May, 1909 
" AMERICAN HOMES AND GARDENS 
Practical Suggestions for Domestic Ventilation 
By Thaleon Blake, C. E. 
HE kitchen is the one room which is the 
room, every day in the week, where numer- 
ous odors originate. Cooking must be 
done, and at the rate of three meals daily 
there are twenty-one meals weekly, one 
thousand and ninety-five meals yearly. 
Think of it—1,095 times each year vari- 
ous odorous foods are prepared for consumption! Then 
assume that in each meal there are but three substances to 
be heated which are capable of giving off odors, and you 
have the great number of 3,285 individual odors! These 
figures would in practice mean nothing were it not for the 
fact that outside of the better equipped kitchens there are 
few stove and range hoods to remove these noisome odors. 
Fig. 1 shows the stove hood which any tinsmith can 
make, or which can be purchased from any of the manu- 
tacturers of ranges for a few dollars. The fire draft up the 
chimney assists the hot air and odors to arise and escape from 
the stove. 
In most American homes the family washing is also done 
in the kitchen, usually on Monday, long hallowed as ‘‘wash- 
day.” If stove hoods may justly be called a scarcity—tak- 
ing all the American homes into account—washtub hoods, 
being fewer in number, are a positive rarity. And if the 
larded smells of some kitchens at meal time are offensive, the 
escaping soap smells of “‘boiling suds” are decidedly worse— 
dangerous, in fact, to the lung tissues. 
The heavy-laden air, moisture saturated, of a room in 
which a washing is being done on a cold winter’s day, when 
the natural tendency is to shut the room up, is deadly to 
lungs, to throat, and to head passages, and is a prolific 
cause of many a woman’s “‘bad cold,” sore throat, pleurisy 
or pneumonia. The graveyard swallows many a victim to 
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the steam of wash-day. Neuralgic headaches are about the 
least of the afflictions to be expected from breathing con- 
fined, moist air. Yet hoods over washtubs and boilers will 
remove nearly all of the hot steam. 
Fig. 2 shows the advantage of placing the tubs between 
opposite windows if possible, so that the breeze blowing 
through the room may assist to take out the gases. A screen 
will keep any draft directly off the worker. 
Washed clothes should never be dried in any place where 
the family will have to breathe the moisture they give up. 
The capacity of air to pick up and carry away moisture is 
limited. Air is said to be “‘saturated” when it is fully loaded 
and can carry off no more. When housewives undertake 
to dry wash clothes in an air-tight room, they defeat their 
purpose, as the air quickly takes up as much water from the 
clothes as it can, after which the process of ‘‘drying’’ stops. 
A. centinuous supply of fresh air is absolutely necessary to 
dry clothes rapidly. ‘The more thoroughly the air is made 
to circulate in the clothes-drying room, the speedier is the 
desired result reached. 
The difference in specific gravity of the water-laden air 
within and the dry air without, is usually sufficient to set up 
a movement which is accelerated if there be also a difference 
of temperature. Humidity and temperature, therefore, are 
the primary causes of air moving so constantly. Forced 
drafts are thus obviated. 
Fig. 3 illustrates an arrangement of clothes-lines in a 
room which has windows at opposite ends. Anything so 
extensive is unnecessary, a simple clothes rack alone being 
used, the rack, should by all means be placed between win- 
dows or doors, so that it intercepts the drafts. 
If a house is situated where winds blowing from certain 
quarters of the heavens afford scarcely any draft through 
SCREEN TO KEEP 
ORAUGHT OFF 
WORKER 
DOTTEO LIN® 
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VENTILATOR 
