DRAINAGE OF CELLARS.
Wet Cellars Unhealthful.--Importance of Cellars in New England.--A
Glance at the Garret, by way of Contrast.--Necessity of
Drains.--Sketch of an Inundated Cellar.--Tiles best for
Drains.--Best Plan of Cellar Drain; Illustration.--Cementing will
not do.--Drainage of Barn Cellars.--Uses of them.--Actual Drainage
of a very Bad Cellar described.--Drains Outside and Inside;
Illustration.
No person needs to be informed that it is unhealthful, as well as
inconvenient, to have water, at any time of the year, in the cellar. In
New England, the cellar is an essential part of the house. All sorts of
vegetables, roots, and fruit, that can be injured by frost, are stored
in cellars; and milk, and wine, and cider, and a thousand "vessels of
honor," like tubs and buckets, churns and washing-machines, that are
liable to injury from heat or cold, or other vicissitude of climate,
find a safe retreat in the cellar. Excepting the garret, which is, as
Ariosto represents the moon to be, the receptacle of all things useless
on earth, the cellar is the greatest "curiosity shop" of the
establishment.
The poet finds in the moon,
"Whate'er was wasted in our earthly state,
Here safely treasured--each neglected good,
Time squandered, and occasion ill-bestowed;
There sparkling chains he found, and knots of gold,
The specious ties that ill-paired lovers hold;
Each toil, each loss, each chance that men sustain,
Save Folly, which alone pervades them all,
For Folly never quits this earthly ball."
In the garret, are the old spinning wheel, the clock reel, the linen
wheel with its distaff, your grandfather's knapsack and cartridge-box
and Continental coat, your great-aunt's Leghorn bonnet and side-saddle,
or pillion, great files of the village newspapers--the "_Morning Cry_"
and "_Midnight Yell_," besides worn out trunks and boxes without number.
In the cellar, are the substantiate--barrels of beef, and pork, and
apples, "taters" and turnips; in short, the Winter stores of the family.
Many, perhaps most, of the cellars in New England are in some way
drained, usually by a stone culvert, laid a little lower than the bottom
of the cellar, into which the water is conducted, in the Spring, when it
bursts through the walls, or rises at the bottom, by means of little
ditches scooped out in the surface.
In some districts, people seem to have little idea of drains, even for
cellars; and on flat land, endeavor to set their houses high enough to
have their cellars above ground. This, besides being extremely
inconvenient for passage out of, and into the house, often fails to make
a dry cellar, for the water from the roof runs in, and causes a flood.
And such accidents, as they are mildly termed by the improvident
builders, often occur by the failure of drains imperfectly laid.
No child, who ever saw a cellar afloat, during one of these inundations,
will ever outgrow the impression. You stand on the cellar stairs, and
below is a dark waste of waters, of illimitable extent. By the dim
glimmer of the dip-candle, a scene is presented which furnishes a
tolerable picture of "chaos and old night," but defies all description.
Empty dry casks, with cider barrels, wash-tubs, and boxes, ride
triumphantly on the surface, while half filled vinegar and molasses
kegs, like water-logged ships, roll heavily below. Broken boards and
planks, old hoops, and staves, and barrel-heads innumerable, are
buoyant with this change of the elements; while floating turnips and
apples, with, here and there, a brilliant cabbage head, gleam in this
subterranean firmament, like twinkling stars, dimmed by the effulgence
of the moon at her full. Magnificent among the lesser vessels of the
fleet, "like some tall admiral," rides the enormous "mash-tub," while
the astonished rats and mice are splashing about at its base in the dark
waters, like sailors just washed, at midnight, from the deck, by a heavy
sea.
The lookers-on are filled with various emotions. The farmer sees his
thousand bushels of potatoes submerged, and devoted to speedy
decay; the good wife mourns for her diluted pickles, and apple sauce,
and her drowned firkins of butter; while the boys are anxious to embark
on a raft or in the tubs, on an excursion of pleasure and discovery.
To avoid such scenes as the above, every cellar which is not upon a dry
sandbank, should be provided with a drain of some kind, which will be at
all times, secure.
For a main drain from the cellar, four or six-inch tiles are abundantly
sufficient, and where they can be reasonably obtained, much cheaper than
stone. The expense of excavation, of hauling stone, and of laying them,
will make the expense of a stone drain far exceed that of a tile drain,
with tiles at fair prices. The tiles, if well secured at the inlet and
outlet of the drain, will entirely exclude rats and mice, which always
infest stone drains to cellars. Care must be taken, if the water is
conducted on the surface of the cellar into the drain, that nothing but
pure water be admitted. This may be effected by a fine strainer of wire
or plate; or by a cess-pool, which is better, because it will also
prevent any draft of air through the drain.
The very best method of draining a cellar is that adopted by the writer,
on his own premises. It is, in fact, a mere application of the ordinary
principles of field drainage. The cellar was dug in sand, which rests on
clay, a foot or two below the usual water-line in winter, and a drain of
chestnut plank laid from the cellar to low land, some 20 rods off. Tiles
were not then in use in the neighborhood, and were not thought of, when
the house was built.
In the Spring, water came up in the bottom of the cellar, and ran out in
little hollows made for the purpose, on the surface.
Not liking this inconvenient wetness, we next dug trenches a few inches
deep, put boards at the sides to exclude the sand, and packed the
trenches with small stones. This operated better, but the mice found
pleasant accommodations among the stones, and sand got in and choked the
passage. Lastly, tiles came to our relief, and a perfect preventive of
all inconvenient moisture was found, by adopting the following plan:
The drain from the cellar was taken up, and relaid 18 inches below the
cellar-bottom, at the outlet. Then a trench was cut in the
cellar-bottom, two feet from the wall, a foot deep at the farthest
corner from the outlet, and deepening towards it, round the whole
cellar, following the course of the walls. In this trench, two-inch pipe
tiles were laid, and carefully covered with tan-bark, and the trenches
filled with the earth. This tile drain was connected with the outlet
drain 18 inches under ground, and the earth levelled over the whole.
This was done two years ago, and no drop of water has ever been visible
in the cellar since it was completed. The water is caught by the drain
before it rises to the surface, and conducted away.
Vegetables of all kinds are now laid in heaps on the cellar-bottom,
which is just damp enough to pack solid, and preserves vegetables
better, in a dry cellar, than casks, or bins with floors.
A little sketch of this mode of draining cellars, representing the
cellar referred to, will, perhaps, present the matter more clearly.
[Illustration: Fig. 99--DRAINAGE OF CELLAR.]
Many persons have attempted to exclude water from their cellars by
cementing them on the bottom, and part way up on the sides. This might
succeed, if the cellar wall were laid very close, and in cement, and a
heavy coating of cement applied to the bottom. A moment's attention to
the subject will show that it is not likely to succeed, as experience
shows that it seldom, if ever, does.
The water which enters cellars, frequently runs from the surface behind
the cellar wall, where rats always keep open passages, and fills the
ground and these passages; especially when the earth is frozen, to the
surface, thus giving a column of water behind the wall six or eight feet
in height. The pressure of water is always in proportion to its height
or head, without reference to the extent of surface. The pressure, then,
of the water against the cemented wall, would be equal to the pressure
of a full mill-pond against its perpendicular dam of six or eight feet
height! No sane man would think of tightening a dam, with seven feet
head of water, by plastering a little cement on the down-stream side of
it, which might as well be done, as to exclude water from a cellar by
the process, and under the conditions, stated.
DRAINAGE OF BARN CELLARS.
Most barns in New England are constructed with good substantial cellars,
from six to nine feet deep, with solid walls of stone. They serve a
three-fold purpose; of keeping manure, thrown down from the cattle and
horse stalls above; of preserving turnips, mangolds, and other
vegetables for the stock; and of storing carts, wagons, and other farm
implements. Usually, the cellar is divided by stone, brick, or wood
partitions, into apartments, devoted to each of the purposes named. The
cellar for manure should not be wet enough to have water flow away from
it, nor dry enough to have it leach. For the other purposes, a dry
cellar is desirable.
Perhaps the details of the drainage of a barn cellar on our own
premises, may give our views of the best mode of drainage, both for a
manure cellar, and for a root and implement cellar. The barn was built
in 1849, on a site sloping slightly to the south. In excavating for the
wall, at about seven feet below the height fixed for the sills, we came
upon a soft, blue clay, so nearly fluid that a ten-foot pole was easily
thrust down out of sight, perpendicularly, into it! Here was a dilemma!
How could a heavy wall and building stand on that foundation? A skillful
engineer was consulted, who had seen heavy brick blocks built in just
such places, and who pronounced this a very simple case to manage. "If,"
said he, "the mud cannot get up, the wall resting on it cannot settle
down." Upon this idea, by his advice, we laid our wall, on thick plank,
on the clay, so as to get an even bearing, and drove down, against the
face of the wall, edge to edge, two-inch plank to the depth of about
three feet, leaving them a foot above the bottom of the wall. Against
this, we rammed coarse gravel very hard, and left the bottom of the
cellar one foot above the bottom of the wall, so that the weight might
counterbalance the pressure of the wall and building. The building has
been in constant use, and appears not to have settled a single inch.
The cellar was first used only for manure, and for keeping swine. It was
quite wet, and grew more and more so every year, as the water found
passages into it, till it was found that its use must be abandoned, or
an amphibious race of pigs procured. It was known, that the most of the
water entered at the north corner of the building, borne up by the clay
which comes to within three feet of the natural surface; and, as it
would be ruinous to the manure to leach it, by drawing a large quantity
of water through it into drains, in the usual mode of draining, it was
concluded to cut off the water on the outside of the building, and
before it reached the cellar. Accordingly, a drain was started at the
river, some twenty rods below, and carried up to the barn, and then
eight feet deep around two sides of it, by the north corner, where most
water came in.
We cut through the sand, and four or five feet into the clay, and laid
one course only of two-inch pipe-tiles at the bottom. As this was
designed for a catch-water, and not merely to take in water at the
bottom, in the usual way, we filled the trench, after covering the tiles
with tan, with coarse sand above the level of the clay, and put clay
upon the top. We believe no water has ever crossed this drain, which
operates as perfectly as an open ditch, to catch all that flows upon it.
The manure cellar was then dry enough, but the other cellar was wanted
for roots and implements, and the water was constantly working up
through the soft clay bottom, keeping it of the consistency of mortar,
and making it difficult to haul out the manure, and everyway
disagreeable.
One more effort was made to dry this part. A drain was opened from the
highway, which passes the barn, to the south corner; and about two and a
half feet below the bottom of the cellar, along inside the wall, at
about three feet distance from it, on two of the sides; and another in
the same way, across the middle of the cellar. These, laid with two-inch
tiles, and filled with gravel, were connected together, and led off to
the wayside. The waste water of two watering places, one in the cellar,
and another outside, supplied by an aqueduct, was conducted into the
tiles, and thus quietly disposed of. The reason why the drains are
filled with gravel is, that as the soft clay, in which the tiles were
laid, could never have the heat of the direct rays of the sun on its
surface, there might be no cracking of it, sufficient to afford passage
for the water, and so this was made a catch-water to stop any water that
might attempt to cross it.
The work was finished last Autumn, and we have had but the experience of
a single season with it; but we are satisfied that the object is
attained. The surface of the implement cellar, which before, had been
always soft and muddy, has ever since been as dry and solid as a highway
in Summer; and the root cellar, which has a cemented bottom, is as dry
as the barn floor. The manure can now be teamed out, without leaving a
rut, and we are free to confess, that the effect is greater than we had
deemed possible.
The following cut will show at a glance, how all the drains are laid,
the dotted lines representing the tile drains:
[Illustration: Fig. 100.]
The drain outside the barn, on the right, leads from a spring, some two
hundred feet off, into the cellar and into the yard, and supplies water
to the cattle, at the points indicated. The waste water is then
conducted into the drains, and passes off.