Untitled record

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N.PETERS, PHOTO-LITHOGRAPHER, WASHINGTON. D. C.

UNITED STATES PATENT OFFICE.

JACOB PEBBLES, OF VIDALIA, LOUISIANA.

BRICK CISTERN.

Specification of Letters Patent No. 4,647, dated July 20, 1846.

To dll whom it may concern:

Be it known that I, Jacob Peebles, of Vidalia, in the State of Louisiana, have made a new and useful Improvement in the Manner 5 of Constructing Cisterns for the Holding of Water in Alluvial Soils; and I do hereby declare that the following is a full and exact description thereof.

My cistern is an improvement upon that 10 for which Letters Patent of the United States were granted to George W. Blenis on the 18th of August 1837. In the cistern patented by him, the side walls were made cylindrical as usual, and the improvement 1 ? consisted in his making the bottoms thereof in the form of an inverted arch, or rather of an inverted dome, and this was done to enable it to resist the hydrostatic pressure which, in alluvial, or moist soils, is sufficient -4 to raise and burst up the bottoms of cisterns, when such bottoms are flat, and the cistern is not filled with water. In the low. lands of the Mississippi, and in other situations of a like character, where the rise of the adjacent 25 waters is considerable, the cisterns made upon the plan of said Blenis have failed, the pressure being sufficient to raise the whole body of the cistern, with its domed bottom, from the ground upon which it was made to 30 rest. To obviate this difficulty, I make my cisterns in the form of a frustum of a cone, the base, or larger diameter of the cone being downward. The bottom I form in the manner of those constructed by Blenis, and I 35 usually inclose it at top, by building thereon a dome of masonry, but it may be covered in this part with plank, or with flat stones.

Although I do not intend to claim the particular manner that I usually adopt, and ^{4 0} prefer, in the building of my cisterns, I will describe it, as I have found it superior to any other.

The accompanying drawing represents a vertical section through the axis of one of my cisterns, with its sides conical, its bottom ₄₅in the form of an inverted, and its top in that of a direct dome.

After digging out my cistern so as to give the desired dimensions and form to its bottom and sides, I plaster the whole of. the _5Qearth constituting said bottom and sides, with hydraulic mortar to the thickness of about an inch, as shown at a, a, a; I then lay bricks c, c, on the bottom in the proper cement, and upon this I build my side walls, ₅₅leaving the distance of about half an inch between the brick work c, c, and the plastering a, a, as shown at δ, &amp; and. as the work goes in, I pour grouting into this space so‘as to fill it completely. The inside of the brick ₆₀work, I then plaster with cement, as shown at d, d.