460 ANNUAL REPORT OF THE Off. Doc. 



I call perfect insulation, that is, the surface of the walls inside of 

 the barn so constructed that I hey will keep dry; in fact, the question 

 really binges upon that point of keeping our animals dry, because in 

 a moist atmosphere there is always danger, and while you may or 

 may not know the full bearing of this — 1 presume Dr. Armsby knows, 

 and I wish I had the opportunity to ask him some questions along 

 this line — but 1 may say to you that a cow weighing a thousand 

 pounds will throw off from her lungs and her skin, about seven 

 pounds of water every twenty-four hours. Now we want to build 

 so that in the cold weather, that moisture won't condense on the side 

 walls of the stable. Haven't some of you seen it there? Damp, side 

 walls, wherever yon have looked on every side, in the winter? 



I bring to mind a man who, last winter, built a new barn, and he 

 built it tight and close and stopped every crack and corner, yet he 

 noticed this dampness of the walls, and he says, "1 am sorry I put 

 water in my barn;" he thought it came from the water supply, but 

 it didn't, not at all, it came from the cows. If you have thirty 

 cows in your barn, you have two hundred pounds of water every 

 day that has to be lifted out of the building. Now if your side wall 

 is cold, it is bound to condense there, and you want to prevent that, 

 that is what we want, and the great question is, how to do it. There 

 are several ways to do it. There is one way that I believe is the 

 best way for ordinary buildings, viz: To ceil inside and outside of the 

 studs or girths and till the space with straw or dry shavings. They 

 are inexpensive and most valuable insulating materials. Of course 

 if you are building of concrete, you can do it effectively with little 

 trouble. If you have two walls, we will say four inches thick, you 

 leave eight inches of space, and this should be at the top and at 

 the bottom, like this (indicating on blackboard diagram) that is dead 

 air space and will serve to insulate the inside of the room, but it is 

 almost a physical impossibility to build a dead air space with lum- 

 ber unless you build for cold storage, and I don't believe it is neces- 

 sary. Of course if you furrowed out here (indicating) and put on 

 another, say here (indicating), and so on until you had three dead air 

 spaces, it would serve the purpose. The trouble is right here; say 

 that is the outside of the building (indicating) and this is the inside, 

 with a single or double thickness of matched lumber on the outside 

 wall, leaving a little crack right there (indicating) and another little 

 opening down here in the bottom (indicating). In the winter time 

 the cold air will get in here and start itself in motion, then the in- 

 side of the stable wall is cold. 



Do not build the ceiling too high. Bring the ceiling down to at 

 least eight or nine feet. If the stable is large it really needs about 

 nine feet. It is of no use when you get up above seven or eight feet, 

 there is no use in making it higher for the ordinary sized stable. 

 Some of our New York builders are building larger and larger. 1 

 know of one stable built twenty feet high, and they actually had 

 to put in another row of windows in order to float the moisture out 

 of the room. Now you do not need that, so I say bring the ceiling 

 down. 



Now about light. Each cow should have at least four square feet 

 of window space; that is not extravagant. More, rather than less. 

 There is a difficulty in an excessive amount of window* space if that 

 heat very rapidly radiates out. Double windows should always be 



