Consider the Soil when Buying a Home
There are two requirements without which the most attractive house should be unhesitatingly rejected. It should be well built and situated on healthy soil. If on unwholesome soil, flimsily built, and insanitary in its construction, it will be found a very dear home, bo the rent what it may. Though little may be paid to the landlord, a great deal will probably bo paid to the doctor. The soil has very great influence on the health of the inhabitants.
This is an important mutter to bear in mind when contemplating purchase or a long lease. The late Dr. Parkes attri-to emanations from the soil attacks of cholera, dysentery, paroxysmal | typhoid and various forms of remittent fevers; and damp soils are the frequent cause of rheumatism and of diseases of the respiratory organs. The two principal dangers connected with soils are ground-water and ground-air. In low-lying districts the former often rises to within a foot or two of the surface, fluctuates very considerably on account of rainfall and other atmospheric conditions.
Above the level of the ground-water, the pores of the soil are filled with air. which is often heavily charged with moisture, and with offensive gases from leaking drains and gas-pipes, from cess-pools, and from decaying vegetable matter.
Every rise of ground-water forces this polluted air upwards, and. unless special precautions have been token, the air is driven into the houses above. In cold weather especially, the same upward movement also occurs in ill-constructed houses,—although on a much smaller scale,—in consequence of the varying pressure of the air within and without the house. Town-houses are particularly liable to pollution with ground-air, as the paving of the adjacent streets and yards is usually made as impervious as possible. The only preventive consists in covering the whole site of a house with an impervious layer of concrete and asphalt. " Made earth ", as it is called, is much to be dreaded as a soil on which to build human habitations.
It is "made'' by Ailing up hollow places with rubbish—often the decaying refuse of dust-bins. Such refuse contains a large amount of organic matter, during the slow putrefaction of which noxious gases are generated, and as gases of all kinds readily find their way through the soil. they are soon driven up into the house that stands over them. Rubbish should be exposed for at least two or three years to the air and sunlight before it is in any way safe to build upon. It is an unfortunate fact that sometimes good material, such as sand or gravel, has been dug out and sold, the space that it occupied being filled with rubbish, and on this foundation houses have been built, the tenants believing themselves to be England and America, that phthisis, ague, croup, dysentery, and other diseases an frequently caused by residence on damp soil. The death-rates from consumption in a number of towns have been reduced one-half by proper drainage of the subsoil. Coughs and colds are prevalent among dwellers on clay. In long-continued drought, too, clay is apt to crack so as to cause deep fissures which may seriously endanger the foundations of badly-construe ted houses.
It is obviously impossible in an overcrowded country like ours to provide a porous site for every house that is built, but when the soil happens to be heavy and wet it can be greatly improved by subsoil drainage. Open-jointed pipes, or small drains built with stones or bricks, help to dry it, if they are laid at a slope beneath the surface. They should never, however, run directly into a cess-pool or sewer. Trees, shrubs, and even grass are valuable as water consumers. They also cleanse the soil by using up much of its organic matter, which, though nutritious for plant life, may about a foot above the ground-level will prevent damp from rising into the walls above.
The ground-layer and the damp-proof course should be laid during the construction of the house; they can only be inserted afterwards at very great trouble and expense. Basement rooms which are intended for regular occupation, and the floors of which are below the surface of the external ground, should be Burrounded with an open area in order that the walls may be kept dry.