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. 
