Cellars | AdventAI

Pacific Seventh-day Adventist Publishing Association · Oakland, California · Nov 6, 1879

Cellars.

CELLARS under houses are generally poorly ventilated, for most of them do not have at any time the direct rays of the sun,—the chief of all healthy hygienic influences. There are very few that are not damp enough to accumulate mold.

In our cities many of our cellars have water-closets in them, which are in daily, or what is vastly worse, in occasional use, and from which sewage gas escapes. The cellar, both in town and country, is the depository both of fruit and vegetables, more or less of which are always in process of decay. Rat-holes frequently connect it with cess-pools, or other sources of miasma. Rubbish is apt to accumulate in it, either interfering with its proper cleansing, or directly increasing the impurity of its air.

Now what would be thought if beneath every house, instead of a cellar, there was an open pit that was constantly exhaling poisonous vapors? And yet, practically, a cellar such as we have described, which must generate impure air, is just this.

Its air comes up into the house through the cellarway, or through the cracks in the floor, or through the airpipe of the furnace, not only when the furnace is supplied with air from the cellar, but quite often through cracks and loose joints in the cold-air box.

We may not be able to remedy the evil in full, but we may reduce it to a minimum by such ventilation as is possible; by the use of disinfectants; by frequent cleansing; by keeping vegetables and rubbish out of the cellar; by abolishing the cellar water-closet; by having the floor thoroughly cemented, the walls well painted and whitewashed, and the beams overhead lathed and plastered.

An effectual method of ventilating a cellar is the following: take a small pipe, place the lower end about four inches above the bottom of the cellar; connect the upper end with the flue or stove pipe in the room above. By this means a draft of air will be kept up from the bottom of the cellar where the coldest, dampest air collects, and the circulation insures a constant supply from without.