REPORT OF MIL WM. A. MuA'KO 441 



SESSIONAL PAPER No. 16 



I should like to draw attention to one feature of the construction of the house 

 which means more for its warmth than perhaps anything else. I refer to the back 

 plastering of all the outside walls. The house is a frame structure and all studding 

 on outside walls have strips nailed to them reaching half the width of the stud. To 

 these strips lath are nailed and the lath covered with plaster. When the inside of the 

 walls is lathed and plastered after this method there are then two dead-air spaces. 



An addition was made to the implement building. The former building was 

 CO feet by 20 feet and was found to be inadequate. An additional twenty feet gives 

 us ample room for tbe present. 



WATER SUPPLY AND SEWAGE DISPOSAL. 



The water supply comes from two sources, namely: Soft water from two forty 

 barrel storage tanks in the basement and hard water from a well sixteen feet distant 

 from the house. In the attic are two tanks, each 3 feet by 5 feet by 2h feet, into one 

 of which is pumped soft water from the basement and into the other, hard water from 

 the well. From the soft water tank, water is piped to the bath tub and wash basin in 

 the bath room, to the sink and heater in the kitchen and from the hard water tank 

 water is piped to the commode and bath tub in the bath room and to the sink in the 

 kitchen. The pumping of the water from the basement is not a difficult task, a man 

 being able to fill the tank in ten minutes, but the pumping of the water from the well 

 requires a man working for thirty minutes. We have recently tried a li h.p. gasoline 

 engine for this and find it works very satisfactorily. 



The well is twenty-three feet deep, is 4^ feet across, and is lined from the bottom 

 to six inches above the level of the ground with a six-inch solid concrete wall. This 

 prevents the possibility of any water entering the well except through the bottom. 



We believe that the well would be much more satisfactory if it were five feet in 

 diameter inside the curb instead of three, because the water enters too slowly, coming 

 as it must only from the bottom. The water is conducted from the well to the house 

 through a 2-inch pipe seven feet below the surface of the ground. 



For sewage disposal, there is a septic tank immediately outside the wall of the 

 outer kitchen with its top level with the top of the ground. The tank is three feet 

 deep, three feet wide and ten feet long, is made of concrete six inches thick, and has 

 three compartments. The wall between the first and second compartments is 33 inches 

 high, the second wall 32 inches and the overflow from the third compartment 31 inches 

 above the bottom of the tank. The tank is covered with lumber and about two inches 

 of earth and about two feet above this a roof. For winter, the intervening space 

 between the cover and the roof is filled with chaff and the whole thing covered 

 1o a depth of about three feet with straw. The tank has been in use for more than 

 a year and has given no trouble from disagreeable odours nor from frost in winter. 

 The outlet from the septic tank connects with the drain from the cellar seven feet 

 below the surface and leads to a cesspool four hundred feet distant. 



In the autumn, the tank was opened to be cleaned of any solid matter that might 

 have accumulated, but none was found. 



A float with a light wood indicator in the third compartment registers the depth 

 and when this compartment is full, a rod connected with a plug in the outlet at the 

 bottom is pulled and the compartment emptied with a rush which prevents any possi- 

 bility of the sewer pipe clogging. 



There are automatic valves for this purpose on the market, but we find the simple 

 cedar plug inexpensive and absolutely proof against disarrangement. As we have 

 occasion to pass the tank several times daily, it is no inconvenience to pull the plug, 

 when the indicator shows the tank to be full. 



