44: BUILDING SITES, ETC. 



all the needful connections can be made to better advantage when 

 planned and executed at one time, than when pipes must be 

 found and tapped for subsequent connections. When the work 

 is done, the exact locality of the main drain, and all its connec- 

 tions, should be marked with blue ink on a general plan of the 

 house and grounds. 



Rats, mice, and moles frequently make their nests in tile-drains 

 when there is no water in them, and may stop them completely. 

 If the mouths of drains are always immersed in water, or if there 

 is a constant flow of water through them, there will be little danger 

 from this cause. But the best precaution is to fill one-third or one- 

 half the depth of the ditch above the tile with coarse gravel around 

 the tile, and broken stone, brick, or coal-clinkers above, putting 

 a layer of sod over all. The deeper drains are located, the less 

 danger there is of their becoming nests for these animals ; and the 

 greater the fall, and the amount of running water, the more certain 

 will they be to keep clean and serviceable. 



Where tile is used in a soil that has veins of quicksand open- 

 ing in the sides of the ditch, it should be laid on a board bed, and 

 surrounded and covered with straight straw, and then with coarse 

 sand (which is not quicksand) or gravel on top of the straw ; 

 otherwise the quicksand will get into, and clog the drain. 



There is considerable choice in tiles. One should be willing 

 to pay a little extra for those which are unusually straight and 

 smooth, as well as hard. In good clay-beds the round tile, which 

 are a trifle the cheapest, answer very well, but the " sole-tile " 

 those which have a flat bottom and a round or egg-shaped tube 

 are better for most kind of works, the latter being the most 

 perfect form of all. For house-drains of considerable importance, 

 glazed pipes, which fit into each other with collars around the 

 joints, are preferable. These, however, are not used so much for 

 land drainage as for conduits of waste water from the house. Where 

 it can be done so as not to create any offensive odor, all the 

 water wastage from the house which contains fertilizing ingredients 

 should be conducted to some reservoir, where, by mixing it with 

 dry earth, or diluting it with pure water, it may be returned to 

 the land. 



