1670 
Tf* RURAL. NEW-YORKER 
October 30, 1920 
®cr 
All winter lone you c:m ilr|»<-nd on JT ' 
your Utilitor to erind feed, shell corn —ft- ---— W\j ^ V'HHRmkQ 
turn a grindstone, pump water, run i ftf? ■ 'y j ¥ «V*^ 'i-Mr- 1 
cream separator, washing machine or # U<——. <i«R ! 
churn. Such lx-lt work can be rion< I.'' . \Ou **■> C 
cither on an individual or aline shaft. JjM/MB/f .' ‘..yaffle® ■V'Y^hwB w hR ’*• 1 
If you would know more of what gB ' MB / lBfe 
this machine can do. go to your dealer mWi {fijfl 
and let him show y ni. Tie will demon- m- W fl lit 
strate its uses gladly. The Utilitor is V ^ F H T*.. .. a L '<111 
useful 365 days a year, ~'- a 
DEALERS—You can make a Midwest Utilitor selling franchise a valuable addition 
to your present line. Write today for all the profitable facts. 
MIDWEST ENGINE COMPANY 
INDIANAPOLIS 
U. S. A. 
I 
! 
A Willing Servant For 
Winter Chores 
No more efficient or useful utility has 
ever been designed to serve the man in the 
country than the Midwest Utilitor. It is the 
trusty servant of the farm and farm home 
because of the things it will do at a time 
when animal power is carried at a loss— 
in winter. 
Now is fuel-gathering time. A Utilitor 
will “snake” big logs to your barnyard and 
there it will run your wood saw. In no 
time this little bundle of power will accum¬ 
ulate your fuel supply for the winter. 
You can haul your saw to your neighbors 
and cut rheir wood — thus making the 
Utilitor pay its way. 
Use It With a Snow 
Plow 
Especially at this time of 
the year the Utilitor comes 
into its own. With snow to 
be cleared, this sturdy utility 
equipped with even a make¬ 
shift plow will keep the paths 
open to barn, chicken houses, 
hog houses and around the 
house. 
f 
Will Help Light Your 
Home 
Besides keeping you warm 
the Utilitor will help light 
your home. A Utilitor and 
a lighting set, designed for 
use with this machine, can be 
purchased from any Utilitor 
dealer for only a few dollars 
more than alighting set alone. 
Dependable For AH 
Belt Work 
Farm Mechanics 
Small Septic Tank for Private Homes 
The increasing use of running water 
and modern toilet facilities in homes 
where no connection with public sewage 
can ho made has made it necessary that 
some safe and simple method of taking 
care of the waste from bathrooms, toilets 
and kitchen sinks should be devised. 
<>]ioii or covored cesspools have long boon 
used where the nature of tho soil per¬ 
mitted, but the danger of contamination 
of domestic water supplies makes their 
use undesirable, even where practicable. 
To meet this need for a private and in¬ 
expensive system of disposal of household 
sewage septic tanks have, in recent years, 
become very popular, and while they have 
been frequently described in these col¬ 
umns increasing knowledge of their oper¬ 
ation and repeated requests for informa¬ 
tion concerning them make it seem ad¬ 
visable to again consider the principles 
involved and the simplest methods of 
making use of them. 
A septic tank is a dark, tightly-closed 
chamber, usually made of concrete and 
placed underground, into which household 
sewage is discharged, and where it re¬ 
mains until practically all of the solid 
matter has been liquefied all of tin 
of decay-producing organisms in the 
So rapid is the process of decay in 
tanks that the greater part of the 
matter in ordinary sewage is liquefied in 
from 111 to 24 hours, while even the 
bodies of such small animals as rats have, 
with the exception of the hones, been en¬ 
tirely decomposed in from three to four 
weeks. As fresh supplies of sewage froip 
the house enter the tank a portion of 
that already liquefied is forced out, and 
is usually disposed of by allowing it to 
seep into the earth surrounding.one or 
more lines of drain tiles; laid just beneath 
the surface. 
Pile septic tank should be placed as 
close as practicable to the house to be 
solid 
tank. 
these 
solid 
from one-fourth to one-eighth inch to 
1 ho foot the greater grade at the tank 
end Iu fairly light, open soil, from 50 to 
100 running feet ot tiling will care for 
the outflow of such a tank as is described 
here. In very heavy soils it may be neees 
sary to use more tiles, arranged, perhaps 
ni several parallel lines, or to adopt 
some such expedient as is suggested bv 
tho New Hampshire State Board of 
Health. This suggestion is to di<>- .. 
drainage trench about 30 in. deep -mi] 
2 ft. wide and to fill it to half its depth 
with coarse furnace cinders or small 
stones. The tiles are laid upon this in 
the usual way, save that for the first 25 
ft-, the joints are cemented up half wav • 
this to prevent, too rapid escape of the ef¬ 
fluent before the farther part of the line 
is reached. The filling of the trench is 
then completed with cinders or sand, 
topped with about six inches of soil or 
day* J'i some places the disposal line 
may carry the effluent from the tank to a 
safe distance and empty it into a stone- 
hllcd pit. It should be remembered 
however, that such a pit then becomes, in' 
effect, a cesspool, and should not he 
placed where any other cesspool would 
not he. Ill other cases, it may be prac¬ 
ticable to carry the effluent to some dis¬ 
tance from the house and then allow it 
to flow away over the surface of grass 
land, but the grade and surface area of 
this grass land should be sufficient to 
prevent (lie discharge from gathering in 
pools and becoming putrid. Again, the 
liquids from the tank may, perhaps, he 
discharged into a running stream, though 
health authorities will not permit this if 
(he waters of the stream are used farther 
down for domestic purposes. 
The accompanying cut shows a sing'o 
Chamber septic tank of a size sufficient 
ror any family, the inside dimensions be¬ 
ing six fept in length, three feet six 
inches in width and five feet six inches 
Sma/i 7'anJt 
suitab/e for 
fami/y of 
ary size 
Dimensions 
inside: 6‘x3'6xf'6' 
A Small Septic Tank 
served, so 
short and 
that tin' entrance pipe may be 
of .sufficient pitch to prevent 
the contents ot the tank from backing up 
in it for more than a few inches. This 
pipe should be absolutely tight. There 
should be about a foot of earth over tile 
top of the tank, and where the grade is 
slight, the top of tin* tank may be built 
above ground if necessary and the earth 
mounded over it. As tin* whole system 
is underground there is nothing offensive 
about it. and it may be placed underneath 
the lawn or garden. House fixtures 
should be trapped to prevent return of 
gas from tank, the air chamber in the 
tank itself preventing sufficient accumu¬ 
lation of gas pressure to force these traps. 
All household sewage may be admitted 
to the tank, but it should lie in ordinarily 
concentrated form and should not he 
diluted by excessive amounts of laundry 
water or by admitting rain water to the 
tank from the roof. Solutions of car¬ 
bolic acid, corrosive sublimate or other 
antiseptics or germicides should not be 
permitted to enter tin" tank, since the 
proper action of the tank depends upon 
the germ life within it. Urease in ex¬ 
cessive quantities will not be destroyed 
in the tank, and a grease trap may bo 
needed where the washings from many 
dairy utensils dilute the sewage. A mod¬ 
erate amount of undissolved matter will 
accumulate as sludge in the bottom of the 
tank and may require removal from time 
to time. In a properly working tank, 
however, this accumulation is slight and 
needs removal only at intervals of per¬ 
haps several years. A heavy scum forms 
over the surface of the tank contents 
after it has been in use for a time, and 
the inlet and outlet pipes are so arranged 
that this scum shall not be disturbed. 
There are several ways of disposing of 
the discharge from the tank. This dis¬ 
charge may be nearly or quite odorless 
and colorless, but it is still liquefied sew- 
ige and should not be allowed to find its 
way uupurified into any household water 
supply. Probably the best way to purify 
this fluid is to allow it to seep 
through the upper layers of the soil from 
open-jointed lines of hard-burned agricul¬ 
tural tile laid from 10 to 15 in. be¬ 
neath the surface. These lines of tiles 
should be carefully laid with a grade of 
in depth. The walls are six inches or 
pore in thickness, and the cover, made 
in two or more slabs, or provided with 
a manhole for cleaning, is thick enough 
to support any weight that will ever be 
imposed upon it. The cover should fit 
tightly and be without vent. The sur¬ 
face height of the contents is determined 
by the position of the outlet, one foot 
below the cover. The inlet pipe is car¬ 
ried to about 2 1 / f> feet below the surface 
level of the contents of the tank, and the 
outlet pipe to within six inches of this 
depth. 
Such a tank can he easily built by 
anyone familiar with the use of concrete, 
a 1:2:4 mixture of cement, sand and 
gravel being suitable for the walls and 
cover. The latter may be reinforced by 
iron rods or bars, if placed where heavy 
loads may be drawn over it. In soils that 
do not crumble easily, an interior form 
of plank may be all that is needed, the 
bottom and sides of the excavation serving 
to hold the concrete. It, is well to know 
also that in this, as in much other con¬ 
crete work, small, clean stones embedded 
in the concrete as it is being put into 
place may be made to save about one- 
fourth of the mixture used. M. B. D. 
Acorns for Chickens 
About a year or so ago I saw au ac¬ 
count in The It. N.-Y. of acorns being 
used for chicken feed. Will you tell me 
whether it was a success, and how they 
were prepared? There are plenty of 
acorns around here. I have a small flock 
of chickens. j. u. 
New Jersey. 
Our recollection is that someone spoke 
of grinding sweet acorns and mixing them 
with cracked corn in a dry mash. The 
liens ate the mixture and did well on it. 
We have not heard of it since. Has 
anyone experience? During the war it 
was said that the Germans used both 
acorns and horse chestnuts for stock 
feeding. They were crushed, sprinkled 
with lime and soaked in hot water. This 
neutralized and washed out most of the 
disagreeable acid. When this pulp was 
dried and mixed with grain it made a fair 
feed. That is all we know about it. 
