^vc-^eSpHoro 'ens.co 
Vol. LXVII. No. 3051 
NEW YORK, JULY ,18. 1908 
WEEKLY, $1.00 PER YEAR 
A STRANGE ELECTRICAL DISPLAY. 
A Household Phenomenon and Its Possible Cause. 
Can you inform me as to the cause and practical remedy 
of tiie following alarming phenomena? During every 
electrical storm the kitchen in a frame two-story addition 
to a stone house is visited by electrical displays of flame 
and reports like pistol shots. This room has no cellar 
beneath it. These phenomena have been going on for over 
15 years, and have increased in violence since the pipes 
have been connected with a gas range. These reports al¬ 
ways proceed from that corner of the room near the 
chimney and directly in a line with a vent pipe on the 
third story roof that comes from the bathroom toilet, 
which drains into a sink-well outside of the house. We 
had a piece of rubber hose one foot long and four inches 
wide placed within the vent pipe to break the connection, 
but with no apparent effect. The house is surrounded with 
four tall trees, birch, hemlock and maples. The sink is 
connected with the house by four-inch terra-cotta drain 
pipe, laid below the surface of the ground outside of 
building, hence runs 
under floor and up 
to the second story 
bathroom, along 
stone wall between 
the house proper 
and kitchen addi¬ 
tion, which is a 
two-story frame. 
The trap is an 
open trap. We seo 
the flame just 
under the sink, and 
sometimes through 
the bricks of the 
hearth, and some¬ 
times playing along 
the pipes leading to 
the gas range from 
a point over the 
the sewer connec¬ 
tion. The rubber 
hose was placed be¬ 
low the vent cap 
and the vent cap 
replaced above the 
rubber hose. This 
hose is same size as 
the vent pipe and 
acts as a lining one 
foot deep. w. h. s. 
Philadelphia, ra. 
The phenomena 
which your corre¬ 
spondent describes 
are very unusual 
and in some ways 
quite remarkable, 
on account of the 
long appearance of 
the phenomena and 
the frequent repe¬ 
tition of them dur¬ 
ing electrical storms. There is a matter of some doubt 
as to whether the peculiar phenomena are wholly 
electrical or whether they are in part associated with 
sewer gas coming from the sink-well. If the phe¬ 
nomena are purely electrical there would be no true 
flames, such as are produced by burning gas, a candle 
flame or a gas flame. Then, too, the reports, if they 
are due wholly to electrical discharges, would be likely 
to be very short and sharp, or shorter and sharper 
than the report of fire-crackers, rather than the more 
prolonged sound of a pistol shot. The light, if due 
simply to electrical discharges, would be quick flashes 
stretching from point to point, or, if the room were 
darkened, the discharges might appear brush-like and 
could hardly give the appearance of a solid body of 
flame which could flutter or wave as flames do with 
the movement of air currents. The light effect of 
electiical discharges gives the appearance of sharp, 
stiff lines going quickly from place to place, or of fine, 
stiff, straight hair-line or thread-like lines of light 
which do not give the impression of waving or flutter¬ 
ing in the same manner that a gas flame does. 
We are inclined to the view that the phenomena in 
question are not wholly electrical, assuming that the 
flames described by your correspondent are due to 
sewer gas ignited by electrical discharges. Combusti¬ 
ble gases are not infrequently generated as products 
of fermentation of house sewage. If the sink-well, 
into which the sewage of the house discharges, is 
closed out of doors so that it is not well ventilated, 
the gases produced by fermentation could accumulate 
there and, unless they are strongly trapped off from 
the house, they might easily be "sucked back into the 
house during electrical storms, provided the joints of 
the terra-cotta drain pipes under the floor of the house 
are not thoroughly gas-tight. When thunderstorms 
pass over a house there is usually associated with the 
passage and with the electrical displays a brief period 
of sudden rarefaction of the air whjch has the effect 
A PRESIDENT X WILLIAM BELT HYBRID. SLIGHTLY ENLARGED. Fig. 257. See Ruralisms, Page 586. 
of causing the air of the house and any gases in con¬ 
fined chambers suddenly to expand and rush out into 
the rarefied atmosphere generated by the electrical 
storm. The case is very much as if your correspond¬ 
ent’s house and sink-well were suddenly covered by 
the receiver of a giant air-pump from which the air 
is suddenly exhausted, thus enabling the gases from 
the sink-well to flow along the four-inch terra-cotta 
sewer pipe and escape at any openings which might be 
found. This sewer gas, if it is of the inflammable 
kind, on escaping into the air of the space under the 
floor, coming up about the sink or between the bricks 
of the hearth, might easily be ignited by a sharp elec¬ 
trical discharge and, associated with this ignition, 
there might be a report more like a pistol shot or even 
less sharp than that, and the gas might continue to 
burn for a moment or two, the time varying in length, 
depending on the time required for the gas to make 
its way out where it could mix with the atmosphere, 
and the volume of gas that had been caused to accu¬ 
mulate by the momentary rarefaction. 
If sewer gas from the sink-well is a factor in these 
phenomena a remedy would be found by ventilating 
the sink-well itself so that the moment any rarefac¬ 
tion of the air over the well occurred the gases in this 
well could easily and quickly escape out of doors, 
rather than to find their way along the sewer pipe 
into the space under the kitchen floor. If the sewage 
in the sink-well accumulate to a certain level and then 
seeps off into the ground, or is led away by an over¬ 
flow pipe of any sort, so that the water level in the 
sink-well is within a foot or so of the level at which 
the sewage enters the well, a trap could readily be 
formed by using a four-inch sewer pipe T, attaching 
the side inlet of the T by means of cement mortar, to 
the end of the four-inch sewer pipe, allowing the long 
end of the T to dip under water, and then closing 
the open end of the T by means of cement placed on 
top of one of the covers which is carried in stock, 
or one which may 
be readily impro¬ 
vised. Such a trap 
as this could not 
clog, and if the 
sink-well is itself 
ventilated, there 
would be no pos¬ 
sibility of the gas 
from the sink-well 
being drawn back 
into the house in 
any volume. The 
ventilation of the 
sink-well would be 
accomplished by 
using a length of 
four - inch sewer 
tile, or two if nec¬ 
essary, setting this 
in the top of the 
sink-well vertical¬ 
ly and open at 
both ends, cover¬ 
ing the top with 
a piece of quarter- 
inch mesh galvan¬ 
ized wire netting, 
allowing the upper 
end of the tile to 
stand six inches 
or so above the 
surface. It is of 
course important 
that the terra-cotta 
sewer pipe con¬ 
necting the house 
with the sink-well 
should have its joints thoroughly sealed with a rich 
cement mortar, both to prevent the leaking of sewage 
and the escape of gases from the sewer pipe. The 
trap under the sink would prevent the gases from 
coming up into the sink, but if the connection of this 
pipe with the sewer below the floor is not gas-tight, 
there could be a ready escape of gases under present 
conditions there, and this gas might come up through 
the floor where the pipe goes through it. So, too, if 
the gas main comes into the house under the kitchen 
floor and then comes up through the floor, gases 
might escape there which could be ignited above the 
floor. The escape of gas between the brick of the 
hearth of the range is not readily explained unless 
there is an air space under the floor which becomes 
charged with these gases at critical times, and the 
bricks are so laid that the gases readily circulate under 
the hearth. There is a possibility, but hardly a prob¬ 
ability, that the gas main itself may leak under the 
floor. Such a gas would of course be explosive, and 
might be ignited by an electric discharge, but the 
