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Classic
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page 397
when the state of the purse permits it--it may be divided into apartments, with
brick walls between, one for vegetables, one for fruits, one for provisions, one
for the laundry, and a fifth for coal and the furnace, if one is used. In one
corner of the cellar, under the kitchen, may also be the cistern, the strong
cellar wall serving for its outer wall. A pump from the kitchen would supply
water there for domestic uses; and a pipe with a stop-cock, leading through the
wall into the cellar, would occasionally be a convenience and save labor. It is
better, however, as a rule to locate the cistern just outside the house, passing
a pipe from it through the cellar wall below the deepest frost level, and thence
to the kitchen. If built in the cellar, the cistern should be square, with heavy
walls, plastered inside with three coats of water lime.
All the apartments of a cellar should be easily accessible from the outside door
and from the kitchen stairway. In the vegetable apartment, the bins should be
made of dressed lumber, and painted, and located in the center, with a walk
around each, so that the contents may easily be examined and assorted. The fruit
shelves, made of slats two inches wide and placed one inch apart, should be put
up with equal care and neatness, and with equal regard for convenience and easy
access. Their place should be the most airy part of the cellar; the proper width
is about two feet, and the distance apart about one foot, with the lowest shelf
one foot from the floor. Pears will ripen nicely on the lower shelves under a
cover of woolen blankets. The supports should, of course, be firm and strong.
The bottom shelf should be of one board, on which to scatter fine fresh lime to
the depth of an inch, changing it two or three times during the winter. A shelf,
suspended firmly from the ceiling, and located where it will be easy of access
from the kitchen, on which to place cakes, pies, meats, and any thing that needs
to be kept cool and safe from cats and mice, is an absolute necessity. Its
height prevents the articles placed on it from becoming damp, and gathering
mold, as they sometimes do when placed on the cellar floor. In planning shelves
for cans, crocks, casks, etc., regard should be had to economy of space by
making the distance between the shelves correspond to the articles to stand on
them, and it is well to so place the lower shelf that the meat barrels, etc.,
may be placed under it. The temperature of a cellar should never be below
freezing, and if it is raised above fifty by a fire, outside air should be
admitted to lower it. The best time for ventilating the cellar is at noon,
taking care in hot weather not to admit so much outside air as to render it
warm. A simple and excellent plan for ventilation, where the location of the
kitchen chimney admits it, is to pass an ordinary stove-pipe through the floor
upward beside or behind the pipe of the kitchen stove, and thence by an elbow
into the chimney. The draft of the chimney will carry off all the impure air
that arises in the cellar, and if too great a current is created it may be
brought under complete control by a valve at the floor.
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