Henry F. French

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,

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.

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:

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.