These instruments would have left a sooty residue on the walls and ceiling that required periodic cleaning.Evidence from other houses indicates that potted vines likely stood in the corners of the interior court, deliberately trained to climb the columns all the way to the second floor roof.Solid insulated walls, ceramic roofs, paved floors, interior kitchens, cisterns, and sewerage disposal all made living more tolerable.
Facilities for household sanitation remained relatively primitive.
Pitchers and would have been used to draw water from the cistern and to carry it to areas of the house such as the kitchen and bathroom.
Despite the technological limitations of its household systems of sanitation, water, and heat, in other words, the closed environment of this house would have been comfortable, serene, and inviting.
Quantities of human labor hours were required to create this environment, not to mention those needed to perform the basic necessities of cooking, cleaning, and maintenance.
The ground-floor rooms were sumptuously decorated and surviving fragments of mosaic and wall painting from the second floor indicate that the interior decor at this level was equally refined.
While the front section of the house rose no higher, the architects added a split-level addition to the buildings south side, ascending two additional stories up the hill directly behind.The sophisticated terrace design of the House of the Herms rendered it one of the largest, most well-conceived and solidly constructed houses on the island.Several of its elements were arranged with breathtaking splendor.Beneath the paved floor of the courtyard was a deep cistern where the inhabitants would store rain water that was channeled by gutters along the roof of the peristyle to the corners of the court below.A marble sculpted wellhead enabled them to draw water from this storage facility.From the third-floor landing, for example, an arriving visitor could have gazed directly down the flights of stairs (deliberately kept steep and aligned), through the south portico of the second story directly into the dining room on the ground floor, where a magnificent sculptural group by the celebrated fourth century BC artist, Praxiteles, would have caught the eye.