Wood makes a very bad roofing material. It decays quickly and is a poor protection against the rain. Then, too, it can hardly be built so that a great wind will not blow it away. Many roofs are now built of zinc, and for some reasons this is good material to make them of. If we have a zinc roof, however, we must build a garret between it and the living rooms,—a sort of air chamber for the sake of coolness; for when the sun beats down on the zinc roof, the metal gets very hot. This sort of roof is useful for catching rain water; after the first rain has washed off all the dust and dirt, then we may collect the rain water that falls from the roof into our cisterns, and have a plentiful, pure supply during the rainy season.
In early days roofs were covered with half-round red tiles. We see a great many of them still on old houses, but they are heavy, and dangerous as well during the typhoons and earthquakes that sometimes visit us.
Perhaps the best of all roofs for this climate are the ones covered with flat, broad pieces of slate, secured by wire or nails to boards and rafters underneath, but roofs of this sort are expensive. It will probably be best, therefore, for us to roof our house with zinc. If we have an airy garret between it and the ceiling of the upper rooms, it will be quite cool enough.
The rooms in our house will be very simple. We shall not have any heavy, stiff carpets on the floors, to catch dust and breed disease. Nor shall there be moldings or ornamental ledges along the walls, because these also catch and hold the dust. Our rooms shall be easy to keep clean. What pictures and ornaments we have on the walls shall be such as can readily be reached and dusted. A room so decorated that it cannot be kept free from dust and dirt cannot possibly be beautiful.
The kitchen of a house anywhere should be clean as can be, but particularly in this country. It should be on the north side of the house if possible, for the sake of shade. We will not, however, have trees growing very near it, even to shade it. They have a saying in the tropics that “He who grows a tree against his house invites death to his door.” This means that dampness and shade made by the trees growing too near the house breed disease and often bring death. So we shall have no trees nearer our house than twenty feet.