_CHAPTER X_
SEWAGE SAFETY
Among the problems which his miniature municipality brings to the
country house owner is the unromantic but necessary one of sewage
disposal. In a suburban area it is merely a matter of connecting the
house to the street main and paying higher taxes. With the country
house, each owner must cope with the question for himself. He cannot
leave it to chance or delude himself that any old system will serve.
Some hot August day when his house is filled with guests, the
makeshift disposal system will suddenly cease to function and an
otherwise tactful guest will ask whether that queer smell is just part
of the regular country air or what.
Of course, nobody thinks of disposing of household waste by piping it
to a brook or letting it flow down a sandy side hill some distance
from the house. Those were the methods of the ignorant and
unscientific past. The means of disposal recommended by sanitary
experts are those in which the wastes undergo a bacterial fermentation
which finally renders the sewage odorless and harmless. It can be
accomplished by a septic tank or a tight cesspool. The latter with its
two chambers is really a variety of the septic tank itself. The first
vault is built of stone or brick laid in mortar and covered with a
coat of waterproof cement. With both supply and overflow pipes below
the normal level of the liquids, beneficial fermentation takes place
in this compartment before the liquids pass over into the second
chamber from which they gradually seep into the ground. Such an
installation calls for more excavation and construction than a septic
tank and, since it accomplishes nothing that cannot be done with the
latter, is only used where there is not enough ground area for the
disposal fields of a septic tank.
The latter is an air-tight cylindrical or oblong container placed
below ground, in which raw sewage purifies itself by the inherent
bacteria. The first stage takes place within the tank and the second
in the porous pipes that constitute the disposal fields. From the
moment household wastes enter the tank, fermentation begins its work
of reducing them from noisome sewage to harmless water. Both intake
and outlet pipes extend below the level of the contents, with a baffle
plate across the center which prevents direct outward flow. The heavy
solids sink to the bottom and anaerobic bacteria, which develop only
where there is no oxygen, breed rapidly and break these up so that
they rise to the top and provide the ever present scum which excludes
all air and stimulates fermentation of the entire content. Meanwhile,
liquid from the tank is flowing into the disposal fields, which are
porous land tile laid in shallow trenches and covered with earth and
sod. Here some air is present and aerobic bacteria (those which thrive
where there is oxygen) develop and complete the process of
transforming the wastes into clear water.
Installing such a system is neither expensive nor complicated. The
tank itself should be large enough to hold the sewage of a household
for twenty-four hours. It can be bought ready to install, or built of
brick or concrete. Ready-made tanks are to be had of steel, concrete,
or vitrified tile. We installed one of steel (which is the cheapest)
some ten years ago and have found it most satisfactory. When it was
delivered, two husky truck-men placed it at the edge of the pit
prepared for it by the waiting plumber. They exhibited some curiosity
and the plumber explained briefly about the bacteria and its action.
"You mean one of these here bugs is into it already?" asked one of
them as he applied an awe-struck eye to the aperture in the top. He
apparently expected to find an insect akin to a full-size cockroach
running around inside, and either decided the light was poor or that
the plumber was a first-class liar, for he went off shaking his head
doubtfully.
The size of tank and length of disposal field is entirely a matter of
size of household. On an average, the daily volume can be reckoned on
the basis of fifty gallons per person and, for every fifty gallons of
tank capacity, there should be thirty feet of disposal field. Thus,
for a family of eight, a tank of five hundred gallons' capacity
connected with a disposal field of three hundred feet will be ample,
allowing for guests as well.
In installing this system, the tank itself can be as near the house as
ten or fifteen feet but the piping connecting it with the soil line of
the plumbing should be water tight. The best way is to use four-inch
cast iron pipe, calking all joints with oakum and lead. At a
convenient point between house and tank, this line of pipe should have
a "clean-out" fitting so that rags, solidified grease, or other
substances that might block it can be removed. Sometimes vitrified
tile with cemented joints is used instead of cast-iron pipe; but it
has the distinct disadvantage that, if the rootlets of trees or large
shrubs, attracted by the water, find so much as a pin hole in the
cement, they will grow through and finally clog the pipe.
From the tank to the disposal field, the first three or four lengths
of pipe should be glazed tile with tight cement joints. From these on,
three or four inch porous land tile laid in shallow trenches is used.
For proper action, the trenches of the field should be not over
eighteen inches deep so that the warmth and evaporation of the sun may
be effective. Also in digging these trenches, there should be a slight
grade away from the outlet of the tank. An inch to every ten feet is
adequate.
The bottom of the trenches is covered with a two-inch layer of
medium-sized crushed stone or clean gravel. On this rest the land
tile, and the joints are covered with roofing paper to prevent bits of
stone or gravel from lodging within the pipe. The latter is covered
two inches deep with more stone or gravel and over all go lengths of
roofing paper cut slightly wider than the trench so that, when in
place, the paper arches and fits tightly to the sides. The purpose of
the stone or gravel is to facilitate water seepage from tile to ground
while the roofing paper cover prevents silt from reducing the seepage.
At the terminus of each trench is a leaching pool, built by digging a
hole about three feet across and five feet deep. It is filled with
crushed stone or small rocks to the level of the trench piping. Over
it, before replacing the dirt, goes another piece of roofing paper.
Into these pools drain what water has not seeped away in flowing from
the tank.
As can be seen from the foregoing description, the fermentation and
bacterial action that takes place in a properly built septic tank
system is automatic and needs no attention, although every second or
third year it is advisable to remove the mud-like sediment from the
tank. Otherwise, the latter's capacity gradually diminishes.
The steps involved in building such a system are so simple that, while
the services of a plumber are advisable, it is possible for an
intelligent handy man to do the work. Be sure, however, that he
realizes that each step is important and necessary. We knew of one
otherwise capable workman who calmly omitted the crushed stone and
gravel in the tile trenches. The system worked well for about four
years. Then, one warm and sticky day in July, it ceased to function. A
plumber demonstrated that the tiles were clogged with silt because the
bed of crushed stone had been forgotten. For a week the house was
sewerless while the careless short cut was remedied. The household had
but two alternatives, take a vacation or go primitive.
However, if a properly installed system fails to work, the cause lies
in what it has to digest. Too much grease or too strong antiseptic
solutions will reduce or prevent proper fermentation. Waste grease
should therefore go into the garbage can. Also, strong doses of
germ-killing solutions poured daily down sink-drains and toilets can
put the hardiest septic tank out of action. The remedy for such
misguided sanitary efforts is simple. Turn on all the faucets in the
house and so flush the tank thoroughly. Then pour down a toilet one or
two pails of warm water in which a dozen cakes of yeast have been
thoroughly dissolved. The bacteria of the yeast will re-establish
fermentation in the tank and all will be well if no further doses of
disinfectants come along to interfere.
When one stops to consider, the septic tank is a remarkably simple and
effective means of being rid of household wastes odorlessly and
without contamination. Of course, such a system should be placed as
far as possible from a water source and the disposal fields should
not be located in a low, damp ground. The drier the soil, the better.
Incidentally, a lawn which turns brown during the dry weather of
summer can frequently be kept green if watered by such a method. The
lines of the disposal pipes can be laid in practically any pattern
desired. Fan-shaped or with parallel laterals is a favorite one. Here
the branches should be so spaced that they are six feet apart. This
will give plenty of surrounding earth to absorb the moisture.
In using this system, there are two things to bear in mind. The action
that goes on within a septic tank will only dissolve paper of tissue
grade. Therefore, old bandages, pieces of absorbent cotton, and the
like should go into the incinerator. Otherwise, they will clog the
system and a thorough cleaning will be imperative. Secondly, the
leaders which care for the water from the eaves cannot be connected to
it, as entirely too much water would flow into the tank during storms.
However, there are several ways of taking care of the water shed by
roofs during heavy or protracted rains. In some localities where the
supply of water is excessively hard or is so meager that it is not
sufficient for all household purposes, pipes from the eaves are
connected with an underground cistern, thus conserving the prized rain
water. Otherwise, the common practice is simply to equip leaders or
down-spouts with "quarter-bend" sections at the lower ends to keep
water away from the foundation. This is a cheap and easy way; but if
the land does not slope away from the house enough so that this water
drains rapidly, pools and mud puddles are the result. Worse still,
water may filter through foundation walls and leave a small lake in
the cellar after every heavy rain. The disadvantages of the latter are
obvious.
The remedy is a dry well for each down-spout. They are simple and
inexpensive, being small pits dug six to ten feet away from foundation
walls and reaching below the frost line. They are filled to a depth of
about two feet with broken stone, fragments of brick, or like material
and connected with the down-spouts by glazed tile pipes. A cover of
roofing paper is added and the earth then replaced. The rain water is
thus absorbed below ground, instead of being left to wear small
gullies into an otherwise well-kept lawn.
Sometimes the contour of land about the house is such that it
resembles a relief map of the Finger Lake country after each heavy
rain or spring freshet. Subsurface drainage is the answer. In other
words, a line of land tile like the fields of the septic tank. Through
it this mislocated water may drain into a dry well, open ditch, or the
gutter along the highway.
Several years ago, highway improvement presented us with such a
problem. The road gang put in a culvert through which flowed the
drainage from a hill on the opposite side of the road. There was no
redress from the Town Fathers. Technically ours was farm land and the
established custom was that highway water could wander as it would and
drain as natural slope dictated. It was be flooded or do something. A
subsurface drain, some fifty feet long and connected with the gutter
of an intersecting road, took care of the lawn. For the rest of the
water to which we were made heir by the same fit of highway
betterment, two local odd-job specialists dug an open trench across a
little-used field. It terminated at an old subsurface drainage line
constructed years ago when some one, who had the gift, brought forth
fine crops of corn, potatoes, and beans there.
There is another drainage problem that concerns mosquitoes, most
exasperating of all summer pests. These insects fly but short
distances. Marshy land and stagnant pools are their breeding places.
If the latter cannot be drained, oil spraying is the alternative and
that is work for a professional. Again an old rubbish heap, replete
with tin cans and other discards that will hold water, offers more
encouragement to mosquitoes than is generally realized. Cart all such
rubbish away or bury it; then you can drink your after-dinner coffee
in peace on terrace or lawn, or enjoy the coolness of evening dew
after a blistering hot day in the city.
DECORATIONS AND FURNISHINGS
[Illustration]
_CHAPTER XI_
DECORATIONS AND FURNISHINGS
The decorations and furnishings of a house depend largely on its style
of architecture and the owner's taste. Further, if in any doubt, it is
better to do too little than too much. Under such circumstances, too,
an interior decorator is helpful; but don't dump your problem in her
lap and take a trip somewhere. When you return, a beautifully
decorated and furnished house, correct in every detail, may greet you.
There may even be a few pieces of the furniture you brought from the
city home scattered about, but it won't be your house because you will
have done nothing except foot the bill.
Homes evolve. They are not pulled, rabbit-like, out of a hat. When you
build a house, the architect makes it yours by getting a word picture
of your ideas and pulling them down to earth in a series of
business-like blueprints. If your ideas regarding decoration are
nebulous, a good interior decorator can help to make them concrete. Do
not depend on her completely, however, because you are anxious that
this country home should be just right and you are afraid of making
mistakes. There is nothing final about them and it is better to make a
few and have a place that seems like your own home, rather than attain
perfection and find your family wandering around the rooms with that
impersonal, slightly bored look worn by the average visitor to a
"perfect home" display in a department store.
The early American was not afraid of color in his home. His fondness
for it is evidenced by 17th and 18th century rooms on display in
various museums throughout the country and in the growing number of
house museums that have been restored to original condition. Looking
at a few of these will help to crystallize your own ideas. You will
notice that their furnishings are by no means limited to the year in
which they were built or even the century. A good example of this is
to be found in a late 17th century house museum, known as Marlpit
Hall, located on Kings Highway, Middletown, New Jersey. Here two
nationalities actually mingle, since the exterior with its details of
roof and gable windows and two-part doors show the Dutch influence,
while the woodwork within is English in feeling. It is not a very
large house but every room has a different color scheme. The restorers
discovered the original colors and reproduced them; now the old
blue-green, light pink, apple green, yellow, tones of red, and the
like form a perfect background for the furnishings which date from
late in the 17th century until well into the 18th.
For instance, in the dining room a gate-leg table of the Puritan years
has settled down comfortably with a set of Windsor chairs that are
probably a hundred years younger. Other rooms are furnished with
William and Mary and Queen Anne pieces so arranged as to appear to be
waiting for the owners of Marlpit Hall, in its heyday, to come back.
Upstairs are bedrooms with four-post beds of varying ages mingled with
other furnishings that are in harmony, though not necessarily of the
same period.
This is a very fair example of an Early American home where two or
more generations were born, lived, and died. In those days the average
citizen did not discard his home furnishings just because they went
out of style. He moved them to less important rooms and bought as he
could afford of new pieces made "in the neatest and latest fashion."
The home owner today can well plan to use what he has, making a few
additions as he and his house become better acquainted. If he has a
number of Oriental rugs and some member of his family has a fixed idea
that those of the hooked variety are the only kind suitable for a
country home, let him buy one or two good hooked rugs, in the
interests of peace, and lay them down with his Orientals. Both will be
found in harmony because both have the same basic idea, skillful
weaving of colors into a distinct but variegated pattern. Besides, the
American colonists, industrious as they were, did not depend solely on
the work of their hands for floor coverings and other accessories.
Oriental rugs or Turkey carpets, as they were then called, were used
here in the late 17th and early 18th centuries. They were popular in
England, also, as is shown by Hogarth's drawings.
In fact, most house furnishings are surprisingly adaptable. As with
people, it is largely a matter of bringing out their pleasing traits
and subduing their unattractive aspects. A quaint piece of bric-a-brac
that was a misfit in the city apartment may look just right on the
corner of the living room mantel in your country home. The old spode
platter that reposed almost forgotten on the top shelf of a closet may
come into its own on the Welsh dresser of your dining room. The same
holds with pictures, mirrors, and clocks.
As for furniture, don't discard a comfortable piece that you like just
because it doesn't seem to fit into the scheme of decoration. A chair
or a sofa that appears to quarrel violently with all other pieces in a
room can often be made to conform by a change in upholstery, or in
cases of extreme ugliness, with a slip cover of heavy chintz, denim,
or rep.
"You see that chair," said one country house owner, a few months after
settling in his new home. "Sallie has thrown out every stick of
furniture we had when we first went to housekeeping except that. She
keeps moving it around from one spot to another but so far has kept
it because I like a comfortable chair to drop down in when I come home
at night. If I find it gone some day I shall know it is time for me to
move on also."
[Illustration: TRUE EIGHTEENTH CENTURY SIMPLICITY. NOW THE AUTHOR'S
DINING ROOM
_Photo by John Runyon_]
The piece was an average example of the overstuffed,
leather-upholstered era. It is still part of the family furnishings
but it has merged quietly and inoffensively with its better born
companions. Plain muslin has taken the place of the leather and over
it has been fitted a heavy slip cover of sage green rep. No one
exclaims over its beauty but everybody sits in it, even the most
ardent admirer of the delicate Hepplewhite side chair standing nearby.
This brings us to the question of whether the additions in furniture
should be antiques, reproductions, or modern pieces. Again, this
depends on the type of house and the taste of those who occupy it. The
person who buys or builds the salt box or similar type of cottage will
naturally want the furnishings in keeping. Consciously or
unconsciously, he will lean towards antiques. Further, those that look
best in the 18th or early 19th century farm cottage are not
necessarily expensive. Simple pine pieces, made by the village
cabinet-maker or, sometimes, by an ingenious farmer in his leisure
hours; Windsor and slat-back chairs; low four-post beds; trestle or
tuckaway tables; even an occasional Victorian piece; all, if on simple
lines, fit into such a house as though made for it.
One of the many advantages of furnishing with antiques is that there
is nothing final about them. If you buy a piece at a proper price and
after due time do not like it or it fails to fit into your decorative
scheme, you can sell for as much as you paid for it and often a little
more. On the other hand, new furniture or reproductions become merely
second-hand pieces as soon as you have bought and put them to use.
Only at distinct financial loss can you change them in six months or a
year for others. That is a good commercial reason for the growing
tendency to furnish with antiques. We believe, however, that the real
reason is the effect of individuality gained by the use of pieces made
by old craftsmen a century or more ago when things were built to last
and mass production and obsolescence were unknown terms.
Several years ago, a family bought a house of the type prevalent in
the region of Cape Cod, Massachusetts, "as a summer shack for three or
four months in the year." The floors with their wide boards were
simply scrubbed, waxed, and left in the natural tone taken on by old
wood in the course of a hundred and fifty years. All trim and paneling
were painted a soft apple green, and walls and ceilings throughout
were calcimined a deep cream color. Curtains of unbleached muslin were
hung at the small, many-paned windows. The furnishings came out of the
attic of their Boston home where the contents of a great-grandfather's
New Hampshire farmhouse had been stored.
These were the average accumulation of family possessions from the
turn of the 19th century down through the Civil War period. There was
a pine tavern table, 17th century in feeling but made nearly two
hundred years later. It had been used in the summer kitchen and bore
the scars of harsh treatment. A skillful cabinet-maker restored it to
a condition suitable for a dining table. At this point, the
antiquarian of the family spoke wistfully of "some nice little
rod-back Windsors that Cousin Julie made off with" when the old
homestead was broken up some twenty years and how they would be "just
right for dining room chairs here."
But all were agreed that the attic contents were to furnish forth the
Cape Cod cottage with no unnecessary additions. Here were eight
cane-seated chairs of the late Empire years. Four had been painted a
dirty brown to simulate black walnut; four represented the white
enamel blight which, in turn, had chipped enough to display the
"grained" painting of the golden oak years beneath. A scraper applied
to a leg revealed the mellow tone of honey-colored maple. Patience and
paint remover did the rest. Brought up in the natural finish, they
blended beautifully with the old pine table and have been much
admired. Yet they were only near-antiques, made by early factory
methods about 1850.
So it went. Old pine bureaus, an under-eaves bed, one or two
four-posters, late but with simple urn-shaped finials and still
covered with the old New England red filler, two or three cherry light
stands, and several slat-back chairs went far towards furnishing the
bedrooms. The living room, in spite of two or three good tables and
ladder-back and Windsor armchairs, appeared to be threatened with a
warring element in the shape of a red plush Victorian sofa and
matching armchair. Both were ugly but comfortable. Chintz slip covers
changed them from blatant monstrosities to background blending items
of hominess.
Skillful grouping, plenty of color, and simplicity produced a highly
pleasing whole that caused more than one guest to exclaim, "These
things look as though they grew in the house." Yet there was not a
piece of museum quality in the lot. Many of them could not even be
classed as antiques. They were simply the kind of things that the
original owner of the house and his descendants would have been apt to
accumulate and use through the years. But it is those plus the
associations, real or imaginary, that make the difference between a
home and a house. The original owner could, of course, have owned
finer pieces such as a butterfly table, a maple or cherry highboy, a
high-post bed with hangings of crewel-work, a small curly maple and
mahogany sideboard, various chests of drawers and light stands made of
cherry and neatly ornamented with inlay. Country cabinet-makers were
as fine artists as those who catered to the urban taste but their
public was satisfied with simple pieces and they wrought accordingly.