Martinsburg herald. [volume] (Martinsburg, W. Va.) 1881-1920, 1892-11-12
A New Idea in Building.

A French civil engineer, NJ. Somesco,
has built himself house on a marsh be-
tween two rivers. 1t is so dry and warm
that measures have been necessary to
produce greater moisture in the rooms.
1t is likely that as the s fence of sanitary
architecture advances NJ. Somesco's man
sion will become the type of modern
dwelling houses.
The ground was so swampy that it was
necessary to dig six feet below the cellar
floor to get solid foundation. The Gel
lar walls are of massive masonry. Then
Somesco's new plan begins The house
is square, and has two walls, one inside
the other, with hollow space of five
inches between them. Up through this
hollow space the heat from the furnace
which warns the house passes and filters
in through the porous walls all through
the mansion.
Sonesco has his furnace room outside
the house. A pipe passes from it con-
veying the smoke and heat to the
house into heat chamber in the cellar
Or basement. Inside the basement
about level with the top of the ground,
a hollow, square passageway runs all
around the walls. Supported upon
brackets in the center of this passage
way runs the iron hue which conveys the
smoke and heat all around the bottom
of the house walls. AT intervals are
openings from the passageway to the
hollow between the walls. The iron
pipe heats the air of the hollow pas
sageway, while carrying the smoke
around again to hue whence it escapes
upward. Inlets of fresh air from the
garden open at intervals into the hot air
passage.
Somescos great idea is the porosity
of his walls, both the inside and outside
one. He will allow no paper or plaster.
Both are made of porous bricks, the in
side one being covered with wooden
tapestry hangiLgs that can be taken
down and cleaned. The whole house is
SO warm that constantly in all weathers
it is possible to leave the windows open.
A writer in the London Lancet says:
Over and above all these considerations NJ.
Somesco maintains he has realized the ideal
that dwelling should be like our clothes,
only not portable, but permeable. 1t should
be warm, because it should be made of mate
rails that are bad conductors of heat. Indoors
we should possess means of counteracting the
chilling effects of the outer air. We ought TO
live indoors as we live out of DOORS and we
should consider our house merely as if it were
an extra greatcoat. The coat. if porous, will
be warm and healthful. One of the reasons, he
says, why we are apt to feel uncomfortable
when it rains is that the rain blocks up the
porosity of the walls, and that, too, on the
windward side.
As for microbes, NJ. Somesco proudly pointed
70 the artistic drapery which covered the bare
bricks of his porous walls. These are" he
exclaimed, my microbe traps. If l have any
reason to believe that injurious microbes have
been introduced into my house, know pretty
well where to find them. 1t would take but
little time or trouble to unlock all this drap-
cry, to put it into the disinfecting stove, and
there superheated steam under pressure, with
out injuring the cloth, would assuredly kill the
microbes. Even without these artificial meth
DDS Of publication, if the walls were porous
oxygen would go wherever the microbe went
and nature would effect its own cure"
You may speak of an elegant watch
or chain or carriage or harness, but do
not talk about an elegant landscape or
an elegant mountain view. Do not call
Niagara elegant"