flue extending upward into the chimney. Between this flue and the masonry is an air-chamber opening to the external air and communicating with the room near the ceiling, so that fresh air from outside the house is continuously warmed, and discharged into the room at a temperature of 80° or 90°. ”

“ The lower animals seem to recognize by instinct that their excreta are dangerous, and they deposit them (except when penned up by men) in places remote from their abodes, or else carefully cover them with fresh earth. Man alone retains his excreta in carefully prepared receptacles near his place of residence, until the accumulation is so large that he is forced to remove it.
The ordinary privy-vault should never be allowed. Its only advantage is its cheapness, while it involves constant danger of contamination of the water of adjoining wells or cisterns. ”

“ An exposure to draughts, however, is dangerous to many persons, and it is desirable, therefore, in [Pg 17] cooler weather, to devise means of admitting fresh air without creating a draught. At a temperature of 60°, a draught is perceived when the air moves at a higher rate of speed than three feet a second. Now it is obvious that a draught may be rendered harmless if the entering current of air is guided in such a direction as not to strike the occupants of a room. ”

“ School-sinks must be of cast-iron, not more than two feet in depth, connected at the upper end with the Croton supply, and at the lower end with a drain leading to the street-sewer, and provided with an outlet at the lowest point and on the bottom so as to admit of a complete discharge of the contents whenever the outlet is opened and the sink flushed with water. ”

“ Every water-closet, urinal, sink, basin, wash-tray, bath, and every tub or set of tubs, must be separately and effectively trapped, except where a sink and wash-tubs immediately adjoin each other, in which case the waste-pipe from the tubs may be connected with the inlet side of the sink-trap ”

“ There is thus a constant interchange between animals and vegetables, the former exhaling carbonic acid and appropriating oxygen, and the latter appropriating carbonic acid and exhaling oxygen. The small percentage of carbonic acid always found in the air is, therefore, essential to vegetable life, while harmless to animals. ”

“ If steam enters a soil-pipe, it heats the water in the traps, injures joints on account of the extreme changes of temperature induced, and hastens corrosion of the pipes.
Fig. 25 shows a system of house-drainage for a city house planned in accordance with the above rules.
Fig. 26.—Field’s flush-tank.
In country houses, where there are no sewers, the best method of disposing of the house-slops is subsoil drainage. The house system may be the same as that already explained for city houses. The fluids are conducted by a pipe with tight joints to a flush-tank (Fig. 26) near the house. ”

“ The objections to the fireplace as a sole means of heating are, its wastefulness, and the fact that it warms only by radiation, so that the room is unequally warmed, and may be too cold in one place and insupportably hot in another. ”