Q. In putting in water-closets for a large factory in an Eastern city, employing in one large building perhaps 300 hands, about one-half of whom are women, the question arose how many water-closets would be needed. Will you please inform me whether sanitary engineers have adopted any ratio for such or similar cases? I have thought that perhaps your city Board of Health may have considered the question in connection with your densely-populated tenement-houses, and if so, would like to know their regulations in the matter. Also, whether under such circumstances, as all the closets will be on one soil-pipe - i. e., arranged directly over one another in a shaft or annex, and will be flushed with 2-gallon flushes from cisterns - a 5-inch drain-pipe, iron, running some distance, with a fall of one in forty, will be sufficient to take care of the wastes and occasional foreign bodies thrown in by carelessness, without risk of obstruction.

A. We think you would require at least sixteen water-closets - eight for each sex. The pipe proposed is large enough. It should be provided with hand-hole screws to admit of the removal of obstructions. You do not state how many operatives will be employed on each floor. Our rule would be to provide at least one closet for each twenty operatives on a floor.