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408 IDEAL HOME LIFE |
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possible for all in the city but a very few—try and get a home where at least the sitting-room faces east or south, and where a draught from windows in front and rear and from air shafts, if possible, will stir up the atmosphere two or three times a day and blow out impurities.
Alas! how many homes, so-called, there are in tenement-houses big and little, pretentious and unpretentious, where the blessed sunlight never comes and the air is constantly loaded with the impurities of the ages and various other things. Pure air sometimes strays in by accident, but it may be unwelcome, so accustomed do people become after a time to darkness and filth and foul odors.
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Air in the Sleeping-Room
It is especially desirable that the sleeping-room should communicate with the external air. Air shafts, especially in tenement houses, are often most imperfect means, either of getting rid of foul air or supplying that which is pure, and the small rooms (closets), which are so common in cities, which have neither air shafts nor windows, which may connect with a gloomy hall or by a transom over the door, ought to be suppressed by law. They are hardly fit for store rooms.
To state in figures the air space which is necessary for the average human being, the cubic feet of air inhaled and carbonic acid gas exhaled, and the volume of inflowing air required to satisfy the normal respiration, would only confuse the average reader, so the matter may be condensed, by advising every one to have as large a sleeping room as he can get, with walls at least ten feet high, with a window facing the east, if possible, so that the sun may look cheerily in and bid him good morning, and let him see to it that his window is open when he goes to bed.
Ventilation
Ventilation, as applied to the home, means the removal of impure air and gases and the admission of pure air. Of course this definition is equally applicable to any and all buildings. |
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