Chapter

IV. Sewer Air

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Description
This section is from the book "Plumbing And Household Sanitation", by J. Pickering
Putnam. Also available from Amazon: Plumbing and household sanitation.

Chapter IV. Sewer Air

BEFORE taking up my subject where we left off at our last lecture we will look at a picture
illustrating two systems of plumbing as radically different from each other as any two
things can be (Figs. 32 and 33.) The first, Fig. 32, represents the waste system of a small
apartment house of three flats and gives, in addition, to two separate stacks of soil pipes,
also a set of "back-vent" pipes as generally recommended by many plumbers today.
There is also a separate rain-water stack, a main house trap with its special ventilating
stack, similarly approved. Besides these many advise a special stack for local vent, as
well as a drip pipe from the principal fixtures. Finally in some localities an exterior sewer
vent pipe is called for by the sewer department. All of these except the sewer vent I have
introduced in the same figure in order to present what many would consider an absolutely
perfect outfit. It is copied from a drawing presented as a "model" by one of the leading
plumbers in the country, except that I have added, as a finishing touch, the drip pipe
frequently recommended for extra fine work. An exterior sewer vent to the roof should also
be added where the disconnecting trap is used.

Fig. 30. Complexity with Inseurity.

Fig. 31. Simplicity with Security.

Fig. 32. Complicated plumbing, showing the modern tendency.

In Fig. 33 I have treated precisely the same fixtures in a somewhat simpler manner.

Now I have no doubt many of you have wondered why it was necessary to administer quite
so powerful a dose of bacteria in a modest course on house plumbing. But if I show you
presently that it is precisely the discoveries made upon these very marvelous organisms
within the last two or three years which have justified our declaring the simpler of these
systems to be by far the safer and better of the two, you will not, I am sure, regret the
time we have spent upon them.

Fig. 33. Simpler and hotter plumbing which should he substituted for the complicated
system.

If it has been shown that the air of sewers does not swarm with disease germs, as has
hitherto been supposed, and is freer from all forms of bacteria than the outer air above
them, and that, in well ventilated sewers, this air is en- tirely innocuous, then, clearly, the
disconnecting trap and its vent become useless, and should be omitted, so that the soil
pipe may serve as an additional means of ventilating the sewers.

If, finally, it has been proven that, in connection with such a sewer, a sound and
permanent water seal is a reliable barrier to the passage of odors and micro-organisms of
any kind through the traps of fixtures, and that such a seal can now practically be
obtained by a correct form of the seal alone, then, clearly, back venting becomes a back
number, and the soil pipe can also be used as a rain water conductor, flushing itself.

I am perfectly aware that to sustain this very heretical position to your satisfaction, the
proofs I bring forward must be unanswerable and very clearly presented.* The claim is a
very vital and important one destroying, as it does, with a single sweep, a vast network of
piping, which has been for a long time regarded as a necessity beyond all question.
Therefore I shall make no excuse for treating the matter somewhat methodically and
thoroughly, and shall endeavor to array the proofs in such order is will render them most
easily intelligible. It is for this reason that we have in our first lecture investigated to some
little extent the habits of some of the microscopic world of bacteria.

The next thing we must do is to become scientifically acquainted with sewer air; and in
the next illustration I shall show you pictures of two kinds of sewer air, one the kind you
find in well-constructed and thoroughly ventilated sewers, the other, however, residing
chiefly in the imagination of the public and supposed to contain deadly poisons and all
sorts of disease germs. The last is the kind plumbers seem to have in their minds when
they erect in the houses of their wretchedly abused clients those formidable barricades of
pipes shown in Fig. 2.

*This position was considered more heretical in 1899 - at the time these lectures were
delivered, a time when trap venting: was almost universal, and even defended by a few
engineers of some repute - than today, when cities and towns are rather rapidly
abandoning the back-venting of traps, the use of the main or disconnecting trap and other
old superstitions.

The first drawing, Fig. 34, illustrates a well built stone sewer of a modern city, and is very
similar to one of the large sewers of Paris which I inspected in 1871. This sewer was so
clean and well ventilated that it was not only much freer from germs than the street above
it, but it was even without any offensive odor, so much so indeed that hundreds of people,
both ladies and gentlemen visit them annually, as one of the particularly attractive sights
of the metropolis. Compared with some of the filthy ones in our great cities, this sewer is a
veritable health resort.

Fig. 34. Paris sewer.



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