Farm drainage: The Principles, Processes, and Effects of Draining Land with Stones, Wood, Plows, and Open Ditches, and Especially with TilesFrench, Henry F. (Henry Flagg)
Science
Farm drainage: The Principles, Processes, and Effects of Draining Land with Stones, Wood, Plows, and Open Ditches, and Especially with Tiles
French, Henry F. (Henry Flagg)
Drainage
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:
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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