Ground, in the country, being the cheapest item which the farmer can
devote to building purposes, his object should be to _spread over_,
rather than to go deeply into it, or climb high in the air above it.
We repudiate cellar kitchens, or under-ground rooms for house work,
altogether, as being little better than a nuisance--dark, damp,
unhealthy, inconvenient, and expensive. The several rooms of a farm
dwelling house should be compact in arrangement, and contiguous as may
be to the principally-occupied apartments. Such arrangement is cheaper,
more convenient, and labor-saving; and in addition, more in accordance
with a good and correct taste in the outward appearance of the house
itself.
The general introduction of cooking stoves, and other stoves and
apparatus for warming houses, within the last twenty years, which we
acknowledge to be a great acquisition in comfort as well as in
convenience and economy, has been carried to an extreme, not only in
shutting up and shutting out the time-honored open fireplace and its
broad hearthstone, with their hallowed associations, but also in
prejudice to the health of those who so indiscriminately use them,
regardless of other arrangements which ought to go with them. A farm
house should never be built without an ample, open fireplace in its
kitchen, and other _principally_ occupied rooms; and in all rooms where
stoves are placed, and fires are daily required, the _open_ Franklin
should take place of the close or air-tight stove, unless extraordinary
ventilation to such rooms be adopted also. The great charm of the
farmer's winter evening is the open fireside, with its cheerful blaze
and glowing embers; not wastefully expended, but giving out that genial
warmth and comfort which, to those who are accustomed to its enjoyment,
is a pleasure not made up by any invention whatever; and although the
cooking stove or range be required--which, in addition to the fireplace,
we would always recommend, to lighten female labor--it can be so
arranged as not to interfere with the enjoyment or convenience of the
open fire.
In the construction of the chimneys which appear in the plans submitted,
the great majority of them--particularly those for northern
latitudes--are placed in the interior of the house. They are less liable
to communicate fire to the building, and assist greatly in warming the
rooms through which they pass. In southern houses they are not so
necessary, fires being required for a much less period of the year. Yet
even there they may be oftentimes properly so placed. Where holes, for
the passage of stovepipes through floors, partitions, or into chimneys,
are made, stone, earthen, or iron thimbles should be inserted; and,
except in the chimneys, such holes should be at least one to two inches
larger than the pipe itself. The main flues of the chimney conducting
off the smoke of the different fires, should be built separate, and kept
apart by a partition of one brick in thickness, and carried out
independently, as in no other way will they rid the house of smoky
rooms.
[Illustration]
An illustration in point: Fifteen years ago we purchased and removed
into a most substantial and well-built stone house, the chimneys of
which were constructed with open fireplaces, and the flues carried up
separately to the top, where they all met upon the same level surface,
as chimneys in past times usually were built, thus. Every fireplace in
the house (and some of them had stoves in,) smoked intolerably; so much
so, that when the wind was in some quarters the fires had to be put out
in every room but the kitchen, which, as good luck would have it, smoked
less--although it did smoke there--than the others. After balancing the
matter in our own mind some time, whether we should pull down and
rebuild the chimneys altogether, or attempt an alteration; as we had
given but little thought to the subject of chimney draft, and to try an
experiment was the cheapest, we set to work a bricklayer, who, under our
direction, simply built over each discharge of the several flues a
separate top of fifteen inches high, in this wise: The remedy was
perfect. We have had no smoke in the house since, blow the wind as it
may, on any and all occasions. The chimneys _can't_ smoke; and the whole
expense for four chimneys, with their twelve flues, was not twenty
dollars! The remedy was in giving each outlet a _distinct_ current of
air all around, and on every side of it.
[Illustration]