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Streeter, John Williams

"The Fat of the Land The Story of an American Farm"

From near
the end of this west pipe a 1-1/2-inch pipe was carried due north
through the centre of the five-acre lot set apart for the hennery, and
into the fields beyond. This pipe was about 700 feet long. Altogether I
used 1100 feet of four-inch, and about 2200 feet of smaller pipe, at a
total cost of $803. All water pipes were placed 4-1/2 feet in the ground
to be out of the reach of frost, and to this day they have received no
further attention.
The trenches for the pipes were opened by a party of five Italians whom
a railroad friend found for me. These men boarded themselves, slept in
the barn, and did the work for seventy-five cents a rod, the job costing
me $169.
Opening the sewer trenches cost a little more, for they were as deep as
those for the water, and a little wider. Eight hundred feet of main
sewer, a three-hundred-foot branch to the house, and short branches from
barns, pens, and farm-houses, made in all about fourteen hundred feet,
which cost $83 to open. The sewer ended in the stable yard back of the
horse barn, in a ten-foot catch-basin near the manure pit.


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