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23
Ventilation of Sewers, Cesspools and Drains.
1864.—The offensive smell from ventilating shafts in
the roads, and from gullies when the water has escaped from
the traps in dry weather, has been frequently a subject of
complaint. This offensive smell would not be so much occasioned
by fresh sewage, but in this district, like many other
progressive districts, new sewers frequently receive the contents
of old drains connected with cesspools or masses of
putrefactive decomposition, and thence the effluvium is worse
than it otherwise would be.
But the ventilation of sewers is of the utmost importance
to health.
It has been proved that in the interior of houses where
fires are kept, a continued diminution of the pressure of the
atmosphere takes place, and there is a continual pouring into
the house of sewer gas; the means of entry being through
water-closets, waste pipes to cisterns, sinks, and drains in the
house.
The closing of ventilating shafts in sewers would, therefore,
assist in forcing into houses a deadly supply of sewer
gas, and would render the sewer unsafe for any workman to
enter it for the purposes of cleansing or repair.
The means of remedying the offensive smell from these
sewer openings or ventilating shafts, would be either by dry
charcoal gratings, or by chimneys erected against some building
and communicating with the sewer, and so high that the
gases would be thrown out of reach, and oxidized by the
atmosphere.
But as impure air, like impure water, though sometimes
slow, (unless concentrated) is always certain in producing its
pernicious effects, in my opinion no system on drainage can
be perfect which admits the possibility of the entry of sewer
gas into the house, and no house can be wholesome in which
the entry of fresh air and the exit ot foul air is not provided
for.
Sewer gas may enter dwelling houses in several ways,