Hints to househunters and householders / by Ernest Turner.

  • Turner, Ernest.
Date:
1884
Catalogue details

Licence: Public Domain Mark

Credit: Hints to househunters and householders / by Ernest Turner. Source: Wellcome Collection.

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    1. By moisture from the ground. It is a popular superstition—based on strictly scientific fact—that water will always find its own level—that is to say, will always sink as low as it can. This is, in fact, one of the “ laws of nature,” and, like all other such “ laws,” always holds good—till another “law’’happens to interfere with it. The law which in this case interferes with that of gravitation is the law of capillary attraction. And under the influence of this law, water, or any similar liquid, instead of sinking as low, climbs as high as it can ; as may be seen if you put a lump of sugar into a wet saucer ; or felt if you build a wall in a wet soil. 2. By rain falling on window-sills which do not project beyond the walls, and are not constructed to throw the water clear of them. Modern aesthetes rather favour this particular form of insanity. 3. By rain falling on projecting portions of the wall itself. Cornices, aesthetic architraves, and other orna- mental features of the kind, are very effective damp-traps in this way. 4. By parapet walls, gables, or dormers, not being properly covered with coping. Here gravitation and capillary attraction join hands, and the wet soaks downwards merrily. 5. By overflows from imperfect roof gutters, or rain-water pipes.