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to the drainage, but allows no reflux of gas nor of liquid
from the public sewer into the hotel drain. The hotel
drain, for several feet before discharging into the interceptor,
is an open channel running at the bottom of an
inspection chamber into which the engineer in charge of
the drainage can at all times enter upon lifting an air-tight
door. In the event of any stoppage at the interceptor or
in the drain, the stoppage can at once be removed, and the
drain can be swept out clean, from section to section, as if
it were a chimney. Into this terminal inspection chamber
there passes a continual in-draught of fresh air, from the
atmosphere outside the basement of the hotel, and this
in-draught at the basement end of the drain passes continually
along the drain and up the soil-pipes and out at
the roof ridge. This arrangement ensures a continuous
fresh-air ventilation of the whole system ot drains and
soil-pipes from the basement outfall to the roof-ridge.
These soil-pipes, open to the sky full-bore, also can never
accumulate gases under pressure so as to bubble through
the water-seal in closet traps and enter the chambers to
which these closets belong. These channels for excremental
matters receive nothing except through a trap.
Each water-closet, urinal, and slop-sink discharges into the
leaden soil-pipe through a perfect water-seal, so that it
is not possible to get any reflux of air or of liquid back
from the soil-pipe into the closet, nor into any part of the
chamber to which the closet belongs. This completes the
apparatus for the reception, discharge, and immediate exclusion
from the hotel of all excremental matters. The
basement drains are of heavy cast-iron pipes jointed
together with molten lead and caulked so as to be as tight
as the street water mains.
6. Rain-water, and water occasionally escaping from
warning and overflow-pipes or flushing apparatus, have also
to be conveyed from all parts of the roof into the main
drain. For this water there is a second separate system
of pipes. This system is constructed of four-inch pipes of
thick cast iron, jointed together with molten lead and