February, 1906 
AMERICAN HOMES AND GARDENS 119 
House Hygiene 
I] .—The Sanitary Plan 
By Ralph Ernest Blake 
HE very important topics which may be dis- 
cussed under the general head of the 
“sanitary plan” are concerned with matters 
both within and without the house. The 
immediate externals of a house are often as 
important as its contents, and no house can 
be Moperly designed and built which avoids them. It is, for 
example, quite possible to conceive of a house planned and 
built with sufficient regard to sanitary requirements, and yet 
surrounded by unpaved yards, served with leaky drains, and 
with the external sanitary apparatus in a condition that 
renders them not only unfit for use, but alarmingly dangerous 
to health. In planning the house, therefore, it is necessary to 
keep the immediate externals, as well as all the externals 
which may in any way affect the dwelling, thoroughly in 
mind, and to plan not a house alone, but an entire estate, from 
the sanitary point of view. 
Within the house certain obvious requirements immediately 
present themselves. There must be ample sunlight and the 
freest possible circulation. ‘The latter includes both the cir- 
culation of air and means of access to the various rooms and 
apartments. ‘his sums up and includes the fundamental 
sanitary law in house planning. 
Sunlight is nature’s most health-giving scavenger. A house 
without sunlight is unhealthy and unsafe for human oc- 
cupancy, and it is necessary not only to have some sunlight, 
but to have as much of it as possible. It is, of course, not 
feasible to admit the direct rays of the sun to every room 
of a house; the typical plan of all houses is square or rect- 
angular, and at least one side of the house is entirely beyond 
the reach of the sun. ‘The other three sides, however, can 
receive more or less direct sunlight, and the problem of the 
plan is thus reduced to arranging the various rooms so that 
the amount of sunlight is adjusted to their uses; and it must 
be sunlight, for mere light itself is not sufficient; the rays of 
the sun have curative and cleansing properties that nothing 
else have. 
It is generally admitted that a southern exposure is the best 
for all houses and should be obtained whenever possible. It 
is immaterial whether the entrance be placed on this side or 
not, so long as the rooms most in use open onto the house. 
In dwellings of average size the entrance front will also be 
the front on which any important room opens; but in large 
country houses the old distinction of a front and back to a 
house has disappeared, and, instead, we have the entrance 
front and the garden front; the service and servants’ quar- 
ters, so long regarded as characteristic of the “back” of a 
house, may be relegated to a side end or placed in a wing 
that abuts directly on the entrance front. In such cases it 
must be well screened and its purpose thoroughly sub- 
ordinated. 
Certain aspects of the interior have sanitary as well as 
architectural significance. Thus the halls should connect with 
every apartment, be broad and spacious in area, and planned 
on the axial principle. They should be lighted and venti- 
lated from without. No room should open out of another 
without hall connection unless it can be permanently regarded 
as one of a suite, and even then the plan is open to criticism. 
In a household of young children the bedrooms should con- 
nect with each other; but this arrangement will be found 
objectionable in a family of adults, each of whom is entitled 
to complete privacy in his own room and which can not be 
obtained with connecting doorways. ‘The general rooms on 
the first or main floor should connect with each other as well 
as with the common hall. 
Various suggestions have been made by sanitary experts 
on the disposition of the chief rooms of the house, especially 
in their relationship to the sunlight. A western or south- 
western outlook is not good for a dining-room, as the hot 
afternoon sun heats it unreasonably in summer; east, north- 
east or north seem to be the direction toward which this 
room opens. The drawing-room, which should be bright 
and sunny, should face the south. ‘The library, which must 
be dry, may face the east. The morning-room may face the 
east or southeast. Every effort should be made to add to 
the coolness of the kitchen, and the north and east seem 
to be the most available directions for this room. ‘These 
suggestions are at best general, but may be helpful in de- 
termining the position of the various rooms. 
The bedrooms should be arranged so as to receive the 
utmost possible amount of sunlight. In building a house, the 
position of the beds, and even of the larger articles of fur- 
niture, should be considered and indicated on the plans. The 
beds should be placed so as not to be in a direct draft between 
door and fireplace; the eyes of the sleeper should not face 
the light on awakening, and the bed should not be placed 
with a side against the wall. An open fireplace or a ventila- 
tion flue is regarded as essential to bedroom ventilation. The 
bathrooms and lavatories on different floors should be placed 
over each other. 
The size of bedrooms has received a great deal of atten- 
tion from sanitary authorities. As one recent writer aptly 
points out, it is not how many rooms one has which is of 
value, but how much room. Lawson Taut maintains that the 
bedroom should have a capacity of 56 cubic meters, and a 
ventilating flue of 1.5 decimeters in diameter. Ten cubic 
meters is the smallest space allowable for sleeping-rooms for 
adults, and a room of 25 cubic meters is much more desirable. 
Dr. Bergey suggests that sleeping-rooms should be at least 
2.75 meters high, but adds that a height in excess of 3 
meters is not desirable. He further states that a room less 
than 2 meters in height is not available for sleeping quarters, 
and that the floor space of such a room should be at least 3 
meters square. [welve cubic meters is given as an allowance 
per person for the living-rooms of a house, but an allowance 
of 30 cubic meters is preferable. 
The size and position of the windows have an important 
influence on the sanitation of the house. The most ample 
sunlight does not mean the most ample windows. Wall space 
is as valuable within the house as any other constructive 
element, and too many and too large windows mean too much 
heat in summer and a thoroughly undesirable amount of cold 
in winter. Objection has been made to a two-window lighting 
of a wall that it produces a shadow across the center of a 
room, a defect that does not arise with an odd number of 
windows. This defect, if it exists, is not very important, and 
it can hardly be avoided in the comparatively small rooms 
of the average house. 
